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Our Policy by Issue
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The Bali Climate Change Conference
See how the Conservancy helped frame the global discussion that will lay the groundwork for the next international agreement to address climate change.
The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility
Read more on why The Nature Conservancy helped launch the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.
We Want to Hear from You
Tell us what you think about our climate change work. What national or international policies should be implemented to fight climate change?
The Nature Conservancy is working with partners to urge countries to agree to a comprehensive global agreement on climate change that includes all major emitting countries and goes into force in 2013. The emission reduction commitments that industrialized countries have made under the Kyoto Protocol are set to expire in 2012.
In early December 2007, governments from around the globe gathered in Bali, Indonesia to meet under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and discussed what is needed to reach a future international agreement.
The climate talks in Bali established a negotiating process for a more comprehensive global agreement for emissions reductions that includes all major emitting countries and all major emissions sources and goes into effect in 2013. These talks resulted in:
- A decision on a clear negotiating process and timetable that will establish, by 2009, a renewed international agreement to be ratified and in effect by 2013.
- A decision to include reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation as part of any post-2012 agreement.
- Recognition and support for adaptation efforts that include protecting natural areas to help reduce the unavoidable impacts of climate change on people and nature.
Recognizing the Value of Forest Carbon
Addressing emissions from deforestation and degradation must be part of a comprehensive plan to address climate change.
We support development of a new system of financial incentives that creates an economic value for the carbon stored in standing tropical forests. To address issues of leakage, or the displacement of emissions to another location, national level efforts will be needed. At this scale, systematic drivers of deforestation can be addressed through government action.
The Conservancy is working with governments, international institutions and other NGOs to test and demonstrate how developing countries could participate in a future global forest carbon market.
Adapting to Climate Change Through Nature-based Strategies
Internationally, adaptation efforts to date have focused primarily on infrastructural changes, such as strengthening seawalls, relocating communities or roads, and damming or channelizing rivers to control flooding.
Infrastructure changes to address climate change, while necessary in some instances, can be extremely costly, can fail under the extreme impacts of climate change, and can unintentionally put communities at risk by undermining the services that nature provides. Building seawalls or dikes may actually destroy or erode healthy wetlands or mangroves that provide a natural buffer to storm surges and nurseries for important fisheries.
Ensuring the health and resilience of natural systems is an important and cost-effective alternative for adapting to climate change. Nature-based adaptation strategies can bring multiple benefits to people and nature, including protection from extreme events, reduced loss of life, decreased economic losses, and improved quality of life under climate change.
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Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Hermes Justiniano (Noel Kempff Mercado National Park in Bolivia, South America); Mark Godfrey © 2004 The Nature Conservancy (A member of a women's agriculture cooperative near the town of Xpujil, on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula).
