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The protection and restoration of nature are critical for climate change mitigation. As such, many international initiatives have been launched to champion the implementation of nature-based climate solutions (NBCS) while supporting other societal goals. Given global momentum, it is critical that policymakers proactively define successful NBCS activities to avoid perverse incentives and harmful land-use change. We argue that effective NBCS will support clear goals and make transparent the relative costs and benefits to climate, biodiversity, and human livelihood. To do this, NBCS must be designed based on the best geospatial science and implemented alongside empowered local communities. Specifically, NBCS should be accompanied by strong benefit-sharing mechanisms that involve procedural equity. Further, where changes in land management and land-use are required, land restoration should be accompanied by financial incentives that make such restoration profitable. Carbon markets could be expanded to include land-based carbon, and auction proceeds or tax revenues could be utilized to fund restoration on private land where landowners may be required to forego other profits over the short term. NBCS will help the global community advance important societal goals if policymakers can be specific about where national goals will be implemented and who will be empowered to make decisions about their design.

Given the recent availability of high-resolution data on both current forest carbon stocks and restoration potential, the next geospatial and computational challenge is to utilize this data to iden...

Ecosystem-based management (EBM), formerly called ecosystem management, employs management approaches for entire systems rather than merely system components like timber or wildlife, and considers humans an integral part of the ecosystem to be explicitly addressed in management strategies. Decision-making is informed by adaptive management, in which management actions are executed as experiments to both enhance system performance and acquire reliable knowledge about system behavior. Management objectives are achieved, whenever possible, using ecosystem processes (for example, fire) and in collaboration with human “stakeholders” vested in the health of the ecosystem. EBM is employed in conservation biology to correct limitations of management efforts targeted to only a few species or limited areas, but needs further clarification of its distinctions to offer more effective contributions to biodiversity conservation.

Economics influences conservation because it offers a way of valuing biodiversity and ecosystem services and a means for conservationists to make decisions for allocating their own resources to address threats to biodiversity. Ecosystem services are often public goods not easily valued in traditional markets. Cost-benefit Analysis, Hedonic Valuation Models, and Stated Preference Methods are adaptations of traditional economic approaches to capture conservation value. Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs) are used in the Majority World to involve people in economic development attained through enhanced sustainability of their natural environment. Conservation biologists today must make economic activity a reflection of nature’s value rather than a determinant of it, and incorporate conservation as a normal part of economic activity rather than an external restraint that reduces its benefits.

Biodiversity refers to the structural and functional variety of life at genetic, population, community, and ecosystem levels. Biodiversity is the core value of conservation biology, and preventing biodiversity loss is the discipline’s mission. Such loss is a systemic outcome of human use and occupancy of land and disruptions of ecological processes. Various systemic strategies of protection including direct legislation, regulation of trade in endangered species, and establishment of protected areas for endangered species have had significant but incomplete success. Protection-oriented approaches employ systematic prioritization of sites by treating site-specific threat of loss, ecological uniqueness, and opportunity for acquisition as primary determinants of priority. In contrast, management-oriented approaches emphasize maintenance of gene flow, creation of resources for habitat and niche specialization, and maintaining effective population sizes.

Conservation biology is a discipline that is empowered by legal support for accomplishing its mission of global biodiversity conservation, with such support rooted in legal frameworks grounded in ethical rights, utilitarian interests, and equal distribution of risks. Two US environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act (1970) and the US Endangered Species Act (1973) reframed biodiversity conservation in the US, and provided models used by other nations. The Stockholm Conference of 1972 and the adoption of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) in 1973 engaged international support in new, systemic, and collaborative associations to achieve conservation. From these foundations, conservationists today must become more astute in understanding conservation law to make research effective in achieving conservation goals.

NASA Carbon Monitoring System projects NNX12AN07G, NNX14AP12G, and 80NSSC17K0710; National Science Foundation Grant No. DGE1322106