Nature can help us address the climate crisis.
Combined with transitioning away from fossil fuels, natural climate solutions offer immediate and cost-effective ways to tackle the climate crisis—while also supporting healthy, thriving communities and ecosystems.
Our global insights, straight to your inbox
Get our latest research, insights and solutions to today’s sustainability challenges.
Get Our NewsletterWhat are natural climate solutions?
Natural climate solutions are actions to protect, better manage and restore nature to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and store carbon.
For example: practices that improve forest management can help forest owners increase the carbon stored in their trees; reducing fertilizer use results in fewer greenhouse gas emissions; restoring coastal wetlands sequesters carbon in submerged soil.
Science shows that—combined with cutting fossil-fuel use and accelerating renewable energy—natural climate solutions can help us avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
What is the science behind natural climate solutions?
In 2017, The Nature Conservancy led a landmark study that showed how natural climate solutions to protect, better manage, and restore forests, grasslands and wetlands could contribute a third of the emissions reductions we need to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The authors developed a framework to distill the exisiting evidence into a taxonomy of natural climate solutions pathways that account for the full climate potential of nature.
Globally, natural climate solutions could deliver more than a third of the emission reductions needed by 2030 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Our groundbreaking study found that natural climate solutions can provide one-third of the mitigation needed by 2030 to keep global temperatures livable.
Since then, TNC scientists and partners have continued investigating how, when and where to invest in natural climate solutions to deliver on the world's most urgent climate goals. Our experts have published more than 50 studies that demonstrate the power of natural climate solutions in the United States, Canada, Indonesia and around the world.
Studies
-
Natural Climate Solutions (Griscom et al.)
Groundbreaking research by TNC and 15 other institutions, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read key takeaways from the study
-
More NCS Research
Explore our Natural Climate Solutions Resource Center to see the latest science, research and case studies demonstrating how nature can help increase carbon storage and avoid greenhouse gas emissions around the world. See a list of studies about NCS
What are the other benefits of natural climate solutions?
Research has also demonstrated that natural climate solutions offer a host of co-benefits for nature and people, including cleaner air and water, richer soil, more biodiversity and resilient communities.
Biodiversity
Deforestation, ecosystem degradation, and unsustainable production practices are threatening biological diversity worldwide. But strategies to protect, manage and restore critical ecosystems not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they also promote biodiversity. For example, nature provides sources of food and shelter for mammals, birds, and insects. It also creates ecosystem connectivity, or wildlife corridors—stretches of habitat that allow species to move around safely.
How NCS Pathways Support Biodiversity
Wetlands
Protecting or restoring coastal wetlands maintains wildlife habitat, including nurseries for commercially important fish and shrimp. Protecting or restoring peatlands ensures the survival of diverse ecological communities, including many distinctive insects.
Grasslands
Protecting grasslands sustains important habitat for nesting and foraging birds. Fertilizer management in agricultural settings supports fish species richness and abundance by reducing nutrient runoff into waterways. Planting trees in croplands can provide habitat for species and support ecosystem connectivity, and improved grazing management reduces disturbance to plant-insect interactions.
Forests
Maintaining healthy forests is essential for conserving biodiversity, plain and simple. For example, in managed forests, reducing the impacts of logging or extending harvest rotations help minimize the impacts to critical wildlife habitat or food sources. Managing fire to mimic historical fire regimes in forests or planting wildlife corridors and buffer areas are other NCS activities that enhance biodiversity conservation.
In Belize, Guatemala and Mexico tropical forest protection is helping secure critical habitat for wildlife like jaguar.
Resilient communities
As climate change exacerbates the effects of storms, droughts, flooding, wildfires, and other natural disasters the lives and livelihoods of millions of people around the world are increasingly at risk. An additional benefit of natural climate solutions: They help make communities more resilient. For example, healthy coral reefs can reduce the impacts of damaging storm surges, protecting infrastructure and more than 200 million people along coastlines globally.
How NCS Pathways Support Community Resilience
Forests
Forests can improve soil water retention and flow regulation, reducing the risks of flooding or droughts. Maintaining lower-severity, managed fires in forests means less chance of catastrophic wildfires. Planting trees in urban environments cools the air and provides shade, helping reduce risks to communities during heatwaves.
Grasslands
Healthy grasslands can provide flood control and maintain ecosystem water balance. Planting trees in croplands can provide erosion control, as can improved grazing management practices.
Wetlands
Coastal wetlands, peatlands, and mangroves all provide various ecosystem services related to flood control, and storm water remediation. Nature can break waves, blunt winds, and absorb storm surges, protecting coastlines from harm. Restoring peatlands or avoiding peatland impacts can decrease peat fire risk.
Using a local-to-global approach, TNC works in more than 50 communities around the world to protect people and communities through nature.
Clean air and water
Another benefit of nature: It protects the air we breathe and the water we (and other species) need to survive. For example, healthy peatlands and wetlands can remove aquatic nutrients, sediments and pollutant metals from the water. And healthy forests don’t just mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon dioxide—they also remove life-threatening air pollution from the atmosphere.
How NCS Pathways Support Clean Air and Water
Forests
Forests can protect nearby freshwater ecosystem integrity and enhance water infiltration and retention. They are also important for ozone abatement and air filtration. Better fire management in forests can reduce particulate matter in the air, which can improve quality of life and reduce human mortality.
Wetlands
Coastal wetlands, peatlands, and mangroves all provide water filtration, and avoid saltwater intrusion on sources of freshwater. Restoring peatlands and/or avoiding peatland impacts can decrease peat fire risk, thereby reducing exposure to pollutants that can cause lung and pulmonary disorders.
Grasslands
Grasslands can also provide ecosystem water balance. Cropland nutrient management improves water quality, which can have positive impacts on drinking water, habitat, and recreation. Conservation agriculture, improved grazing practices, and improved rice cultivation reduce agricultural water demands. Trees in croplands can provide water recharge. Improved nutrient management can reduce nitric oxide and other emissions into the air we breathe. Tree planting helps capture airborne particles and pollutant gasses. Avoided burning of crop stubble and reduced tillage reduces damaging particulate matter exposure to farmers and others living near agricultural areas.
The Nature Conservancy and partners are implementing natural climate solutions in the Okavango Basin, one of the most biodiverse habitats in Africa that supplies water for more than 1 million people.
Thriving economies
Actions like improved forest management and regenerative farming practices can create new jobs, supporting rural economies and local communities.
How Different NCS Pathways Support Economies
Wetlands
Mangroves serve as habitat for commercially important fish, thus contributing to food security and community livelihoods. Salt marshes and seagrass beds provide habitat for plant species important in artisanal harvests as well as waterfowl harvested by subsistence and recreational hunters. These habitats are valued for tourism, recreation, education, food security, and household income.
Grasslands
Sustaining rangeland and ranching can support tourism. Growing and processing cover crop seeds can lead to increased employment opportunities. Legumes can improve grazing quality, which increases efficiency of livestock. Better nutrient management or the addition of biochar in soil can enhance soil quality and fertility, leading to more productive agricultural yields.
Forests
Forests are home to many Indigenous communities worldwide. If implemented appropriately, reforestation can lead to increased employment opportunities and an increase in socioeconomic benefits for forest-dependent communities. In managed forests, climate-smart forestry activities can also increase timber yields, creating economic benefits for forest owners and concessionaires.
Promoting sustainable development while keeping forests intact and restoring deforested areas can benefit Indigenous peoples and local communities in Brazil.
What do natural climate solutions look like in practice?
Working with nature provides proven pathways, such as improving the way working forests are managed, planting cover crops and restoring tidal wetlands, that can be implemented now.
Examples of Our Natural Climate Solutions Work
Other Tools and Resources
-
Natural Climate Solutions Resource Center
We've collected the latest science, research and case studies demonstrating how nature can help increase carbon storage and avoid greenhouse gas emissions around the world. See a collection of our NCS research.
-
Carbon Markets
The Nature Conservancy advances natural climate solutions through many strategies, including high-quality carbon markets. Learn how we strive for excellence in carbon markets.
-
Nature4Climate
This global coalition promotes the critical role that nature plays in restoring balance to our climate. Get news and updates from Nature4Climate.
-
US Nature4Climate
This coalition of 26 conservation, environmental, and sustainable business organizations works to ensure forests, farms, ranches, grasslands and coastal wetlands are an important part of the overall strategy to fight climate change in the U.S. See real-world examples of NCS in action across the U.S.
Our Latest Insights
The Nature of Innovation: The Critical Role of Natural Climate Solutions
We must reduce emissions dramatically this decade to keep global temperatures in safe bounds—and both technology and nature can play a role, says TNC's Director of Global Climate Science.
Invest in Nature, and Nature Invests in Us
How we fund and transition to a nature-positive economy at land, water and sea.
Living Carbon: Stories of Nature’s Climate Solutions
In this series, we showcase innovative carbon projects in Africa, the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania, Chile's Valdivian Forest, and the Emerald Edge of North America's Pacific Coast.
Reforesting the U.S.
The Reforestation Hub identifies up to 148 million acres of total opportunity for reforestation, which could capture up to 535 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
Global Insights
Check out our latest thinking and real-world solutions to some of the most complex challenges facing people and the planet today.