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  • Review Article
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Constraints and enablers for increasing carbon storage in the terrestrial biosphere

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 2, pages 436–446 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Harnessing nature-based climate solutions (NbCS) to help simultaneously achieve climate and conservation goals is an attractive win-win. The contribution of NbCS to climate action relies on both biogeochemical potential and the ability to overcome environmental, economic and governance constraints for implementation. As such, estimates of additional NbCS-related terrestrial biosphere storage potential range from less than 100 GtCO2 to more than 800 GtCO2. In this Review, we assess the negative emissions contributions of NbCS — including reforestation, improved forest management and soil carbon sequestration — alongside their environmental, social and governance constraints. Given near-term implementation challenges and long-term biogeochemical constraints, a reasonable value for the expected impact of NbCS is up to 100–200 GtCO2 in negative emissions for the remainder of the twenty-first century. To sustainably reach this level, focus should be on projects with clear co-benefits, and must not come at the expense of a reduction in emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, rapid decarbonization and innovation from alternative negative emissions technologies.

Key points

  • Land management interventions can contribute to climate change mitigation through avoided emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and through negative emissions from increasing carbon dioxide removal via reforestation, soil carbon sequestration and more.

  • The largest existing estimates of negative emissions potential from nature-based climate solutions implicitly rely on a potentially risky strategy of increasing carbon storage beyond historical bounds.

  • More conservative estimates that focus on refilling past carbon losses from the terrestrial biosphere are likely to be more feasible and have more co-benefits.

  • Successful implementation of nature-based climate solutions requires rapid increases in financing, increased on-the-ground capacity, and robust policy and governance mechanisms.

  • In the absence of broader climate action, climate change impacts on the biosphere will limit the potential for nature-based climate solutions to contribute negative emissions.

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Fig. 1: Silo versus haystack.
Fig. 2: Estimates for unfilled sink potential and increases in carbon storage from nature-based climate solutions.
Fig. 3: Parsing natural climate solutions estimates by constraints considered.
Fig. 4: Summary of constraints and judgement of near-term and long-term likelihood to be limiting.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Climate and Land Use Alliance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Connor J. Nolan & Christopher B. Field

  2. Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Christopher B. Field

  3. Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA

    Katharine J. Mach

  4. Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA

    Katharine J. Mach

Authors
  1. Connor J. Nolan
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  2. Christopher B. Field
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  3. Katharine J. Mach
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C.J.N., C.B.F. and K.J.M. conceived and designed the project. C.J.N. analysed and visualized data and drafted the manuscript, with comments and revisions from all authors.

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Correspondence to Connor J. Nolan.

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Nature Reviews Earth & Environment thanks Richard Houghton and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Nolan, C.J., Field, C.B. & Mach, K.J. Constraints and enablers for increasing carbon storage in the terrestrial biosphere. Nat Rev Earth Environ 2, 436–446 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-021-00166-8

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