PETER MACDIARMID—GETTY IMAGES; ILLUSTRATION BY JACQUI OAKLEY FOR TIME
53
35% of global wetlands were destroyed
from 1975 to 2015, according to the U.N.
Scientists say it’s too late to pre-
vent catastrophic climate change by
only reducing greenhouse-gas emis-
sions. As well as rapidly phasing out fos-
sil fuels, the world also needs to deploy
so-called negative- emissions technol-
ogies to draw down large amounts of
the carbon dioxide already in the atmo-
sphere. Many believe that nature res-
toration is the cheapest and simplest
way to do it. Other options, including
machines that catch carbon as it is being
emitted by power plants or suck carbon
out of the atmosphere to store it under-
ground, need research, money and time
to mature before they can be used on a
large scale. For that reason, most Inter-
governmental Panel on Climate Change
pathways for limiting warming to 1.5°C
above preindustrial levels rely on for-
estry and better land management to
make up the bulk of carbon drawdown
over the next 30 years. To save the
planet, we may need to give some of it
back to nature.
In EuropE, home to some of the most
densely populated land in the world, and
where true wilderness has become almost
nonexistent, the idea of bringing nature
back while also fighting climate change
has captured the imagination. Dozens of
privately and publicly funded rewilding
projects have popped up across the conti-
nent. Europeans are reviving coastal hab-
itats like Wallasea in the U.K., reversing
the drainage of peatland bogs in Germany
and replanting forests in the Scottish
Highlands. The projects not only seques-
ter carbon but also boost biodiversity and
help the land adapt to the changing cli-
mate by preventing floods and wildfires.
Advocates of nature restoration say
those benefits give rewilding an edge
over simple tree planting, which has
been popular with European govern-
ments for decades. From 2005 to 2015,
Europe’s forest cover grew by the equiv-
alent of 1,900 football fields every day,
as the E.U. spent several billion euros to
fund tree planting, often on farmland that
had been abandoned because of changing
agricultural practices in places like France
and Italy. Some of that was reforestation,
using native species to restore forests to
what they were before, but much of it was
escape into the atmosphere and contrib-
ute to global warming gets buried. “Bits
of decomposing leaves and seaweed come
down rivers to the coast,” explains Rob
Field, a senior conservation scientist at the
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds,
which runs Wallasea. “When it gets to the
[slow- flowing] salt marshes, the carbon
falls out of suspension and gets stored
there, in the thick, gloopy mud.” Ecolo-
gists say coastal wetlands like these are
capable of trapping carbon up to 40 times
faster per hectare than tropical rain for-
est. But over the past 400 years, farmland,
coastal development and rising sea levels
have combined to destroy 91% of wetland
habitats on the Essex coast. Worldwide,
Miranda
Wa ng
INVENTION
Ten years ago, Miranda
Wang went on a school field
trip to a waste- management
facility and was shocked by
the vast amount of plastic
she saw there, destined
for landfill. Now 25, Wang
is CEO and co-founder of
a Silicon Valley–based
startup, BioCellection,
that transforms the most
commonly used and
unrecyclable plastics
into new materials using
pioneering chemical
technology. “[Plastics] are
just natural compounds
and natural carbons tied
together in an unnatural
way, and once you disrupt
that, you can use those
natural building blocks
to make anything,” says
Wang. “We can make
a product from plastic
garbage that’s not only
useful in new products, but
it is biodegradable and can
break down.” The company’s
pilot program with San Jose,
Calif.’s waste- management
facility has already received
accolades from groups
like the U.N. Environment
Programme, and now Wang
is setting her sights on other
cities all over the world.
ÑSuyin Haynes
CLIMATE OPTIMISTS
