By Joel Clement, Director, Office of Policy Analysis at the United States Department of the Interior

How do we work with diverse ecosystems and landscapes to address climate change? How can we help these natural systems build resilience and pull more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?

Globally, the degradation of forests, agricultural areas, wetlands and other important landscapes account for nearly one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions today. Slowing – and perhaps reversing – these emissions is critical to addressing climate change.

As many of you may know, forests, wetlands, grasslands, deserts, the arctic tundra and even agricultural areas are threatened both by land conversion practices, but also by climate impacts such as wildfire and drought. Improving management to build resilience and foster carbon sequestration and storage in these areas, rather than converting lands and adding to carbon emissions, can directly contribute to the planet’s climate mitigation efforts. While efforts to protect and restore forest ecosystems are certainly the front line in this endeavor, there are many innovative approaches currently underway and showing success in a range of systems including wetlands, coastal mangroves and agricultural areas.

Daniel Murdiyarso, Lee White and Giovanna Valverde Stark joined U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell here at the 21st meeting of the Conference of Parties in Paris – known as COP21 – to talk about some of the cutting edge, innovative mitigation actions that are underway in key landscapes around the world.

In Costa Rica, Stark is helping her country remain carbon neutral through its Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMA) program. Costa Rica is a one of the largest producers of coffee, but its coffee cultivation practices have been threatened by climate change and other factors. To continue to make smart, environmentally friendly choices, the country has implemented “low carbon coffee” climate adaption practices, aimed at building resilience and reducing emissions of harmful gasses such as nitrous oxide and methane, while increasing the country’s coffee sector role as a carbon “sink,” or storehouse. NAMA is a whole-of-sector effort.

During the conference, Stark said their analysis found that 50 percent of emissions from the coffee sector take place in the production process, while the other 50 percent comes from consumption, so to reduce emissions, they engaged the entire coffee sector, including producers, mills, exporters, roasters and consumers. Local coffee growers used “shaded coffee” methods in the field – using trees to improve resilience – while mills used clean technologies to reduce methane emissions.

To ensure success, NAMA used an extensive monitoring, reporting, and verifying process. As a result, it is saving 90,000 tons of CO2 per year, and overall they project to prevent the release of 1.8 million tons of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere.

Right here in the United States, we’re also taking significant, innovative steps to reduce carbon emissions from our land sectors; steps we hope will enhance the ability of our ecosystems to absorb and store carbon. In her remarks, Secretary Jewell noted the importance of measuring and understanding the carbon that is currently stored in ecosystems and how the U.S. Geological Survey has developed tools to do so. Their Land Carbon Data Tool helps land managers make informed landscape-scale decisions that improve carbon storage in ecosystems around the country.

Combatting climate change will require research and innovation on all fronts, and reversing the flow of carbon from the land sector and ecosystems into the atmosphere is crucial to success. Protecting and restoring mangroves to store more carbon, developing landscape-scale carbon and resilience strategies to produce measurable success, and smart technologies in the coffee cultivation process in Costa Rica are important steps that provide hope and encourage innovation worldwide.

Read the full, original article at https://www.doi.gov/blog/beyond-forests-innovative-conservation-solutions-work-diverse-landscapes