Working Together for a Pollution Free Future for Nature, Climate and People (Environmental Pollution Programme)

Working Together for a Pollution Free Future for Nature, Climate and People (Environmental Pollution Programme)

Working Together for a Pollution Free Future for Nature, Climate and People (Environmental Pollution Programme)

Countries: Vietnam, South Africa

Partners: Vietnam project: The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP), Ho Chi Minh City University of Natural Resources, Environment Together, Department of Natural Resources and Environment of An Giang Province, Institute of Agricultural Environment (Hanoi); South Africa project: JNCC, Institute of Natural Resources, Durban University of Technology, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Rhodes University

Summary: The Environmental Pollution programme aims to reduce biodiversity loss, climate change and human health impacts by tackling pollution and its effects in low- and middle-income countries. During Phase One of the GCBC, this work took place across two separate projects that focused on different pollution issues in their country of operation, Vietnam and South Africa.

Related links: Environmental Pollution Programme | JNCC – Adviser to Government on Nature Conservation

Realising the potential of plant bioresources as nature-based solutions in African biodiversity hotspots (TIPAs project)

Countries: Ethiopia, Guinea, Sierra Leone

Partners: UK: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew; Ethiopia: Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute, Hawassa University, Addis Ababa University; Sierra Leone: Njala University; International: Biodiversity International, CIAT.

Summary: More than 31,000 useful plant species have historically been documented to fulfil needs and services for humans, yet today in our food systems, we derive >50% of calories from just three crops, rice, wheat and maize. Sustainable exploitation of the diverse library of underutilized species and bioresources – including timber, medicines and valuable chemicals – represents an untapped opportunity to alleviate poverty, develop value chains, and tackle food insecurity, whilst being underpinned by nature conservation. These nature-based opportunities lie predominantly in tropical high-biodiversity countries and offer significant climate alleviation and biodiversity co-benefits. This project seeks to accelerate Kew’s efforts to identify and characterise high-value plant biodiversity hotspots, in three strategic tropical high-biodiversity countries, and pathways to develop bioresources within them. It aims to demonstrate both the economic and ecosystem service benefits of plant bioresources at both the local community and national level.

Related links: Supporting climate-resilient sustainable development in Africa | Kew

Deep-ocean resources and biodiscovery: enabling a sustainable and healthy low-carbon future (DEEPEND project)

Countries: Fiji, Cook Islands

Partners: Natural History Museum, National Oceanography Centre, University of Aberdeen, University of Strathclyde Glasgow, University of Southampton, Pacific: Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority, University of the South Pacific, Pacific Community

Summary: The climate change crisis has increased the demand for natural resources, such as lithium, cobalt, and manganese, due to their role in the green energy transition as important components for batteries of electric vehicles. With vast reservoirs of minerals present in the deep sea, mining in our oceans is already being discussed and could start within the next decade, but little is known about the biodiversity and Marine Genetic Resources (MGR) present in these deep-sea regions. DEEPEND looks to develop a long-term project to understand the true value of biodiversity in deep-sea regions at risk from mining and climate change. It utilises molecular approaches to provide fundamental knowledge on biodiversity, explore pharmaceutical applications of deep-sea microbes and invertebrates, inform policy on seabed mining, deliver development outcomes, enable understanding of future climate scenarios and provide long-term research and development value.

Related links: DEEPEND: Deep-ocean resources and biodiscovery | Natural History Museum 

 

Nature Transition Support Programme (NTSP project)

Countries: Colombia and Ecuador

Partners: UK: UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC); Colombia: Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute; Ecuador: Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INABIO); US: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), University of Minnesota

Summary: The Nature Transition Support Programme (NTSP) is an ambitious research programme aiming to support partner countries identify pathways towards an economy that is embedded within nature, as articulated by the Dasgupta Review. NTSP engages a combination of UK-based and global experts, in-country specialists as well as representatives from partner governments to make the case for an economic transition, developing a set of options for sustainable growth based on predicted impacts to natural capital and prosperity of different approaches to land use.

 

 

Transparency and Traceability of Forest Risk Commodities

Countries: Global

Partners: World Resources Institute (WRI), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Summary: The Traceability and Transparency (T&T) research project forms a UK contribution towards the international dialogue on the traceability and transparency of supply chains of internationally traded agricultural commodities including supporting discussions in the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) Dialogue. During its COP26 Presidency the UK launched the FACT Dialogue, with Indonesia as co-chair. The government-to-government Dialogue brings together the 28 of the largest producers and consumers of Forest Risk Commodities (FRCs), such as palm oil, soya, beef, cocoa and timber, to protect forests and other ecosystems while promoting sustainable trade and development and addressing the climate and biodiversity crises. The T&T research report aims to support growing an understanding of the state of global traceability and transparency systems in order to provide key stakeholders with the understanding they need to promote and guide positive change for people and forests. The T&T project provides a synthesis of the state-of-play regarding T&T of FRCs to enable a more comprehensive and data-driven response that stakeholders from both the FACT Dialogue and the international community can use to make evidence-based decisions in pursuit of our shared goals.

Related links: Traceability and Transparency in Supply Chains for Agricultural and Forest Commodities | World Resources Institute

Central and Eastern European Conflict Timber project

Countries: Main timber sample collection areas: Ukraine and Belarus; Additional timber samples also collected from: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia and Moldova.

Partners: World Forest ID (WFID), Royal Botanic Gardens Kew

Summary: In light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the opportunity for Russia to finance the war or subsequent occupation through sales of timber, the Central and Eastern European Conflict Timber project seeks to build on existing voluntary measures, punitive tariffs and sanctions on the direct import of timber to make it harder for Russia to circumvent these measures. Specifically, this project is designed to support the widespread use of scientific testing techniques to scrutinize claims about the origin of timber from this region. Current reference libraries lack samples of key species which grow in Russia but also throughout Ukraine and neighbouring countries. This project therefore aims to build up a georeferenced database of timber samples so products in trade can be tested against this reference data to validate the species and location of harvest.

Impacts of kelp harvesting for marine biodiversity and ecosystem services (KELPER2 project)

Countries: Argentina, Chile, Peru

Partners: UK: Newcastle University, Marine Biological Association, Scottish Association for Marine Science; Latin America: IMARPE (Peru), IBIOMAR (Argentina), Catholic University of Chile (Chile)

Summary: Wild kelp harvesting is an important industry in Latin American countries, especially in Chile and Peru, with over 40% of global brown algal landings originating from these two countries and where over 13,000 people are directly employed by the industry. With previous work showing that poorly managed kelp harvesting alters the structure and formation of kelp forests, KELPER2 aims to explore the drivers that reduce the resilience of kelp forests and their blue carbon potential to different sustainable harvesting regimes.

Optimising the long-term management of invasive species affecting biodiversity and the rural economy using adaptive management (CONTAIN project)

Countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile

Partners: UK: University of Aberdeen, Queen’s University Belfast; Latin America: Unesp (São Paulo State University, Brazil), CONICET (Argentina), Centro de Humedales Río Cruces (Chile), Agricultural and Livestock Service – SAG (Chile)

Summary: The CONTAIN project works across the Latin America region with the aim of realising the multiple environmental, social, and economic benefits and co-benefits of managing Invasive Alien Species (IAS) in a cost-effective manner. The project’s objectives are to:

  • Move from efficacy to efficiency when evaluating IAS management, by considering wider costs and benefits associated with each management action, such as those that scale up with the number of invaders and costs associated with ecosystem services changes brought about by IAS.
  • Rigorously evaluate empirically and through modeling under what circumstances invasive trees deliver valuable carbon sequestration ecosystem service that could be traded-off against the loss of carbon above and below ground, by native plant communities, loss of biodiversity, and ecosystem service and resilience. Hence informing a lively ongoing debate on the pros and cons of carbon sequestration by invasive trees, a potential nature-based solution.
  • Evaluate how incentives, compensation for the loss of income, and sources of income may contribute to the sustainability of participatory control of IAS for rural communities so heavily affected by IAS that their livelihoods are in peril.

A trait-based understanding of Latin American biodiversity programme forest biodiversity and resilience (ARBOLES project)

Countries: Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru

Partners: UK: 4 universities (Leeds, Lancaster, Oxford and Imperial College London) and the Natural History Museum; Latin America: Universidad Nacional de Cordoba (Argentina), Universidad Austral de Chile (Chile), National Institute for Space Research (Brazil), Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonia Peruana (Peru)

Summary: The Amazon rainforest occupies a uniquely important place in the Earth System. Spanning an area of 5.5 million km, the Amazon’s forests are the most biodiverse on the planet, absorb 5-10% of global CO2 emissions and sustain rainfall regionally.  However, the invaluable ecosystem and climate services provided by Amazon rainforests are currently under severe threat from deforestation and changing climate. Concerns have been raised that continued forest loss and climate change may lead to a tipping point, beyond which forests would no longer be sustained and replaced by savanna vegetation. The global change threat to the Amazon is most pronounced in southern Amazonia, where deforestation, maximum temperature increases and reduced dry season rainfall have been markedly more pronounced than other Amazon regions.  An understanding of how forests in southern Amazonia are changing and of their sensitivity to global change stressors is imperative for improved prediction and for climate-smart conservation of Amazon forests more generally. ARBOLES aims to understand the plant functional trait basis of LATAM forest biodiversity and resilience, by investigating the sensitivity of important southern Amazonian tree species to two key climatic stressors, heat and drought.

 

A nature-based solution for biodiversity restoration and poverty alleviation in a time of accelerating global climate change (Innovative Seaweed Aquaculture project)

Country: Malaysia

Partners: UK: Natural History Museum, Scottish Association for Marine Science; Malaysia: University of Malaya, Jabatan Perikanan Sabah Fisheries Department

Summary: Seaweeds form some of the most productive marine ecosystems, supporting a greater diversity of species than almost any other marine habitat and providing a wide range of ecosystem services critical to the well-being of the oceans. Despite the massive importance of seaweeds, and their vital role in the global food supply chain, there has been very little effort to protect them. Their conservation remains patchy or non-existent globally. Increasing demand and temperatures mean that seaweed communities are predicted to lose up to 71% of their current distribution under certain climate change scenarios by 2100. The Innovative Seaweed Aquaculture project seeks to address this, by developing new temperature resilient seaweed stocks for farming and by outlining protection measures for seaweed globally. Seaweed cultivation offers a potential nature-based carbon neutral climate resilient solution to restore seaweed forests globally and alleviate poverty, particularly in the Global South. The project is being delivered via two main workstreams: i) the sustainable cultivation of novel red seaweed eucheumatoid strains collected locally from the wild; and ii) the conservation and management of wild seaweeds and cultivars around the world.