Are 'nature based solutions' the best fix for climate change?

On this episode we discuss mangrove restoration and other "nature based solutions" (NBS) to climate change.

Now promoted as the best strategy to slow climate change--and encompassing an array of solutions from reforestation to ecosystem restoration--critics point out that they also have numerous pitfalls that must be guarded against.

Mangrove restoration and other 'blue carbon' projects are a common NBS program one hears about, so host Mike G. speaks with Alfredo Quarto, co-founder of the Mangrove Action Project, who shares why mangrove forests are so globally important & what successful restoration projects look like.

Norah Berk also joins the show: she's a policy advisor on climate change and forests at the Rainforest Foundation UK, who explains that NBS have, in many cases, been co-opted by corporations that are using them as carbon offset schemes, and discusses why she thinks land titling for Indigenous and local communities is a better solution to climate change which the world should be focusing on.

Further reading:

• “At a plantation in Central Africa, Big Oil tries to go net-zero” 

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Episode artwork: Mangrove trees growing on a beach. Photo via Pixabay.

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