“Biodiversity loss and climate change are both driven by human economic activities and mutually reinforce each other. Neither will be successfully resolved unless both are tackled together,” the researchers said.
The drive by corporate organisations and governments on planting trees to help absorb carbon is not a magic cure, the scientists warned.
The report disclosed that the right trees must be planted in the right places in order not to destroy local ecosystems.
It noted that climate change could ‘drastically reduce the mitigation potential of forests due to an increase in extreme events like fires, insects and pathogens’
Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of the workshop that produced the report, said relying on natural solutions to warming was ‘a vision that may not come true if we let climate change go on even large ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest are progressively losing their ability to support mitigation’.
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