Climate change

The interconnected crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation threaten to exacerbate human inequality and disrupt efforts for broad human well-being, unless an integrated approach to these challenges is rapidly implemented. Without positive change at the nature-climate nexus, the risk of overshooting the goal of the Paris Agreement of "pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels" will continue to increase, with numerous feedback loops that accelerate biodiversity loss and climate impacts. 

About climate change and nature

Climate change threatens people’s lives and livelihoods, the survival of species, and the integrity of ecosystems all over the world. Climate change has already altered marine, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, causing species losses and declines in key ecosystem services. These climate-driven impacts on ecosystems have caused measurable economic and livelihood losses – but it’s not too late to take collective action.  

The Paris Climate Agreement is a commitment of the international community to keep global warming well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. However, the “Global Warming of 1.5 °C IPCC Special Report” shows greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Current plans to address climate change are not ambitious enough to limit warming to the 1.5°C limit—a threshold scientists believe is necessary to avoid even more catastrophic impacts. Above the 1.5 °C limit, the risks of extreme weather and collapsing ecosystems grow.  

The actions of the international community between now and 2030 will determine whether we can collectively slow warming enough to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS), rooted in the principles of enhancing nature’s innate capacity to address societal challenges, provide a promising pathway for such integration. NbS are increasingly recognised as essential to synergistically achieving the goals under the three Rio Conventions — the UNFCCC, CBD, and UNCCD — and their respective multilateral agreements, including the Paris Agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and the Land Degradation Neutrality target. As such:

Our work

The climate and biodiversity emergencies are not distinct, but two aspects of one crisis. Unsustainable human activity continues to compound the situation, and threatens not only our own survival but the foundation of life on Earth. Our response to these emergencies must be mutually reinforcing.

- Marseille Manifesto

Our ambition is for a world that limits temperature rise to 1.5°C through ambitious measures to mitigate climate change, and enables effective adaptation. We work to achieve this by monitoring the impacts of climate change and responses to it, helping governments implement effective Nature-based Solutions at scale, and ensuring that responses to climate change and its impacts are informed by evidence. We guide climate policy and action that is equitable and inclusive to bring the greatest benefits to societies, nature and economies.

How is IUCN limiting climate change impacts on nature?

Supporting a just and equitable transition

IUCN works to accelerate a just and equitable transition to clean energy and a low carbon future, for the protection of people and the planet, especially including:

• promoting a global transition to clean and renewable energy sources,
• engaging a suite of climate mitigation actions such as eliminating the use of coal for energy and reducing fossil fuel consumption,
• transforming agriculture and food systems,
• and halting deforestation.

Promoting Nature-based Solutions

In addition to cutting emissions, IUCN strongly advocates for a worldwide use of Nature-based Solutions, such as restoring ecosystems to absorb and sequester carbon already emitted or implementing ecosystem-based adaptation to increase the resilience of ecosystems.

The latest IPCC report demonstrated that reducing the destruction of forests and other ecosystems, restoring them, and improving the management of working lands, such as farms — are among the top five most effective strategies for mitigating carbon emissions by 2030.

IUCN engages on this issue from multiple perspectives, from assessing the risks that climate change poses to biodiversity, to advancing practical nature-based solutions for both climate mitigation and adaptation, centred on the better conservation, management and restoration of the world’s ecosystems, including:

• Drive collaboration through initiatives such as the Enhancing Nature-based Solutions for Accelerated Climate Transformation (ENACT) Partnership, a coalition of state and non-state actors collaborating and building support for the joint implementation of the Rio Conventions via integrated approaches for climate action.  
• Enhance nature’s ability to store carbon across forests, drylands, and oceans by deploying Nature-based Solutions for climate mitigation, such as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) and promoting forest landscape restoration and blue carbon initiatives.
• Secure community resilience through Nature-based Solutions to adaptation, such as restoring mangroves and wetlands which reduce the impact of storms and floods, as well as hybrid solutions, such as green-grey infrastructure and integrated adaptation technologies.
• Support best practices in climate investments to minimise risks of maladaptation and ancillary negative impacts on people and biodiversity, such as developing best practices for the use of Nature-based Solutions as carbon offsets.
• Mobilize enhanced finance through multiple revenue streams to enable the implementation of Nature-based Solutions for climate change, such as through the Global EbA Fund, the Blue Natural Capital Financing Facility, the Subnational Climate Finance initiative, and the Nature+ Accelerator Fund.