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Ambitious nature-based climate solutions programs could deliver benefits for biodiversity, communities, and the climate. Unfortunately, a lack of evidence about specific benefits from specific strategies prevents researchers and policymakers from confidently prescribing when and where they should be used.

This report from EDF helps guide through challenges involved in application of process-based models to measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV) schemes in large-scale contexts. It provides important context and recommendations for process-based model implementation in agricultural soil GHG and SOC projects to increase consistency, transparency, and confidence in this integral portion of the MMRV process.

"Much of the conservation and climate change spotlight falls on tropical forests. Given this, people might forget that forests in the temperate areas — those found in large parts of North America, Europe and higher latitudes in Asia and Australia — also have the power to help limit climate change," EDF experts Amanda Leland and Steven Hamburg write in Scientific American.

Study based on research conducted at institutions including Environmental Defense Fund, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and Columbia University, assessed whether 43 nature-based climate-solutions (NbCS) are based on sufficiently strong scientific evidence to support solutions like high-quality carbon crediting.

This post is authored by Mark Moroge, Vice President of Natural Climate Solutions at Environmental Defense Fund. We know that nature-based climate solutions are among our greatest assets when it comes to tackling climate change. Conserving, restoring and improving the management of nature – alongside reductions in new fossil fuel use – can provide at …

This Handbook from EDF guides readers through key decisions and complex issues involved in creating effective crediting systems for natural climate solutions (NCS).

Scaling up natural climate solutions, or NCS, could help us reach climate goals while providing social and economic co-benefits.

We need scientifically robust and accessible ways to measure soil carbon to ensure that different practice changes deliver reliable results. This research article from Environmental Defense Fund highlights two best practices for measuring carbon in soil.

COP28 laid an important foundation and some direction on where countries, industry and civil society need to accelerate climate action. But the work following COP28 will require monumental ramp-up in ambition and collaboration to address the climate crisis. We hoped the final agreement would have given countries stronger direction toward a just and equitable transition to clean energy, including realizing the full potential of methane reductions to slow the rate of warming in the near term.  

This blog was co-authored by Britta Johnston, Senior Policy Analyst for Natural Climate Solutions at EDF. Heading into COP28, nature as a climate solution has been making headlines, and rightfully so. Sustainably conserving, restoring, and managing the world’s ecosystems is one of the most powerful tools we have to meet global climate goals. A recent …

As the United Nations climate change conference, COP28, approaches, Environmental Defense Fund's Amanda Leland lays out her three point plan for global climate action

Paper co-authored by EDF scientists examines the relationship between soil organic matter and yield heterogeneity, studying its distribution between particulate organic matter (POM) and mineral associated organic matter (MAOM) at the sub-field scale within 9 farms located in the central United States.

Analysis co-authored by EDF reveals the potential to use empirical approaches to accurately quantify, at project scales, soil organic carbon stock responses to practice change.

Carbon capture technologies remove vast amounts of CO2 from the air and have a vital role to play in protecting us from catastrophic climate change.

EDF scientists and co-authors engaged experts in a system mapping exercise to support decision-making in the context of the high levels of uncertainty associated with seaweed blue carbon.

Literature review co-authored by EDF scientists addresses the climate mitigation potential of organic soil amendments, including biostimulants and biopesticides.

This paper explains how jurisdictional HFLD credits meet integrity and additionality thresholds for fungibility.

EDF research published in Ecological Applications offers new insights and opportunities for strengthening the integrity of temperate forest carbon credits by accounting for differences in forests' geography and tree species composition.

All future climate scenarios that hold planetary warming close to 1.5 °C by 2050 will require massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, supplemented by the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods to clean up leftover heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide can be permanently stored under the seabed in geologic reservoirs.

Marine plants and algae, like phytoplankton, take up CO2 during photosynthesis, and this can increase the ocean’s uptake of atmospheric CO2.

This booklet from EDF and partners provides a primer on various ocean CDR strategies, summarizing the theory behind each technique, the current state of knowledge of their carbon storage potential and associated costs, technical readiness, and potential environmental and social impacts.

Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), also termed enhanced weathering (EW), aims to alter seawater chemistry, usually by spreading finely ground alkaline minerals like silicates and carbonates in seawater or on coastal lands.

Macroalgae, or seaweeds, are large, plantlike organisms that grow naturally in the ocean and, like land plants, take up and store carbon via photosynthesis.

Electricity can be used to remove carbon dioxide from seawater by driving well-understood chemical reactions that either liberate carbon dioxide gas from the seawater for capture and sequestration, or alter seawater’s chemical balances to enable it to store more CO2 than it naturally would.