Why Nature-Based Solutions Won't Solve the Climate Crisis—They'll Just Make Rich People Even Richer
Imagine you're a Baka, a hunter gatherer in the Congo Basin forest. That land has been your home for generations. You know every stone and every tree there. Your grandparents are buried on that land. You and your people have nourished it, taken care of it and loved it. Now imagine that you're evicted and your house destroyed because, as someone explains to you, a white man living very far away, thinks that your forest has to become a Protected Area where only elephants are allowed to live. He likes elephants, they tell you. White men like elephants. Apparently he went up to space and realized that he likes your forest, and he is worried about climate change. That man created a company that produced 60.64 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year—the equivalent of burning through 140 million barrels of oil. But, they tell you, if your forest is protected, he can feel better about his emissions of CO2. You might wonder why he doesn't stop his emissions instead of destroying your life. The answer to that is money. You might also wonder how anyone can believe he's doing good. And the answer to that is the topic of this article.
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What are Nature-based solutions?
The name sounds great, doesn't it? Appearing for the first time in 2009, in a paper prepared by the IUCN for global climate negotiations, the concept was pictured by big conservation organizations as the "forgotten solution" to climate change. The idea is very simple: nature holds the solutions to our various environmental crises, and, in the case of climate change, we can mitigate it by avoiding more emissions from natural and agricultural ecosystems (that is, creating more Protected Areas) or by increasing carbon sequestration within them (that is, planting trees or restoring forests). Here it is: a magical solution, that does not rely on significant changes by large economies and their major industries.
Global debates on climate and biodiversity now increasingly include the claim that 30% of global climate mitigation can be achieved through Nature-based solutions (NbS).
The real problem starts when nature-based solutions are presented as the best way to tackle the climate crisis, providing an easy solution that doesn't involve burning less fossil fuel and changing our consumption patterns—which are the only real answers. But as the required scale of NbS grows, so does the likelihood of a devastating impact on Indigenous Peoples and other local communities.
Hidden in the catchy name we find the usual (and not very new!) market-based approach. Practically speaking, NbS provides a new spin on what used to be called carbon offsets. "Nature", in this context, is considered a capital or an asset, something we can put a price on and trade in the market. Let's say that Shell (one of the big supporters of NbS) is releasing X amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. In order to claim that it's respecting its climate commitments, Shell can carry on releasing exactly the same amount of CO2, as long as it also supports the creation of a Protected Area that stocks the same amount of CO2, or plants some trees that are supposed to absorb the same amount of CO2. This exchange, of course, is carried out in the financial markets, through the creation of carbon credits. And this is what governments mean by "net zero": they don't really intend to reduce their emissions to zero, they will simply claim to "offset" those emissions somewhere else.
Transforming nature into a form of capital (in this case, as carbon credits), that can then be sold in the market, is such a fashionable idea that it even got the support of the conservationist and TV personality Sir David Attenborough.
So what's wrong with this?
From a justice perspective: everything.
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The most effective known way of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is by planting trees. Indeed, according to the 2017 estimates, afforestation accounts for nearly half of the potential for climate mitigation through NbS. But achieving this potential would require planting trees over an estimated area of nearly 700 million hectares, almost the size of Australia. Where is that land going to be found? Certainly not in France or the United Kingdom (among the supporters of NbS). The clear risk is that many indigenous peoples and local communities, among those least responsible for the climate crisis, lose their lands.
Amarlal Baiga, from the Baiga tribe, explains the impact of afforestation for offsetting on his community. In this case it's biodiversity offsetting, but the process and the devastating consequences are the same. "The forest department has forcefully put fences around my field and around everyone else's fields. They have put fences and planted teak trees. This land is ours, this land belonged to our ancestors. They made us plant the trees, they made fools out of us saying: "these plants will benefit you" but now they are harassing us and saying: "this jungle is ours and this land doesn't belong to you anymore."
and much more:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/10/13/why-nature-based-solutions-wont-solve-climate-crisis-theyll-just-make-rich-people
