How to protect species and save the planet—at the same time

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Humanity is struggling to contain two compounding crises: skyrocketing global temperatures and plummeting biodiversity. But people tend to tackle each problem on its own, for instance by deploying green energies and carbon-eating machines while roping off ecosystems to preserve them. But in a new report, 50 scientists from around the world argue that treating each crisis in isolation means missing out on two-fer solutions that resolve both. Humanity can't solve one without also solving the other.

The report is the product of a four-day virtual workshop attended by researchers of all stripes and is a collaboration between the United Nations' Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In light of the Paris Agreement, it's meant to provide guidance on how campaigns that address biodiversity might also address climate change, and vice versa.

The plain-language report should prove to be hugely influential not only among governmental policymakers and conservation groups, but also among corporations, says Betsy Beymer-Farris, a sustainability scientist at the University of Kentucky, who wasn't involved in the report but did peer review it. It's hard for companies or even nation states to really distill academic literature," Beymer-Farris says. The report both lays out the climate and biodiversity science and the social science of how to effect change with the help of the people who actually rely on the land for farming and grazing. I definitely got excited when I reviewed the report," Beymer-Farris adds. I thought: OK, this is definitely different from what I've seen before because it's a conscious and serious engagement with a more equitable and just way forward."

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