All over the world there is ongoing tension when efforts to preserve biodiversity and fight climate change seem to be in opposition to the ability of nearby communities to sustain themselves through growing food or hunting or simply having a place to live. This is particularly the case with forests where “actions to capture carbon, restore biodiversity and find ways to support the livelihoods of the people who live near and in the forests might be at odds.”
For example, in India, if you were to protect a forest to help preserve the tigers or other animals living within it by fencing it off from those that live around it, you might severely limit their ability to access food from the forest or prevent their animals from being able to graze within it. To address this problem, this Guardian article suggests “Dr. Trisha Gopalakrishna and her fellow researchers used a framework called Nature’s Contribution to People (NCP) to show how restoring nature and biodiversity can help communities to thrive if it is done carefully.” The result of applying the NCP framework is that you end up with integrated plans that attempt to create solutions that will work to preserve biodiversity, fight climate change and help human communities as well.
In India, where this research took place “38%-41% of the people affected by integrated spatial plans for these forests belong to socioeconomically disadvantaged groups” so it is especially important to consider the impact of such plans. “The researchers generated maps of 3.88m hectares of possible forest restoration area, and found that integrated plans aimed at multiple goals rather than just one delivered on average 83.3% of climate crisis mitigation NCP, 89.9% of biodiversity value NCP and 93.9% of societal NCP compared with those delivered by single-objective plans.”
Other researchers are taking notice and the “method has been adopted by the UN Development Programme, which has written a report on how integrated spatial planning is important. European conservationists INSPIRE are also using the method to understand protected area networks in Europe.”
Gopalakrishna says “the next frontier should be considering gender outcomes”. Watch this space for more on the topic of how our species response to the climate emergency is evolving around the world.
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