Solving Climate Change with Nature

The global opportunity of nature

COVID-19 has created huge challenges for societies around the world. We have experienced the loss of millions of lives to a global pandemic, the disruption of key parts of our social fabric, and record losses in jobs and economic activity. And further uncertainty lies ahead. Tackling the pandemic remains, rightly, the number one priority.

However, governments across Europe are also thinking hard about how they can help our societies and economies recover.

In this, nature is one of our greatest allies. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) believes deeper investment in natural systems can help create jobs and important innovations while tackling another urgent global threat: climate change.

Europe embraces nature in its Green Deal

With a detailed pandemic recovery plan announced in May, Europe has been one of the first major economies to put nature at the heart of its recovery. It is doing so through its Green Deal—a comprehensive plan to put Europe on track to a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy by 2050, including through restoring the health of its natural environment, while also protecting the regions’ wildlife.

One of the many suites of actions planned under the Green New Deal is the New EU Forest Strategy which looks to significantly scale the protection and restoration of Europe’s forests as a key way to absorb more greenhouse gas emissions.

The Forest Strategy also acknowledges the positive impact the EU can have on forests outside its borders through promoting imported products and value chains that do not involve deforestation and forest degradation.

Europe’s business sector mobilises to support the Green Deal

Achieving the Green Deal cannot be done by policymakers and institutions alone; it requires strong collaboration between representatives from governments, industry and the business sector. CEOs of many of Europe’s leading companies, including Deutsche Bank, Axa, Snam, and Royal DSM are part of a CEO Action Group for the European Green Deal which aims to mobilise the business sector to contribute to the effort.

Also, among the European companies that have stepped up to align with the Green Deal’s net-zero goal by 2050 are a number of the major international energy companies based in the region. 

As noted by Forbes in May 2020:

“European oil majors have increased their ambitions to tackle climate change markedly in the last six months, with Total, Shell, BP, Repsol and Eni all having made commitments to significantly reduce the carbon intensity of the energy they supply”.

Natural climate solutions can play a key role in meeting these new commitments, particularly in the short-term. This needs to be in addition to, not at the expense of, rapid decarbonization of the companies’ core businesses. In other words, nature presents an opportunity for them to go further, faster on climate change.