Biodiversity and Carbon: Perfect Together

1. Biodiversity conservation is often considered to be a co-benefit of protecting carbon sinks such as intact forests to help mitigate climate change. 
2. Researchers tested this correlation by conducting 97 face-to-face interviews of local land-use experts in twelve landscapes in seven countries and five continents, followed by another set of face-to-face interviews with biodiversity experts. 
3. They found positive carbon-to-biodiversity relationships in ten of the twelve landscapes, with biodiversity impacts of measures to increase carbon also positive in eleven of the twelve landscapes, thus indicating that a random land-use change that increases biodiversity is also likely to increase carbon and vice versa. 
WCS Media Contact:  Stephen Sautner, 7182203682, [email protected]

Study and Journal:  "“Payments for adding ecosystem carbon are mostly beneficial to biodiversity”"   from  Environmental Research Letters 
WCS Co-Author(s):  Tim Davenport , WCS Tanzania Country Program Director