To stabilize the climate and spare the planet from the consequences of runaway climate change, we must let nature play a bigger role in our conservation plans. According to a comprehensive new study, countries should double their protected zone to 30 percent of Earth’s land area, and add 20 percent more as climate stabilization areas, for a total of 50 percent of all land kept in a natural state. All of this needs to be done by 2030 to have a real hope of keeping climate change under the “danger zone” target of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) and to prevent the world’s ecosystems from unraveling—according to a plan called the Global Deal for Nature. When forests, grasslands, and other natural areas are well preserved, they’re able to sequester twice as much carbon dioxide as planted monocultures. Obviously, this is a very ambitious plan, but it does allow us to see just how vital nature can be in keeping carbon out of the atmosphere to prevent a greater increase in temperature, something that is not widely understood yet.
To save the Earth, science says we must keep half of all land in a natural state
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