• Energy Research

Climate change impacts social-ecological systems in mountainous areas by increasing certain natural disasters and changing nature's contributions to people (NCP). Nature-based solutions (NbS) are increasingly implemented to help local communities adapt to climatic hazards. However, the relevance of their location in relation to those hazards and local NCP has hardly been addressed. In the PORTAL (Pathways of Transformation in the Alps) project, we identified and mapped a portfolio of 97 NbS for climate change adaptation in the European Alps. Most NbS addressed drought or soil instability and aimed to provide multiple NCP simultaneously such as wood production and protective function against landslides. We analysed whether NbS are located where they are the most needed, according to both current and future intensity of the hazards they aim to address and to supply-flow-demand indicators of the NCP they aim to provide. We found that the location of NbS is not overall related to current supply-flow-demand indicators of most NCP, nor to the intensity of hazards. Nevertheless, NbS addressing droughts and floods are located in areas where these hazards are more intense, but do not match higher values for NCP indicators. Conversely, NbS aiming to produce wood and to provide protective function against landslides are located in areas with greater levels of these NCP, regardless of the intensity of hazards. These results suggest that hazards and NCP indicators are not the main drivers of NbS implementation. We argue that integrating local climate conditions and current NCP flows is needed to underpin a macro-regional strategy for planning NbS implementation.

Significance Deforestation is a key driver of climate change. The program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is one of the major attempts to tackle climate change mitigation in developing countries. The program intends to provide result-based incentives to countries that reduce deforestation. We model various future scenarios of the distribution of REDD+ funds and assess how each scenario would contribute to reducing carbon emissions and to conserving biodiversity under different distributional equity rules. Results help to understand how the inclusion of distributional equity affects biodiversity and climate objectives under REDD+, and they provide insights about potential synergies and trade-offs between environmental and equity targets in broader policy arenas such as those related to the Sustainable Development Goals.

AbstractTo address climate change and global biodiversity loss, the world must hit three important international conservation targets by 2030: protect 30% of terrestrial and marine areas, halt and reverse forest loss, and restore 350 Mha of degraded and deforested landscapes. Here, we (1) provide estimates of the gaps between these globally agreed targets and business-as-usual trends; (2) identify examples of rapid past trend-shifts towards achieving the targets; and (3) link these past trend-shifts to different levers. Our results suggest that under a business-as-usual scenario, the world will fail to achieve all three targets. However, trend-shifts that rapidly “bend the curve” have happened in the past and these should therefore be fostered. These trend-shifts are linked to transformative change levers that include environmental governance, economic factors, values, and knowledge. Further research on trend-shifts, as well as bold action on underlying levers, is urgently needed to meet 2030 global conservation targets.

Transformation of social-ecological systems due to climate change requires, transformative adaptation responses. We propose the concept of nature’s contribution to adaptation (NCA; previously called adaptation services), to reveal properties of ecosystems that provide options for future livelihoods and adaptation to transformative change. Knowledge about the capacity of ecosystems to supply NCA can inform decisions by revealing options for adaptation. We analysed eight historical and contemporary case studies of transformative adaptation and found that the five cases with medium-high degree of adaptation and use of NCA showed evidence of participative learning and co-production of adaptation options, low values contestation, low power imbalances and well-developed governance arrangements. These variables indicated that communities engaged in adaptation had ownership and agency to change how they thought and acted to implement transformative adaptation. We found the use of NCAs enabled transformative adaptation by helping people overcome current decision constraints imposed by societal values, institutional rules, or knowledge deficits to create novel options and re-frame decision contexts. The NCA concept can be applied to (1) help resolve uncertainties about nature’s contributions to people under environmental change; (2) reveal ecosystem properties of value for adaptation, but which are marginalised in current, dominant knowledge frameworks and decision-making; (3) act as a ‘boundary object’ for participative learning and co-production of adaptation options. Thus, the NCA concept represents a pragmatic, optimistic approach for societal adaptation to ecosystem transformation, countering feelings of despair that accompany the acceptance of irreversible, unavoidable loss of current ecosystem states and associated nature’s contributions to people.

Protected area coverage targets are still far from being achieved and protected area effectiveness shows major deficiencies. Climate and land use changes and pressures from increasing human populations challenge the future of protected areas. In this research we analyse the trends and effects of these drivers of change on protected areas in Spain. This Mediterranean country, a biodiversity hotspot with many different systems of protected areas, is changing from focusing on increasing protected area coverage towards also improving conservation effectiveness. A Participatory Scenario Planning (PSP) approach was developed to create four scenarios in which the evolution of the protected area system was assessed and proposals to achieve a desirable future were agreed among participants. Results show that PSP facilitates exploration of complexity and uncertainty associated with the future of protected areas understood as social-ecological systems. We conclude that greater social and institutional support and active and adaptive management are needed for protected areas in Spain to meet the coverage and effectiveness challenges ahead.