COP29: What are the climate change solution pitfalls to look out for?

Overreliance on technical solutions

Technical solutions such as direct air carbon capture are not yet ready and currently don’t work at scale. Furthermore they use a LOT of energy, mainly from renewable sources, but at present, it would be better to use this energy for domestic and industrial power, while reducing the amount generated by fossil fuels.

Carbon capture technologies may form an important part of the fight against climate change in the future, but they’re not ready yet and the situation requires immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Outsourcing emissions

One of the reasons the UK has performed well historically in reducing carbon emissions is that imported goods with high carbon footprints are not part of our carbon emission figures.

Climate change is a global issue, and poor accounting in terms of the carbon involved in goods and services can create an impression of a country or area doing well. We should be wary of local or national policies that appear to ‘cut’ emissions but in reality are outsourcing them to somewhere else.

False carbon and biodiversity credits

There are excellent carbon offsetting schemes, but equally there are many poor quality schemes, which capture very little carbon and may have negative effects on biodiversity and local communities. Much more regulation is needed in these markets.

International carbon markets have been the big headline so far at COP29, with a set of guidelines on what sort of projects should be eligible to sell carbon credits being put through by the conference’s supervisory body without waiting for permission to implement them. A controversial tactic that has drawn both criticism and plaudits.

Plans that pit the economy against climate

Fears that environmental policies will lead to reduced economic growth or hold back development in global south countries are often used in arguments against their adoption. While badly planned environmental action can have negative effects on social structure, inequality and consequences for the global south, well designed schemes can benefit all of these.

However, while it is possible to partially decouple economic growth from environmental degradation, I don’t think this is fully possible – and changes to our current economic systems may be vital for successful action.

Misplaced nature-based solutions

Nature-based solutions (NbS) have enormous potential to help us fight climate change, but when used in ways that aren’t evidence led, the best intentions can become false good ideas.

Perhaps the best example comes from poorly planned and poorly regulated tree planting schemes. Many tree planting schemes are good for nature and the climate, but the dogma that trees reduce carbon can be misplaced.

For example, trees have frequently been planted on peatland in the UK. Peat holds huge amounts of carbon, but this can begin to breakdown and be released into the atmosphere if peat dries out, or if it is disturbed.

Planting trees on peat not only disturbs it, but also the roots take up water, and gradually dry out the soil. As a result, trees planted on peat create carbon emissions, rather than absorb carbon from the atmosphere.

. . . and more false good ideas below the surface

There’s also some commonly held false information when it comes to NbS. For example, seagrass is often cited as a magic solution to carbon sequestration, and that it captures 20-100 times more carbon per unit area than tropical rain forests.

This statistic is false. It’s based on a paper which measured carbon in the sediment of seagrass beds (where most carbon is sequestered) compared to carbon in the soil in tropical rainforests (but most carbon isn’t in the soil, but held in the biomass of the wood of the tree).

While differences do occur between specific seagrass beds and forests, typically seagrass would sequester about 50% of the carbon of a typical forest. There are lots of reasons to restore seagrass, but it can be very expensive if the goal is solely to sequester carbon.

So what solutions do work?

It’s easy to feel disheartened and become sceptical of solutions presented for the climate and biodiversity crises but there are actions we can take that do work. Crucially what unifies these is that they are evidence-based and underpinned by the work of ecologists and the research community