Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
Conservation International's science is the foundation for all our work. Our global science team is dedicated to advancing conservation science — pursuing actionable knowledge and amplifying it through partnerships and outreach.
To date, Conservation International has published more than 1,300 peer-reviewed articles, many in leading journals including Science, Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here is an archive of our most recent research:
Irrecoverable Carbon: The places we must protect to avert climate catastrophe
Allie Goldstein; Monica Noon; Juan Carlos Ledezma; Patrick Roehrdanz; Shyla Raghav; Michael McGreevey; Chris Stone; Sushma Shrestha; Rachel Golden Kroner; David Hole; Will Turner
November 18, 2021
To avert climate catastrophe, there are ecosystems that we cannot afford to destroy, because they store vast amounts of carbon. Nature has absorbed more than half of anthropogenic emissions to date, preventing at least 0.4° C of warming. To stay within the 1.5° C limit, there are some natural places that we simply cannot afford to lose. Our team of scientists examined all ecosystems on Earth — from forests to grasslands to mangroves to tidal marshes — to identify this “irrecoverable carbon.” If lost, these carbon stores could not be restored by 2050, the year by which we need to reach net-zero emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. But protecting these ecosystems is largely within our control. The amount of irrecoverable carbon we estimate is stored in Earth's ecosystems is 139 billion metric tons, equivalent to about 15 years of fossil fuel emissions. To get this figure, we used the latest remote sensing technology and modelled products—including global maps of carbon stored in vegetation and soil, as well as measurements of carbon sequestration rates from more than 13,000 forest plots—into a global scale and high-resolution data set. While not all of these places are immediately threatened, many are being destroyed or may become threatened in the years ahead. The fact that they’re “irrecoverable” means that we must 1) identify where they are and 2) proactively protect them before it’s too late. This report introduces irrecoverable carbon reserves and describes how they are designed to be inclusive, climate resilient, sustainably financed and tech enabled, bringing conservation into the 21st century.
Read MoreCITATION
Goldstein, A., Noon, M., Ledezma, J. C., Roehrdanz, P., Shyla Raghav, McGreevey, M., Stone, C., Shrestha, S., Kroner, R. G., Hole, D., & Turner, W. (2021). Irrecoverable Carbon: The places we must protect to avert climate catastrophe (Version 1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.5706060
