Landscape prioritization for enhanced climate solutions: Lessons from the tropics

An interdisciplinary framework is proposed for coordinated conservation, restoration, and management for Enhanced Natural Climate Solutions (NCS+). Examples from tropical regions are used to illustrate how NCS+ can increase atmospheric CO2 removal and permanence on land, with major social and ecological co-benefits, even under pervasive resource limitation. On the conservation front, a global meta-analysis shows that the distribution of ~85% of endemic and/or threatened species (including plants, mammals, and reptiles in 37 nations) correlate spatially with carbon-rich habitats that could be leveraged to incentivize climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. On the restoration front, two decades of experimentation in degraded areas of central Brazil reveal soil-plant feedback mechanisms that govern successional trajectories, pointing to novel (plant and microbial) communities in restored areas where carbon accumulation goes beyond the predicted saturation thresholds of undisturbed ecosystems. On the management front, long-term records of social and ecological change in Amazonia warrant a revision of the current model for sustainable land use in the region, where the combination of indigenous knowledge with biogeochemical and geographic information can improve carbon sequestration and nutrient use in agroecosystems. Five generalizable principles arising from these examples are proposed to advance NCS+ research in natural and human-engineered landscapes where climate mitigation and adaptation projects can sustain livelihoods while protecting essential ecosystem services.