A considerable number of existing and proposed post-2020 biodiversity targets by international organizations are at risk of being severely compromised due to climate change, even if other barriers such as habitat exploitation are removed argue the authors of a study led by Almut Arneth from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). According to their analysis published in PNAS, global warming accelerates the loss of biodiversity. Vice versa, measures to protect biodiversity may also mitigate the impacts of climate change. The authors suggest that flexible approaches to conservation would allow dynamic responses to the effects of climate change on habitats and species. (DOI: 2009584117)
About a million plant and animal species are endangered worldwide. At least 13 of the 17 sustainable development goals of the United Nations, however, depend on biodiversity, including species diversity, the genetic diversity within species and the diversity of ecosystems. Biodiversity regulates fundamental processes, such as soil formation and water-, trace-gas-, and nutrient cycles and thus contributes notably l to regulating the climate. The continued loss of biodiversity makes humankind face ecological, social, and economic problems. “Apart from the over-exploitation of natural resources on land and in water, or environmental pollution, climate change also causes loss of biological diversity. This impact will increase in future,” says Almut Arneth, Professor at the Atmospheric Environmental Research Division of the Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK-IFU), KIT’s Campus Alpine in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. She led an international study that is now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) under the title “Post-2020 biodiversity targets need to embrace climate change.”
