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Monoculture in forests: spruce forest destroyed by bark beetles
Photo: Jochen Eckel / imago images / Jochen Eckel
Climate protection measures are urgently needed to protect the earth from further overheating.
But it is also important to pay attention to species protection, report scientists.
Because poorly thought-out climate protection can have serious consequences for individual animal species, according to a joint report by the World Biodiversity Council IPBES and the IPCC
.
For the first time, the two institutions jointly discussed solutions to the closely interwoven crises.
The
The researchers' common demand is that the climate and biodiversity crises must be viewed from different perspectives.
Otherwise, supposed solutions for one crisis could exacerbate the other, they say.
The report demands
that 30 to 50 percent of the world's ocean and land areas are placed under nature protection.
Currently it is about 15 percent of the land and 7.5 percent of the ocean.
Circular economy must be promoted in order to use fewer resources.
The world must move away from disposable products.
Subsidies that endanger species would have to be phased out in order to prevent overfishing, clear-cutting in forests or over-fertilization of fields.
"Climate protection is often thought of without biodiversity, we have to change that," said climate researcher Hans-Otto Pörtner from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven, one of the authors of the report, the Science Media Center.
The restoration of moors is an example of measures that promote both.
They can bind a lot of climate-damaging CO₂ and at the same time are a biotope for many species.
Co-author Josef Settele from the Environmental Research Center (Ufz) in Halle / Saale gives an example of the harmful effects of climate measures: "Biomass plantations are a really bad idea if we want to combine climate protection and biodiversity," he says. For example, corn fields for biogas would have little biodiversity. Further problems with monocultures also arise when afforestation with only one tree species. You can see that in the Harz, where spruce plantations are suffering from climate change and are susceptible to bark beetles. Monocultures could also disrupt nutrient cycles and water supplies.
Another example is electromobility: more electric instead of combustion engines help protect the climate. But the batteries require raw materials that are extracted in mines with harmful consequences for the environment and people, said Almut Arneth from the Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research Atmospheric Environmental Research (IMK-IFU) in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. New technologies are needed here in order to conserve raw materials.
The loss of species has many causes: expansion of agriculture and cities, overfishing of the seas, environmental pollution and climate change. According to the environmental organization WWF, the number of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish fell by 68 percent from 1970 to 2016. The insect population also decreased. Species have died out and new ones have emerged for millions of years. The IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, estimates that the loss is now 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than it would be without human influence.
The most important task of the next federal government is to ensure that the goals of the Paris climate conference are achieved, said Pörtner.
According to previous plans, the Federal Republic wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 65 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
Germany should be climate neutral by 2045.
The requirement to take greater account of the consequences for biodiversity and the people affected in climate protection is nothing new.
But at the governmental and international level, the issues are often considered separately.
joe / dpa
