Nature-based Solutions can be defined as: ‘actions to protect and restore wildlife ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More in a way that addresses human wellbeing, protects biodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More, sequesters carbon, and helps communities adapt to climate change’. It is a term that becomes relevant when it is implemented, like the concept of biodiversity. Hence, it might not be at all definable. The outcomes you are looking to achieve in a local context, determine what it is.
Wildlife as the working definition of nature-based solutions
Because the force that stabilises ecosystems is universally powerful and unyielding, they cannot be ‘managed’ by us. This means that the more we do to try to impose our change on systems to create a desirable outcome, the more we break them. That’s a difficult thing to accept, since our economy, conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More and science is built on the presumption that we can recreate ecosystem stability, like we might engineer a building. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The only way to reverse environmental decline is to give ecosystems the chance to rebuild themselves and due to their interminable complexity, this requires the very elements that made them in the first place. That’s to say, animals. Wildlife drives ecosystem stability and an abundant supply of animals in the right proportions, is the only mechanism powerful enough to restore lost biodiversity.
Traditional conservation science tends to be linear thinking – the assumption that you can build habitatsWhat is habitat for animals and people? Habitat, hence the word "habitable" describes the natural surroundings in which any animal (or human) lives, that houses basic needs, such as food and shelter. Vegetation, for example, is habitat for animals. On its own, habitat is not necessarily stable or sustainable, which is why it differs from an ecosystem. Habitat in disrepair More and animals will come to fill them is wrong. It doesn’t work that way. Only something equally complex in diversity and abundance – wildlife – can maintain ecosystems. The greatest threat we face isn’t a warming planet or declining soil fertility, it is the chaos that occurs when there aren’t enough animals to moderate and stabilise the systems we equally rely on for our survival.
As a working definition, nature-based solutions can’t work unless wildlife is front and centre. Where we give animals chance to do their job, we will reverse ecosystem instability.
Tree planting is not a nature-based solution
Reforestation alone cannot be a nature-based solution because plants are primary producers and the energyEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More they transfer(of nutrients) the thing that sets animals apart from plants, is that they can move. Some of the biggest migrations on Earth every day, are the movement of insects like caterpillars, from the stem of a plant to a leaf and back, before turning into butterflies and transferring the energy elsewhere. Large-scale migration of grazing animals and migratory songbirds moves More from the Sun and emit as chemicals unbalances ecosystems unless animals are present.
We are facing the real risk that organisations and businesses are becoming too focused on tree planting. Trees are carbon stores, so it would seem to make sense that the more we have, the less carbon there will be in the atmosphere. That’s a simple thing to understand but sadly it is not a solution.
The carbon cycle could work without animals but it would lead to ocean death and climate chaos(Of energy and ecosystems). Ecosystems are thermodynamically driven. Disorder occurs when energy dissipates and becomes more chaotic. For example, the release of hot air into the atmosphere results in that energy is freer to disperse (maximum entropy). The opposite is true when energy is locked into biological processes, when it is stored inside molecules (minimum entropy). Stability in ecosystems occurs More … that is not a habitable world for humans to live in.
We are animals and evolved as the latest in a long line of wildlife most likely to reduce ecosystem chaos by absorbing free energyThe energy of a system that is emitted as waste and is not part of ecosystem processes. There is always some free surplus energy as this creates the basis for evolution where new species exploit gaps in the ecosystem where free energy becomes available. Surplus energy can occur as a result of disruption or disturbance. When free surplus energy reaches More from carbon that plants produce.
A storage-focused system isn’t much use for an animal lifeform like us. Think about it. A person who keeps their money in a bank can’t spend it to survive. Ecosystems don’t work unless carbon is processed through a system that lets us feed ourselves.
The mistake we have made, is to assume humans are not animals and that carbon storage, not carbon processing, is the key to our survival.
Poverty alleviation for nature conservation
Wildlife is the mechanism for creating stability but poverty-alleviation has to happen simultaneously. People live among animals and eat animals and plants. Our food is all cultivated with the help of animals. Wildlife conservation is essential for poverty-alleviation and conservation cannot happen if people cannot feed themselves.
The reality is, that humans occupy almost every space on Earth. It has been that way for tens of thousands of years. There is no separating our fate from that of the animals that build the ecosystems around us.
Intact wildlife populations are needed, in addition to habitat protection, farming and fisheries, for nature-based solutions to be sustainable.
Creating local empowerment
Successful nature-based solutions depend on localised, self-determined outcomes built by people to preserve their own environment. For example, a Vancouver Port Authority initiative led to 80 shipping organisations and over 6,000 ships participating in a noise-reduction plan. In West Papua, locals just revoked a quarter of a million hectares of land from palm oil. As environmental costs mount up, governments can no longer afford to centralise management control. It will become more common for them to pass power to local communities.
That will be good news. Locals empowered to make their own decisions and policy, can achieve nature-based solutions. The large scale approaches proposed by governments and multinational companies are too centralised and lack diversity.
Think about it this way. If everyone adopts the same strategy, there is no resilienceReferring to an ecosystem’s ability to maintain a steady stable-state. The need to build resilience is entirely anthropocentric and symptomatic of ecosystems that are damaged or declining, leading to loss of ecosystem services on which humans depend. More in any system. Scientists may like to find a unifying way to preserve nature but in reality, only small-scale, widespread experimentation, failure and adaptation makes any system operate sustainably. The idea that some strategies need to fail to be successful, doesn’t sit well politically but risk-taking is essential.
The bigger challenge will be allowing enough local communities to secede from large power centres to make their own decisions.
Animal impact and core principles of nature-based solutions
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) adopted eight core best practice principles. None of these recognise the critical and central role that wildlife plays in ecosystem stabilisation.
Principle 5 in particular, is dependent on animal impactWhat is Animal Impact? Without wildlife, Earth would not be habitable for humans, because it's animals that stabilise ecosystems. It’s a fundamental law of nature that animals (and humans) exist because we are the most likely lifeforms to minimise environmental chaos. Animal impact, therefore, is a measure of how much all wildlife is collectively responsible for creating a habitable Earth. The More:
Principle 5: Nature-based solutions maintain biological and cultural diversity and the ability of ecosystems to evolve over time. Nature-based solutions need to be developed and implemented in a manner that is consistent with the temporal dynamics and complexity of ecosystems, in order to support biological and cultural diversity, so that the services provided by the ecosystem are sustainable and, as far as possible, resilient to future environmental change [1].
1. Cohen-Shacham, E. et al. (2019) Core principles for successfully implementing and upscaling Nature-based Solutions. Environmental Science & Policy. Volume 98, August 2019, Pages 20-29 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901118306671?via%3Dihub
