Abstract
Limiting global warming to a 1.5°C temperature rise requires drastic emissions reductions and removal of carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere. Most modelled pathways for 1.5°C assume substantial removals in the form of biomass energy with carbon capture and storage, which brings with it increasing risks to biodiversity and food security via extensive land-use change. Recently, multiple efforts to describe and quantify potential removals via ecosystem-based approaches have gained traction in the climate policy discourse. However, these options have yet to be evaluated in a systematic and scientifically robust way. We provide spatially explicit estimates of ecosystem restoration potential quantified with a Dynamic Global Vegetation Model. Simulations covering forest restoration, reforestation, reduced harvest, agroforestry and silvopasture were combined and found to sequester an additional 93 Gt C by 2100, reducing mean global temperature increase by ∼0.12°C (5%–95% range 0.06°C–0.21°C) relative to a baseline mitigation pathway. Ultimately, pathways to achieving the 1.5°C goal garner broader public support when they include land management options that can bring about multiple benefits, including ecosystem restoration, biodiversity protection, and resilient agricultural practices.
Highlights
Following the adoption of the Paris Agreement, with its overall objective to ‘balance sources and sinks’ of greenhouse gases to limit global warming to ‘well below 2◦C’, international attention has turned to the possibilities for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
We explore the mitigation potential at a global scale of five spatially explicit ecosystem-based land management pathways: Forest Restoration; Reforestation; Reduced Harvest; Agroforestry and Silvopasture
The areas identified for ecosystem restoration were simulated in a community land surface model, the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), which incorporates the dynamic global vegetation model TRIFFID to simulate vegetation and carbon cycle processes [32]
Summary
Following the adoption of the Paris Agreement, with its overall objective to ‘balance sources and sinks’ of greenhouse gases to limit global warming to ‘well below 2◦C’, international attention has turned to the possibilities for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Approaches that restore nature, with significant benefits to biodiversity, ecosystem services and local communities are gaining widespread interest [5,6,7], but their quantitative potential is uncertain. Policy and scientific debate has focused on the potential for restoration of natural ecosystems to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at gigatonne scale, with potentially significant co-benefits. The potential to protect and restore ecosystems and to regenerate and more sustainably manage lands exists across all climatic biomes and country classifications
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