The biodiversity-shaped piece in the climate crisis puzzle: How to solve it

In the last fifty-plus years, wildlife populations have declined an average of 73%, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s 2024 Living Planet Report, released earlier this month. Rising sea temperatures have contributed to seven mass coral bleaching events in the Great Barrier Reef since 1998. Forest fires and a pine beetle infestation are turning pine forests across the western U.S. into shrublands and grasslands.

The clock is ticking on efforts to help halt and reverse biodiversity loss, but there’s still time to sidestep doomsday scenarios and help support the animals, plants and ecosystems that are all necessary for a healthy planet. Critically, this means ramping up action to mitigate threats such as habitat loss and rising temperatures that risk damaging ecosystems like reefs and rainforests that are key to absorbing carbon and keeping climate change in check.

In order to protect biodiversity — every living organism and ecosystem from microbes to mangroves — citizens, companies and countries all need to do their part.

This week’s annual United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Cali, Colombia, is providing an ecosystem health check and highlight progress towards the “30x30” goal of safeguarding 30% of land, seas and fresh water by 2030.

With just 17% of land currently protected, it’s an ambitious target that makes the Mastercard-led Priceless Planet Coalition mission to restore 100 million trees and regenerate biodiversity-rich forests more relevant than ever.

“Building back the biodiversity of trees will provide a platform for other types of biodiversity, animals, plants, everything,” says Starry Sprenkle-Hyppolite, the senior director for restoration science at Conservation International, which teamed up with Mastercard and World Resources Institute to launch the coalition in 2020. “It’s a fundamental building block.”

Now the coalition, through its execution partners WRI and CI, is working with local communities to expand six of its 19 projects and add three new sites in Thailand, the High Andes, including Ecuador and Peru, and India’s eastern Himalayas to combat the effects of climate change, pollution and expanding human activity on vulnerable ecosystems.

Deciding where to start a new reforestation project takes more than sticking a pin in a map, Sprenkle-Hyppolite says. It’s a complicated process that hinges on getting local community buy-in and targeting key tree species that will drive climate change benefits.

Invariably, species variety is nearly as important as the number of trees planted for the quality and benefits of the restoration. Bringing over 100 tree species with different characteristics into a restoration project offers protection against both extremes such as drought and being wiped out by pests. In Brazil, for example, the Priceless Planet Coalition’s restoration site is restoring 180 species. In Colombia, there are 102, and in Mexico, 109.

“You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket,” Sprenkle-Hyppolite says. “Biodiversity helps us get more bang for our buck when there’s more species in an area.”

In the Andes and Himalayas, the coalition’s new programs aims to restore biodiversity while reducing the knock-on effects of deforestation such as droughts and floods that put local populations at risk. And in Thailand’s Kaeng Krachan National Park, which is home to Asian elephants and Indochinese leopards, which are endangered and critically endangered, respectively, a new 165-hectare project aims to restore degraded landscapes with diverse tree types to support wildlife and communities.

The new projects will benefit from the experiences of the coalition’s existing programs from Brazil to Scotland to Cambodia, which already have some 46 million trees under restoration and support over 65,000 people.

For instance, at Madagascar’s freshwater Lake Alaotra, the coalition is working with local landowners to plant more than 9 million trees to cut the impact of massive soil erosion that is affecting livelihoods and food supplies. And for Colombia’s Arhuaco indigenous community in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, reforestation work is helping regenerate damaged ecosystems and restore culturally important ancestral land. 

Once tree seedlings are grown and planted throughout PPC’s projects, comprehensive monitoring is then needed to track how they survive and thrive. Using small sample areas, communities record tree growth and report damage from storms or animals, while remote sensing satellite data tracks tree cover changes to help build up a vast global database.

As the pressure grows on the private sector to step up their sustainability targets and progress towards net zero, the coalition is encouraging more to join the 150 companies in its network and run campaigns to help fund reforestation efforts.

Given protecting ecosystems is costly, the private sector can also help bridge the yawning biodiversity financing gap and make it easier for developing countries to hit their 30x30 goals, says Mastercard Chief Sustainability Officer Ellen Jackowski: “This is a critical moment. By building strong partnerships, we can move faster and have deeper impact, helping to fight climate change.”

Photos: Banner, a river snakes through Brazil's Amazon rainforest, which is at risk of being turned into savannah. Top left, mangroves have a powerful ability to capture and store carbon; top right, the ancient Polylepis forests of the High Andes are dwindling in number; bottom left, Thailand's Indochinese leopards are threatened by habitat loss; bottom right; a woman uses a net to fish in Cambodia's shrinking Tonle Sap lake, which provides a major source of protein to the country and the economic livelihood for the surrounding communities.