At last we have a balanced ecological approach to Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) thanks to a new report by the British Ecological Society.
Until now lobbyists and special interest groups have been jumping on the NbS bandwagon, claiming their business/industry will “fix” the problem of the Climate Emergency.
But from an ecological point of view, it is vital to be cautious about weighing in and substituting one habitat for another.
As the British Ecological Society’s new report on NbS states: “it is vital to understand factors such as underlying soil conditions, habitat quality and potential biodiversity losses and gains… For instance, woodland creation on some species poor, low productivity grasslands may be a good NbS for climate change mitigation. However, on a species rich grassland it could damage biodiversity and where grassland is found on degraded peat soils, restoration by re-wetting is likely to have better NbS outcomes for biodiversity and greenhouse gas reduction.”
It is my hope that the Scottish Government’s land-use and marine strategies will be guided by this report.
We cannot have a healthy planet and people without nurturing healthy ecosystems to support them. To me and to you this is self-evident, yet most of the world’s policy makers still do not seem to have grasped this fact.
Ref: Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Change in the UK, British Ecological Society, 2021.
bioregioning 