Natural Climate Solutions: Seeing The Wood For The Trees
Webinar
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Deforestation and other forms of land use change are a major cause of biodiversity loss and a large net source of anthropogenic GHG emissions, contributing about a quarter of the global total. Reducing deforestation is an essential contributor to meeting both climate and biodiversity goals. Reforestation, forest restoration and other “natural climate solutions” (NCS) are some of the few options available now to deliver negative GHG emissions at scale, relatively quickly and inexpensively. One credible estimate is that NCS could deliver 37% of the GHG reductions needed by 2030 to meet the Paris goals at less than $100/te. But NCS also raise serious concerns about the verifiability, sustainability and permanence of supply and about how NCS credits will be used and accounted for. The key questions are whether the concerns can be sufficiently addressed for the benefits of NCS to outweigh the risks. And whether voluntary or regulated markets are best placed both to manage the risks and attract the vast scale of investment that would be needed to realise the potential of NCS sustainably. Paul Jefferiss will offer his own perspective on those questions, based on thirty years’ experience working at the interface between climate change and biodiversity.
Speaker:
Dr Paul Jefferiss has over thirty years’ executive, non-executive, advisory and teaching experience in sustainability in the private sector, NGOs, government and academia. His interests lie at the intersection between energy, climate and biodiversity, and in mechanisms for valuing and controlling natural resource damage. He is currently a Non-Executive Director of the Carbon Trust and Programme Lead, Sustainability and Climate Change at the UK National Committee on China (UKNCC). He recently stepped down as bp’s global Head of Policy and Partnerships, where he managed the company’s positions and relationships on energy, climate and the environment for over a decade. Previously, he worked as Executive Director of the Green Alliance in London and as Energy Programme Director at the Union of Concerned Scientists in the US. He has advised the Clinton and Blair governments on energy and climate policy and was a UK Regulator of Renewable Fuels. He has given evidence on energy and climate to numerous Parliamentary committees and published and spoken and widely on these topics. He has degrees from Cambridge, Harvard and Tufts, where he lectured on Environmental Management for UNEP. He has been honoured by the Queen as a “Pioneer to the Life of the Nation” for services to the environment.
Speaker(s):
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Dr Paul Jefferiss
Non-Executive Director
Carbon Trust
Chairman:
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Simon Mills
Associate
Z/Yen Group