Climate Change and Biodiversity
CEEweb, as an organization focusing primarily on biodiversity issues, has the mission of promoting the deep interrelation between climate change and biodiversity, and facilitating coherence between these two fields.
Despite lots of efforts during the last 20 years from local to international levels, global CO2 concentration have increased in the atmosphere by 35% since 1990, and is still growing. Now we came to the point that, if the CO2 level could be fixed within five years, climate change would still unfold in the coming decades with approximately 2 degrees Celsius warming according to pre-industrial level. This is underpinned by recent assessments, stating that we are very close to approaching 450 ppm concentration of CO2 equivalents (including all greenhouse gases), which is corresponding to two degrees warming according to IPCC. Two degrees is considered to be a threshold, above which climate change very likely turns uncontrollable.
The urgency of climate change and other environmental crises – above all biodiversity loss – the complex interrelation between them as well as their close link to socio-economic problems call for a systemic approach, identifying and targeting the common root causes behind these challenges.
Central and Eastern Europe is a region with one of the richest biodiversity in Europe. Therefore it is the most vulnerable to climate change on one hand, but on the other hand provides the most opportunities in terms of employing biodiversity for climate change mitigation and adaptation measures, involving various sectors such as spatial planning, land use, agriculture, forestry and water management.
CEEweb is lobbying for an ambitious climate commitment with higher priority of biodiversity and sustainability aspects at EU and national level primarily in Central and East European countries, but also going beyond it, we are working for a holistic environmental policy and a new, more sustainable socio-economic framework. Climate change from a holistic approach The ecosystem-approach in climate change The special role of soils in climate change mitigation and adaptation The role of agriculture and forestry in achieving climate change commitments
Policy levels
Global: the UNFCCC process from Rio to Durban EU: Climate policy in the EU National: Climate policies in Central and East Europe Local: Pilot project in CEE microregions on ecosystem-based adaptation of land use