Protecting half the planet could help solve climate change and save species
Earth faces two interrelated crises: accelerating loss of biodiversity and climate change. Both are worsened by human development of natural lands that would otherwise allow species to flourish and would store atmosphere-warming carbon, stabilizing the climate. A new study argues that nations can help avert the biodiversity and climate crises by preserving the roughly 50 percent of land that remains relatively undeveloped. The researchers dub that conserved area a “Global Safety Net,” mapping out regions that can meet critical conservation and climate goals in a study published September 4 in Science Advances. Eric Dinerstein, a conservation biologist at RESOLVE, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., and colleagues began by mapping out existing protected areas, which cover about 15 percent of land. The team then sequentially added slices of land needed to meet different conservation goals, using existing biodiversity databases. To protect species most threatened by extinction that aren’t already protected, an extra 2.3...