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A changing climate

The climate is changing. Most climate models show that a doubling of pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gases is likely to commit the Earth to a rise of between 2 and 5°C in global mean temperatures.  The consensus within the scientific community is that human activities have altered the world’s climate systems and that change is now inevitable.

This poses an unprecedented threat to biodiversity: even a 1.5°C temperature increase above pre-industrial levels could result in extinction of nearly one in three of the world's endangered species.

Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that the continued existence of high biodiversity areas will help communities directly dependent on the natural world to adapt to our changing environment.  The conservation of biodiversity therefore continues to be of vital importance.

Between 18 and 25% of the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions come from the destruction of natural habitats – particularly tropical forests.  Other natural habitats such as grasslands and peat swamps are also significant carbon stores.  The destruction of peatlands alone could be responsible for 9-15% of global carbon emissions. 

Conservation of such habitats is crucial if we are to prevent temperature increases from exceeding 2°C (a figure emerging as the maximum acceptable change in global temperature before losses become catastrophic).  

Global demands for fossil fuels, spiralling population, unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and a failure to recognise the full costs of environmental degradation are driving these trends. 

We must act now if we are to prevent dangerous climate change.  However, climate change policy has not always worked in favour of conservation.  For example, the recent drive to use biofuels as a means of improving fuel security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is increasingly being challenged for its environmental and social impacts.  In developing countries the side effect of such land use change policy has been a large-scale acceleration in the clearance of natural habitats (often through burning the forest), resulting in an overall increase of greenhouse gas emissions, rather than a reduction.

Read more about FFI’s climate change work