COP21: Nature can provide 30 percent of solution

Last week, the Climate Policy Initiative released new figures on the funding for climate change solutions in 2014. Based on their figures, of the estimated $391 billion that went to climate change solutions last year, only about 2% went to conserving and leveraging nature as a solution. And yet nature can provide 30% or more of the solution to climate change.

CI has released a new infographic to illustrate how much nature can be a solution to fighting climate change. They have also released our position statement on what we want to see out of the COP.

Conservation International believes that the new climate change agreement will only be effective if it recognizes the social and economic value of nature-based solutions for both mitigation and adaptation. These measures make financial sense, provide multiple benefits beyond mitigation and adaptation, and are critical to sustaining and increasing collective ambition.

The past year of negotiations will culminate in Paris as Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) finalize a new global climate agreement for adoption. The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) will be deliberating on a text containing two parts: 1) draft agreement text, and 2) draft decisions to be adopted by the Conference of the Parties to complement the agreement.

Nature-based solutions are an essential component of the global response to combat climate change and must be strongly supported in both the new agreement and decision text.