
Photo courtesy of HMEI.
As we confront the growing climate crisis, society must weigh potential pathways to net-zero emissions. But in the race to decarbonize—including through planting forests and biofuels—a new study finds that well-intended efforts could have unintended impacts on biodiversity, and argues for consideration of these impacts as humanity chooses the most effective tools to mitigate climate change.
Many net-zero emissions plans call for reforestation (restoring forests in places where they historically grew), afforestation (adding forests in places like savannahs and grasslands), and bioenergy cropping (farming plants like switchgrass for renewable energy). Until now, it has been challenging to predict these strategies’ impacts on biodiversity because they affect species in multiple, complex ways.
A new study, published this week in Science, evaluates the potential biodiversity impacts of those three climate change mitigation strategies. A team of scientists—led by Dr. Jeffrey Smith, an Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University’s High Meadows Environmental Institute—modelled the impact of these mitigation strategies on over 14,000 species, from creatures smaller than a mouse to larger than a moose.