In Canada, preventing conversion of grassland, avoiding peatland disturbance, increasing cover crops, and improving forest management offer the largest greenhouse gas mitigation opportunities. These pathways to natural climate solutions have potential to reduce carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other greenhouse gases worldwide.
Led by The Nature Conservancy and its Canadian affiliate Nature United, environmental experts from Canada and the United States conducted the first ever natural climate solutions assessment for the entire nation of Canada, the second largest country in the world in total area. Several years ago, experts assessed natural climate solutions for the United States.
The reveals that by protecting, better managing, and restoring natural assets, Canada can mitigate up to 78 megatons of greenhouse gases annually by 2030—an amount equal to the current greenhouse gas emissions from powering every single home in Canada for about three years.
“Right now, Canada’s vast natural landscapes can play a powerful role in helping to tackle our climate and biodiversity crises,” says Hadley Archer, Executive Director of Nature United.
Building on previous , Nature United collaborated with 16 institutions and 38 leading experts from academia, government, and non-governmental organizations to analyze pathways in Canada to implement natural climate solutions. Top pathways include protecting more natural areas, including old forests, to capture and store greenhouse gases; improving farming practices such as cover crop planting and nutrient management; and planting trees—actions that could have impacts worldwide in mitigating climate change.
“The impacts from this study are global in scope, as Canada is such a huge country with enormously diverse ecosystems and natural assets,” says co-author William Keeton, researcher at ̽̽ (̽̽). “The study shows how natural climate solutions can be applied to a wide variety of ecosystems and agriculture.”
Researchers examined four land types (agricultural, forested, wetland, and grassland) and 24 pathways that, if undertaken in the next decade, have potential to cut Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equal to 11 percent of the nation’s current annual emissions.
The study shows that Canada can protect ecosystems (38 percent of total potential in 2030) such as grasslands, peatlands, and forests—preserving them in a healthy state, instead of converting them to other intensive uses, and avoiding the release of greenhouse gases. The nation can improve management of its natural resources (57 percent of total potential in 2030) by enhancing forest carbon storage or expanding cover crops to keep soil healthy and reduce emissions. Canada can also restore nature (5 percent of total potential in 2030) to increase carbon capture by planting trees in cities, replanting formerly forested land, or rehabilitating wetlands and shorelines.
The researchers considered which short-term actions could deliver the longest lasting benefits. In addition to overall improvements in forest management, protection, and restoration, immediate actions to restore forests by planting trees can deliver substantial long-term carbon mitigation. By 2050, these forests will store large amounts of carbon, and planted trees will be growing fast enough to off¬er significant mitigation potential.
“Even as forest area expands, creating a warming effect from increased absorption of solar radiation, there would be a substantial net cooling effect from forest carbon uptake and storage,” says Keeton, of the ̽̽ Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and the Gund Institute for Environment. “And our estimates were probably conservative because we were not able to include everything, like reduced emissions from fire restoration and increased carbon stocking by retaining more trees during harvesting operations.”
The mitigation identified by this study represents an important potential contribution to the Paris Agreement, the international treaty on climate change. The pathways to greenhouse gas mitigation are vital for meeting Canada’s 2030 targets and reaching net-zero by 2050. Combined with innovations in clean energy and other efforts to decarbonize the world’s economies, these natural climate solutions offer expedient options in the global response to climate change.
“Decision-makers in Canada must invest in natural climate solutions now,” says Amanda Reed, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Nature United. “Protecting, managing, and restoring nature is a critical part of an integrated strategy to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions and keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.”
The study highlights currently available actions that are cost effective—with many of the pathways costing less than $50 per ton of greenhouse gases. Protection, management, and restoration pathways can create new jobs and provide alternative revenue streams to Indigenous communities, farmers, ranchers, and foresters to help stimulate Canada’s economy. Study recommendations will help decision-makers at all levels and across all sectors understand where the greatest greenhouse gas mitigation potential exists to inform Canada’s contributions in confronting the global climate crisis.
“These natural climate solutions are just as relevant in other areas of the world, including Vermont, where the state has committed through the recently passed Global Warming Solutions Act to a goal of net zero emissions by 2050,” says Keeton. “Carbon sequestration and storage in green infrastructure and natural assets is a key element of that strategy.”