Biodiversity and climate change

Climate change is a major driver of biodiversity erosion, and loss of biodiversity also accelerates climate change processes, as the capacity of degraded ecosystems to assimilate and store CO₂ tends to decrease. Humanity therefore has a global responsibility to address these two challenges and the interactions between them.

Ecosystem services and Nature-Based solutions, which depend on a healthy biodiversity, make essential contributions to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and are effective vehicles for transformational change.

UNESCO’s actions for biodiversity

Restoring the relationship between humans and nature

Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme

Spearheading interdicsciplinary work on ecosystem services, biodiversity and climate change.

Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LINKS)

Indigenous peoples make an important contribution to environmental management and climate change policy.

UNESCO Designated Sites: A Climate Change Observatory

Useful platforms to apply and test climate monitoring, mitigation and adaptation, and to raise awareness on climate change impacts.

Man and the Biosphere (MAB) programme

In the area of biodiversity and climate change, the MAB Programme is spearheading interdisciplinary work on ecosystem services, and the protection and sustainable use of biodiversity, such as forests, of great importance for the global climate.

World Network of Biosphere Reserves

Biosphere reserves are ‘learning places for sustainable development’.

Biosphere and Heritage of Lake Chad (BIOPALT)

Promote peace, safeguard and enhance natural and cultural resources and improve local communities' capacities of resilience.

MangRes Project

Mangrove restoration as a nature-based solution in biosphere reserves in Latin America and the Caribbean

Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LINKS)

For over 350 million indigenous peoples worldwide, climate change impacts are expected to be early and severe due to their location in high risk environments. To face these challenges, indigenous peoples are mobilizing their in-depth knowledge of the territories that have been the source of their livelihoods for generations. Indigenous knowledge operates at a much finer spatial and temporal scale than science, and includes understandings of how to cope with and adapt to environmental variability and trends.

LINKS works on a number of processes and projects relating to indigenous and local knowledge and biodiversity, including supporting the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).