Nature-based solutions (NbS)-solutions to societal challenges that involve working with nature-have recently gained popularity as an integrated approach that can address climate change and biodiversity loss, while supporting sustainable development Although well-designed NbS can deliver multiple benefits for people and nature, much of the recent limelight has been on tree planting for carbon sequestration There are serious concerns that this is distracting from the need to rapidly phase out use of fossil fuels and protect existing intact ecosystems There are also concerns that the expansion of forestry framed as a climate change mitigation solution is coming at the cost of carbon rich and biodiverse native ecosystems and local resource rights Here, we discuss the promise and pitfalls of the NbS framing and its current political traction, and we present recommendations on how to get the message right We urge policymakers, practitioners and researchers to consider the synergies and trade-offs associated with NbS and to follow four guiding principles to enable NbS to provide sustainable benefits to society: (1) NbS are not a substitute for the rapid phase out of fossil fuels; (2) NbS involve a wide range of ecosystems on land and in the sea, not just forests; (3) NbS are implemented with the full engagement and consent of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in a way that respects their cultural and ecological rights; and (4) NbS should be explicitly designed to provide measurable benefits for biodiversity Only by following these guidelines will we design robust and resilient NbS that address the urgent challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, sustaining nature and people together, now and into the future

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/gcb.15513

Getting the message right on nature-based solutions to climate change

The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked1-3, yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently4,5. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales. We propose ESBs for maintaining the resilience and stability of the Earth system (safe ESBs) and minimizing exposure to significant harm to humans from Earth system change (a necessary but not sufficient condition for justice)4. The stricter of the safe or just boundaries sets the integrated safe and just ESB. Our findings show that justice considerations constrain the integrated ESBs more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading. Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just ESBs and at least two regional safe and just ESBs in over half of global land area are already exceeded. We propose that our assessment provides a quantitative foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people now and into the future. 

/pdf/safe-and-just-earth-system-boundaries-2q2mf18l.pdf

Safe and just Earth system boundaries

Summary Human pressure mapping is important for understanding humanity's role in shaping Earth's patterns and processes. Our ability to map this influence has evolved, thanks to powerful computing, Earth-observing satellites, and new bottom-up census and crowd-sourced data. Here, we provide the latest temporally inter-comparable maps of the terrestrial human footprint and assessment of change in human pressure at global, biome, and ecoregional scales. In 2013, 42% of terrestrial Earth could be considered relatively free of direct anthropogenic disturbance, and 25% could be classed as “wilderness” (the least degraded end of the human footprint spectrum). Between 2000 and 2013, 1.9 million km2—an area the size of Mexico—of land relatively free of human disturbance became highly modified. The majority of this occurred within tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannah, and shrubland ecosystems, but the rainforests of Southeast Asia also underwent rapid modification. Our results show that humanity's footprint is eroding Earth's last intact ecosystems, and greater efforts are urgently needed to retain them.

Change in Terrestrial Human Footprint Drives Continued Loss of Intact Ecosystems

. Data on the extent, patterns, and trends of human land use are critically
important to support global and national priorities for conservation and
sustainable development. To inform these issues, we created a series of
detailed global datasets for 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2015 to evaluate temporal
and spatial trends of land use modification of terrestrial lands (excluding
Antarctica). We found that the expansion of and increase in human modification
between 1990 and 2015 resulted in 1.6  M km2 of natural land lost. The
percent change between 1990 and 2015 was 15.2 % or 0.6 % annually –
about 178  km2 daily or over 12 ha min −1 . Worrisomely, we
found that the global rate of loss has increased over the past 25 years. The
greatest loss of natural lands from 1990 to 2015 occurred in Oceania, Asia, and
Europe, and the biomes with the greatest loss were mangroves, tropical and
subtropical moist broadleaf forests, and tropical and subtropical dry
broadleaf forests. We also created a contemporary ( ∼2017 )
estimate of human modification that included additional stressors and found
that globally 14.6 % or 18.5  M km2 ( ±0.0013 ) of lands have
been modified – an area greater than Russia. Our novel datasets are
detailed (0.09  km2 resolution), temporal (1990–2015), recent
( ∼2017 ), comprehensive (11 change stressors, 14 current),
robust (using an established framework and incorporating classification
errors and parameter uncertainty), and strongly validated. We believe these
datasets support an improved understanding of the profound transformation
wrought by human activities and provide foundational data on the amount,
patterns, and rates of landscape change to inform planning and decision-making for environmental mitigation, protection, and restoration. The datasets generated from this work are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3963013 (Theobald et al., 2020).

/pdf/earth-transformed-detailed-mapping-of-global-human-7q69ofl25o.pdf

Earth transformed: detailed mapping of global human modification from 1990 to 2017

Leading up to the Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of the Parties 15, there is momentum around setting bold conservation targets. Yet, it remains unclear how much of Earth's land area remains without significant human influence and where this land is located. We compare four recent global maps of human influences across Earth's land, Anthromes, Global Human Modification, Human Footprint and Low Impact Areas, to answer these questions. Despite using various methodologies and data, these different spatial assessments independently estimate similar percentages of the Earth's terrestrial surface as having very low (20%-34%) and low (48%-56%) human influence. Three out of four spatial assessments agree on 46% of the non-permanent ice- or snow-covered land as having low human influence. However, much of the very low and low influence portions of the planet are comprised of cold (e.g., boreal forests, montane grasslands and tundra) or arid (e.g., deserts) landscapes. Only four biomes (boreal forests, deserts, temperate coniferous forests and tundra) have a majority of datasets agreeing that at least half of their area has very low human influence. More concerning, <1% of temperate grasslands, tropical coniferous forests and tropical dry forests have very low human influence across most datasets, and tropical grasslands, mangroves and montane grasslands also have <1% of land identified as very low influence across all datasets. These findings suggest that about half of Earth's terrestrial surface has relatively low human influence and offers opportunities for proactive conservation actions to retain the last intact ecosystems on the planet. However, though the relative abundance of ecosystem areas with low human influence varies widely by biome, conserving these last intact areas should be a high priority before they are completely lost.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/gcb.15109

Global human influence maps reveal clear opportunities in conserving Earth's remaining intact terrestrial ecosystems

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Global human influence maps reveal clear opportunities in conserving Earth's remaining intact terrestrial ecosystems