Under the thick forest of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, the ancient ruins of a Maya City have been uncovered with the use of remote sensing.

Of course, that wasn’t the outcome that Woodwell Climate’s Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Wayne Walker, anticipated when he and his team collected and processed the remote sensing dataset for an unrelated project nearly a decade ago.

Walker’s team was mapping the region as part of the Mexico REDD+ project, a collaborative, international effort to explore strategies for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in the country. Using a remote sensing technology called LiDAR, which scans terrain from a low-flying plane using pulses of laser light, Walker and project collaborators created a comprehensive map of forests—and the carbon they contain—across Mexico. 

Walker and team coordinated the flights and processed the raw data for use in the project, uploading it afterwards to a website for public use. But, once the project ended, he all but forgot about the effort, apart from responding occasionally to researchers interested in downloading the dataset for their own work. 

One of those researchers was Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD candidate at Tulane University researching the Classic Maya civilization, which thrived in the Yucatan until the 9th century when much of the region was abandoned, though their culture and languages persist to this day. Because of its unique ability to provide a detailed three-dimensional picture of whatever features are present on the ground, LiDAR imagery is an incredibly powerful tool for a multitude of purposes, from climate science to archaeology. And while the Mexico REDD+ project was interested in documenting the forests, Auld-Thomas was interested in what might be hidden beneath them.

“One scientist’s noise is another’s entire field of study,” says Walker. “In our other projects, like Climate Smart Martha’s Vineyard, we see historical structures like stone walls that aren’t necessarily meaningful to our work but could be of interest to archaeologists.”

In Mexico, the large areas surveyed by Woodwell Climate revealed not just individual human-built structures, but the plazas, reservoirs, and ball courts of an entire, previously undocumented city. The discovery, published in the journal Antiquity, supported the theory that the region was, in fact, densely settled during the height of Classic Maya civilization. 

“We knew that it was close to a lot of interesting sites and settlements— areas of large-scale landscape modification that had been mapped and studied— but none of the survey areas themselves were actually places that archeologists ever worked, making it a really exciting sample to work with,” said Auld-Thomas.

Auld-Thomas had specifically been on the hunt for a pre-existing LiDAR dataset like the one Walker helped create— a survey conducted for completely non-archaeological purposes and therefore free of any biases. Essentially a “random sample” of the region. That randomness, and the subsequent discovery of an entire city, allowed Auld-Thomas and his colleagues to more strongly argue their point about intense urbanization in the Yucatán.

“If you’re only going to places where you know there’s going to be something, then of course, you’re going to find something significant, right? These random samples, not collected for archeological purposes, are gold in some respects,” said Dr. Marcello Canuto, who co-authored the paper. Canuto directs the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane, where the research for this study was conducted.

The unexpected outcome of the LiDAR survey offers a textbook example of the value of open data access. Sharing data and resources both within and between fields of science can jumpstart discovery and distribute the costs of an otherwise  expensive data collection effort.

“Just look at what came out of the moonshot,” says Canuto. Thousands of technologies, developed in humanity’s pursuit of the moon landing, have found unforeseen applications in today’s world— including LiDAR.

“Certainly, many of us have produced datasets that have led to incremental advances in closely related fields,” says Walker. “But here is a special case of open source data advancing discovery in an entirely unrelated field of study.”

Advancements across fields continue to better our understanding of the world around us. And the lessons learned from a civilization like the Maya have very real parallels to today’s climate crisis.

As Auld-Thomas and Canuto show, the Maya densely settled the Yucatán Peninsula, maxing out the capacity of the surrounding environment to support their population. And then the regional climate shifted. A long-term drought settled in, resources became scarcer, governments became unstable, people started leaving the cities, and the infrastructure of the larger civilization collapsed.

“The reason environmental scientists collect LiDAR data of the forest, is that they are trying to understand environmental processes in order to help human societies conserve the landscape,” says Auld-Thomas. “As archaeologists, we try to understand how people in these exact environmental contexts have confronted deforestation and climate change and all of these other things before.”

For Canuto, the lesson to be learned lies not just in the environmental perils, but in the societal ones. Because what complex societies hate— be they the Classic Maya or today’s modern culture— is a lack of predictability. If a system cannot adapt, it will fail.

 “The collapse was more than just climate change,” says Canuto. “It was a failure of a political system to respond to climate change.”

La capitale congolaise Kinshasa s’étend sur la rive sud d’un coude turbulent et boueux du fleuve Congo. C’est ici que Glenn Bush, chercheur associé de Woodwell Climate, et Joseph Zambo, coordinateur des forêts et du changement climatique, ont rejoint d’autres chercheurs et responsables gouvernementaux dans les salles de conférence d’un hôtel du centre-ville pour un atelier de trois jours sur la tourbe.

Glenn Bush est un économiste et spécialiste des sciences sociales qui travaille depuis 16 ans en République démocratique du Congo (RDC), où il étudie les structures sociales et économiques qui déterminent l’utilisation des terres. Zambo est le reponsable de Woodwell Climate en RDC, et assure la liaison entre les résidents locaux, le gouvernement national et les chercheurs internationaux. Ces deux chercheurs se sont engagés à conseiller le gouvernement de RDC afin de l’aider à créer sa « contribution déterminée au niveau national » (CDN), qui définit l’engagement du pays à réduire ses émissions dans le cadre des Nations unies sur le changement climatique.

Les tourbières, un type d’écosystème humide, pourraient constituer un élément essentiel de la contribution de la RDC. Ces sols riches en carbone qui s’étendent sur de vastes surfaces de la forêt tropicale congolaise doivent impérativement être protégés. Des activités telles que l’agriculture, la déforestation et le changement climatique ont cependant déjà commencé à grignoter le précieux stock de carbone. Et une fois libérée, la tourbe prend des millénaires à se renouveler.

Qu’est-ce qu’une tourbière ?

Les tourbières du Congo se trouvent principalement dans les forêts humides et marécageuses dans le « centre du bassin » du Congo. Elles se forment sur les rives humides des cours d’eau – un environnement pauvre en oxygène qui ralentit le processus de décomposition, permettant à la matière organique de s’accumuler au fil du temps pour former un sol spongieux qui emprisonne le carbone, l’empêchant ainsi de rejoindre l’atmosphère.

La stabilité d’une tourbière dépend du taux d’humidité et des matières organiques. En cas d’assèchement d’un marais tourbeux, le carbone en contact avec l’air est immédiatement exposé à la décomposition et à l’érosion.

« Dès que les bactéries aérobies commencent à pénétrer dans la tourbière, explique Bush, tout ce carbone commence alors à devenir instable. Il est donc crucial d’éviter autant que possible de perturber cette tourbe. »

Mais, cette mesure est une action difficile à entreprendre de nos jours. La croissance démographique pousse les populations à s’enfoncer vers des marais boisés, exploités souvent pour l’agriculture, notamment pour la production du riz dans les zones humides ou la pisciculture, afin de subvenir aux besoins de leurs familles et de leurs communautés.

Les tourbières sont également extrêmement sensibles à la dégradation et à la déforestation dans le biome de la forêt tropicale. Au cœur du bassin du Congo, la forêt tropicale est en fait le moteur de la création de la plupart de ses propres pluies – la saison des pluies de printemps est déclenchée par l’humidité insufflée dans l’atmosphère par les plantes, plutôt que par le vent de la mer qui pénètre les terres. Face aux effets desséchants de la déforestation, le Congo est donc encore plus fragile que l’Amazonie.

« Pour chaque hectare de forêt perdu en Afrique, on perd proportionnellement plus de précipitations que pour une quantité similaire de forêt perdue en Amérique latine ou en Asie du Sud et du Sud-Est », explique Dr Mike Coe, directeur du programme Woodwell Climate Tropics.

Ce que nous ne savons pas sur les tourbières du Congo

Quelle est la superficie exacte des tourbières du bassin du Congo ? Et quelle serait la gravité de leur disparition en termes d’émissions ? La réponse à ces deux questions est « nous n’avons aucune donné précise ».

La recherche commence à peine à cartographier cet écosystème critique. Récemment, une équipe de chercheurs congolais et britanniques dirigée par le Dr Simon Lewis de l’université de Leeds a parcouru deux transects de 20 à 30 kilomètres de forêt marécageuse pour prélever des échantillons afin d’évaluer l’existence de tourbières. Ils en ont trouvé partout dans la forêt. Au total, on estime à 145 000 kilomètres carrés la superficie de la région.

Cela représente environ 30 milliards de tonnes de carbone, soit plus de 20 fois les émissions annuelles de combustibles fossiles des États-Unis.

« Il ne s’agit que de deux transects dans l’ensemble du bassin du Congo, mais qui nous ont permis de recalibrer les modèles existants d’étendue et de qualité des tourbières, et cela démontre que nous visitons un trésor de carbone tropical », insiste Bush.

Protéger les tourbières, c’est lutter contre la pauvreté

Protéger les tourbières est crucial, mais dans la pratique, elle est difficile à mettre en œuvre. Pourquoi ?

À l’heure actuelle, les tourbières sont plus utiles pour les congolais en tant que ressources foncières permettant de produire de la nourriture, de chasser, de pêcher et de récolter des plantes et des matériaux de construction, qu’en tant que forêt intacte. Selon certaines estimations, plus de 90 % de la déforestation dans le pays a pour but de soutenir l’agriculture de subsistance. C’est une nécessité pour près des trois quarts de la population du pays qui vit avec moins de 2,15 $ par jour.

En 2020, Zambo et Bush, accompagnés de Kathleen Savage, chercheuse principale à Woodwell, ont mené des études sur les méthodes d’intensification agricole dans les rizières humides, qui sont souvent créées sur des tourbières déboisées. L’application de techniques agricoles différentes, consistant à désherber et à s’occuper des plants de riz tout au long de la saison plutôt que de voyager et de revenir pour la récolte, permettaient un augmentation considérable des rendements sur la même surface, ce qui réduit la nécessité d’augmenter de grignoter la forêt pour augmenter la productivité.

« Rien qu’en s’occupant du riz, on pourrait peut-être sauver environ 30 % de la forêt », explique Savage.

Les agriculteurs ont reconnu les avantages de cette méthode, mais hésitent à l’adopter. En attendant la croissance du riz, le temps est souvent consacré à gagner un revenu supplémentaire pour les charges immédiates. Tabler sur un revenu plus conséquent à la fin de la saison est un risque qu’ils ne veulent pas toujours se permettre. Une bonne récolte n’est pas garantie ; les parasites, la sécheresse ou les inondations peuvent anéantir le travail d’une année, laissant les agriculteurs sans revenu. Cette fragilité pousse les populations à prendre des décisions difficiles quant à l’utilisation des forêts.

« La RDC ne dispose d’aucun filet de sécurité sociale », rappel Savage. « En fait, le filet de sécurité sociale, c’est la forêt – la chasse, l’abattage d’un arbre et la vente du bois parce qu’il vaut beaucoup d’argent. »

Les marchés du carbone pourraient orienter l’argent vers les communautés forestières

Afin d’éviter la déforestation et la dégradation des tourbières, les communautés rurales devront trouver une autre source de revenus. Bush et Zambo ont discuté du potentiel des marchés du carbone pour fournir ces revenus.

Les marchés du carbone sont des systèmes d’échange qui attribuent une valeur monétaire à la prévention de l’émission de carbone dans l’atmosphère ou à son élimination active. Ils fonctionnent sur la base de la vente de « crédits carbone » qui représentent théoriquement une tonne métrique de carbone stockée ou séquestrée grâce à des pratiques de gestion des terres. Idéalement, l’argent provenant de leur achat va directement aux personnes qui gèrent les terres, qu’il s’agisse d’un agriculteur qui protège les forêts ou d’un groupe communautaire qui restaure les zones dégradées.

En réalité, les crédits carbone sont difficiles à vérifier en raison de la faiblesse des réglementations et du manque de données.

« Le problème du crédit carbone est que personne n’est vraiment sûr de la qualité et des normes de livraison, ni de la manière de les mesurer et de les contrôler, car il est évident que quelqu’un ne se présente pas à votre porte avec un sac rempli de carbone », nuance Bush.

Jusqu’à présent, la mise en œuvre du marché a été entravée par des accusations d’écoblanchiment de la part des entreprises polluantes qui achètent des compensations et par des programmes réglementaires gouvernementaux qui peinent à prouver le bénéfice sur le climat et la biodiversité. Bush et Zambo estiment néanmoins qu’une version de cette solution pourrait apporter des revenus plus conséquents directement aux agriculteurs si elle est bien appliquée.

Bush travaille avec l’équipe carbone de Woodwell Climate à l’élaboration d’un indice de capital paysager (ICP) qui utilise des normes scientifiques pour évaluer le potentiel de toute parcelle de terre à atténuer les effets du changement climatique et à offrir d’autres avantages tels que la biodiversité et le cycle de l’eau. Une fois affiné, l’indice fournira des données permettant de vérifier les crédits carbones.

Zambo s’est beaucoup a mené des discussions approfondies avec le ministère de l’Environnement sur le plan national zéro émission. Avec Bush, il espère qu’un marché du carbone soutenu par la science pourrait générer des moyens économiques pour financer de nombreux projets de développement durable décrits dans le plan.

« La validation du carbone stocké dans cet écosystème pourrait générer beaucoup d’argent dans le pays pour le développement », déclare Zambo.

Renforcer les capacités du Congo

Un autre obstacle à la mise en œuvre d’un marché du carbone efficace est de trouver des données disponibles pour alimenter l’ICP. Comme souligné par Bush, les données actuelles sur le carbone des tourbières ne sont basées que sur une fine tranche de l’ensemble du bassin. Le financement des projets de conservation au niveau local nécessite une compréhension beaucoup plus détaillée de l’étendue et de la qualité du carbone présent dans l’ensemble de l’écosystème. La collecte de ce type de données nécessitera davantage de scientifiques – des scientifiques congolais – et davantage de compétences techniques chez les fonctionnaires qui pourraient être responsables de la gestion des programmes de conservation à l’avenir.

« La RDC doit renforcer ses capacités en matière de cartographie des tourbières afin d’élaborer une stratégie nationale spécifique aux tourbières », explique Zambo.

L’atelier auquel ont participé Bush et Zambo à Kinshasa étaient principalement basé sur le renforcement des capacités.

« Cet atelier revêtait d’une importance capitale dans la mesure où il a permis le partage des connaissances et des avancées au sujet de la collecte de données sur les tourbières, devant permettre au gouvernement congolais d’identifier les données manquantes, de sensibiliser les parties prenantes et de créer des synergies entre les tourbières et d’autres initiatives climatiques », explique M. Zambo.

Il faudrait également appuyer les capacités scientifiques avec des ressources technologiques supplémentaires. Savage a travaillé avec l’assistante de recherche Zoë Dietrich pour mettre au point des chambres de surveillance du méthane portables et peu coûteuses, qui seront utilisées sur des sites de recherche de terrain au Brésil et en Alaska. Savage estime qu’il est possible d’adapter la conception de ces chambres pour la situation en RDC, afin de surveiller les flux de carbone dans les forêts des zones humides.

« Actuellement, en termes de comptabilisation du carbone, [la RDC] utilise des mesures estimées à partir d’un autre pays similaire et l’on suppose que c’est également ce que font leurs forêts. Mais pour obtenir des chiffres précis, il faut vraiment passer à des mesures directes », explique Savage.

L’avenir durable de la RDC

Beaucoup reste à faire pour que les marchés du carbone deviennent un mécanisme de financement viable pour les grands efforts de conservation en RDC. La durabilité et la croissance économique se résumeront en fin de compte à fournir aux ménages ruraux des alternatives pragmatiques de subsistance et à développer un sentiment de sécurité financière. Mais Bush espère que l’enthousiasme suscité par leur potentiel pourrait contribuer à faire traverser l’impasse des discussions, non seulement sur la conservation et le climat, mais aussi sur la gouvernance économique du pays à plus grande échelle.

Après tout, le marché du carbone est un marché au même titre que ceux qui vendent des sacs de riz ou du bois de valeur.

« Une fois que les acheteurs et les vendeurs ont compris la valeur fondamentale de ce qu’ils achètent et vendent, ils ont besoin des mêmes conditions-cadres pour fonctionner que n’importe quel marché », explique Bush. « Bonne gouvernance, transparence et respect de l’État de droit. »

Zambo envisage également une solution. En raison des avantages qu’elles procurent à l’écosystème, la valorisation des tourbières peut contribuer à améliorer la situation partout en RDC.

« J’espère que la conservation, la protection, la gestion et le développement des tourbières et des forêts congolaises pourront être un moteur clé du développement durable du pays », conclut Zambo.

On the southern bank of a turbulent, muddy-brown bend in the Congo River, sits the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. Here, Woodwell Climate Associate Scientist, Dr. Glenn Bush and Forests and Climate Change Coordinator, Joseph Zambo, have joined other researchers and government officials in the conference rooms of a downtown hotel for a three-day workshop about peat.

Bush is an economist and social scientist who has worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for 16 years, studying the social and economic structures that shape land use. Zambo leads Woodwell Climate’s work from the DRC side, liaising between local residents, the national government, and international researchers. The pair of them are hard at work advising on the creation of the DRC’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which outlines the country’s commitment to emissions reductions within the UN climate change framework.

Peatlands, a type of wetland, could be a critical element in the DRC’s contributions. Underlying large swaths of the Congo Rainforest, these carbon-packed soils are critical to protect. But disturbances like agriculture, deforestation, and climate change have already begun nibbling at the valuable stock of carbon. And once it is released, it takes millennia to replace.

What is a peatland?

Congo peatlands are found primarily in the wet, marshy forests of the country’s “Cuvette Central” or Central Basin. They form on the water-soaked banks of stream channels—an oxygen-poor environment that slows the decomposition process, allowing organic matter to build up over time into a spongy soil that locks away carbon, preventing it from re-joining the atmosphere.

A stable peatland relies on wetness. Draining a peat swamp immediately exposes that carbon to decomposition and erosion when it touches air.

“As soon as aerobic bacteria start getting in there,” says Bush. “Then all that carbon starts to become unstable. So the idea is, we just need to not disturb that peat as much as possible.”

But avoiding disturbance is a difficult thing to do these days. As populations grow, people are pushing further into forested marshland margins, often modifying them for agricultural uses like wetland rice production or fish farming to support their families and communities.

Peatlands are also extremely sensitive to degradation and deforestation across the rainforest biome. In the Congo Basin, the rainforest is actually responsible for creating most of its own rain—the spring rainy season is triggered by moisture breathed into the atmosphere by plants, rather than blown inland from the sea. This makes the Congo even more sensitive than the Amazon when it comes to the drying effects of deforestation.

“For every hectare of forest you lose in Africa, you lose proportionately more rainfall than you do for a similar amount of forest loss in Latin America or in South and Southeast Asia,” says Woodwell Climate Tropics Program Director, Dr. Mike Coe.

What we don’t know about the Congo’s peatlands

So exactly how much peatland does the Congo Basin hold? And how bad would it be in terms of emissions to lose them? The answer to both is “we don’t know for certain.”

Research has only just begun to give size and shape to this critical ecosystem. Recently, a collaborative Congolese and British team led by Dr. Simon Lewis of the University of Leeds walked two 20-30 kilometer transects of marshy forest, taking core samples to assess the existence of peatland. They found it everywhere beneath the forest. All told, an estimated 145,000 square kilometers across the entire region.

That translates to an estimated 30 billion metric tons of carbon—more than 20 times the United States’ annual fossil fuel emissions.

“It’s only two transects in the whole of the Congo Basin, but using that, we’ve been able to recalibrate existing models of peatland extent and quality, and it basically shows we’re sitting on a tropical carbon treasure trove,” says Bush.

Peatland protection is poverty alleviation

So protecting peatlands is important, but in practice, it’s a hard thing to accomplish. Why?

Right now, peatlands are more valuable to the people of DRC as a land resource to produce food, hunt, fish and harvest plants and materials for building, than as untouched forest. Some estimates indicate more than 90% of deforestation in the country occurs to support subsistence agriculture. It’s a necessity for the nearly three quarters of the country’s population that lives on less than $2.15 a day.

In 2020, Zambo and Bush, alongside Woodwell Senior Research Scientist Kathleen Savage, conducted research into methods of agricultural intensification in rice paddy wetlands which are often created on deforested peatland. Applying different farming methods, involving weeding and tending to rice plants throughout the full season rather than traveling and returning for the harvest, significantly boosted yields over the same area, meaning less pressure to expand into the forest to increase productivity.

“Just by tending the rice, you could perhaps save about 30% of the forest,” says Savage.

Farmers recognized the benefit of this method, but were hesitant to adopt it. That time spent not tending to rice is often spent working to earn extra cash to pay immediate expenses. Waiting for a larger payout at the end of the season is not always a risk they are able to take. A good crop is not guaranteed; pests, drought, or floods could all wipe out a year’s worth of work, leaving farmers with no income. That uncertainty pushes people to make tough decisions about how to use forests.

“There’s no social safety net,” says Savage. “Well actually, the social safety net is the forest—hunting, chopping a tree down and selling the lumber because it’s worth a lot of money.”

Carbon markets could direct money to forest communities

To prevent deforestation and degradation of peatland, rural communities will need an alternative source of income. Bush and Zambo have been discussing the potential for carbon markets to supply that income.

Carbon markets are a finance mechanism that places a monetary value on preventing carbon from entering the atmosphere—or actively removing it. They function on the sale of “carbon credits” which theoretically represent one metric ton of carbon kept stored or sequestered through land management practices. Ideally, money from their purchase goes directly to the people managing the land—whether that’s a farmer protecting forests or a community group restoring degraded areas.

In reality, however, carbon credits have been challenging to verify because of weak regulations and lack of data.

“The problem with the carbon credit is nobody’s really sure about quality and standards for delivery or how to measure and monitor them because, obviously, somebody doesn’t turn up on your doorstep with a bag full of carbon,” says Bush.

So far, market implementation has been plagued by accusations of greenwashing for polluting corporations who buy offsets and government regulatory programs unable to prove positive climate and biodiversity impacts. But Bush and Zambo see potential for a version of this solution to bring more wealth directly into farmers’ hands if done right.

Bush is working with the Carbon team at Woodwell Climate on the development of a Landscape Capital Index (LCI) that uses scientific standards to assess the potential of any tract of land to deliver climate mitigation and other benefits like biodiversity and water cycling. Once refined, the Index will provide data against which carbon credits can be checked.

Zambo has been deeply involved in conversations with the Ministry of Environment around the country’s National Net Zero Plan. Both he and Bush hope that a science-backed carbon market could make many of the sustainable development projects outlined in the plan economically feasible.

“The validation of carbon stored in this ecosystem could generate a lot of money in the country for development,” says Zambo.

Building Congolese Capacity

Another obstacle to implementing an effective carbon market is finding available data to feed the LCI. As Bush mentioned, current information on peatland carbon is based on only a thin slice of the entire watershed. In order to provide payments for local-level conservation projects, we need a much more granular understanding of the extent and quality of carbon across the entire ecosystem. Collecting that kind of data will require more scientists—Congolese scientists—and more technical capacity among officials who could be responsible for managing conservation programs in the future.

“DRC needs capacity building in the mapping of peatland areas to develop a national strategy specific to peatlands,” says Zambo.

Capacity building was a large part of the workshop in Bush and Zambo attended in Kinshasa.

“This workshop was very important in the context of sharing knowledge and advances in data collection about peatlands, in order to enable the Congolese government to identify missing data, raise awareness among stakeholders, and create synergies between peatlands and other climate initiatives,” says Zambo.

Additional technological resources could also help bolster scientific capacity. Savage has been working with Research Assistant Zoë Dietrich to develop inexpensive, portable, methane monitoring chambers for use at field research sites in Brazil and Alaska. Savage sees the potential to adapt the chamber design for use in the DRC monitoring carbon fluxes in wetland forests.

“Right now, in terms of carbon accounting, [the DRC] is using measurements estimated from another similar country and the assumption is that’s what their forests are doing, too. But in order to get accurate numbers, they really need to move to direct measurements,” says Savage.

DRC’s sustainable future

There is much work to be done to build carbon markets into a viable funding mechanism for large conservation efforts in the DRC. Sustainability and economic growth will ultimately come down to providing rural households with pragmatic livelihood alternatives, and developing a sense of financial security. But Bush hopes the excitement around their potential could help push forward difficult conversations, not just around conservation and climate, but about economic governance within the country on a larger scale.

The carbon market, after all, is a market just like the ones selling sacks of rice or valuable timber.

“Once the buyers and sellers understand the basic value of what is being bought and sold, then it requires the same framework conditions to operate as any market needs,” says Bush. “Good governance, transparency and adherence to the rule of law.”

Zambo sees a path forward as well. One where valuing peatlands for their ecosystem benefits can help lift up all of DRC.

“I hope that the conservation, protection, management, and development of peatlands and forests in the DRC can be a key driver for the country’s sustainable development,” says Zambo.

Negotiations at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan ran well past the scheduled end of the conference Friday evening. While the final outcomes fell short of hopes, they exceeded many expectations.

And while a full analysis of the final decisions will take time, a few key takeaways are already clear. The new goal for climate finance is an important step in the right direction, but responsibilities for it are ambiguous. The same can be said for the global goal on adaptation, conclusions about the need for enhanced research and observation systems, and a work plan for greater involvement of Indigenous peoples in the UN climate negotiation process. There was some enhanced clarity around mechanisms for implementing carbon markets under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement; however, the failure to reach consensus on the Just Transition Work Programme and improvements to the Global Stocktake process used to gauge progress toward climate goals were distinct disappointments.

Every COP presents unique challenges and opportunities, the pace of diplomacy rarely matches the acceleration of climate change, and under the Paris Agreement, the responsibility for ambition lies at the national level. But the main negotiations—as important as they are—are not the only venue where progress is made. Over the course of the two week convening, Woodwell Climate’s delegation hosted and participated in dozens of meetings and events, scoring significant wins at COP29:

As is always the case, this COP was the first step on the road to the next one. COP30 will bring the UN climate change negotiation process back to Brazil, where the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in 1992, and where sustainable food production and tropical forest conservation—core areas of research and expertise for Woodwell Climate—are expected to be at the top of the agenda.

This year, Las Vegas, Nevada broke its all-time heat record, reaching 120° F. 

The temperature was recorded at Harry Reid International Airport on July 7, 2024. That week, between July 6 and July 12, was the new hottest 7-day period on record, with an average high temperature of 117.5° F. 

This is the daily reality for Vegas residents in the summer. Record-breaking temperatures are hard to bear, but so were all the hot days and nights that came before. Commuters frequently see temperatures above 120 flash on their vehicle dashboards, and outdoor workers struggle to do their daily tasks under the hot sun.

“There’s a disconnect between climate science and the people who live here,” says Woodwell Climate Research Associate, Monica Caparas. “Vegas residents know our summers are hot and unbearable. Understanding climate change is driving the extreme weather we’re experiencing is where the disconnect lies. ”

Caparas moved to Las Vegas as a child. She grew up there, left for college, and returned to settle into her adult life. Today, she works for Woodwell Climate’s Risk team remotely from her home in the city. Caparas knows the ins and outs of local life. These include Vegas’s rapid population expansion, the groups of people experiencing homelessness sheltering in underground stormwater infrastructure, and the heat that was unbearable before it started making headlines. 

Experiencing climate change without shelter

Caparas’s work with the Risk team aims to provide communities like Las Vegas with an accurate picture of the climate-driven changes in their future. These “risk assessments” are provided through Woodwell Climate’s Just Access program, which uses the most accurate climate models, in collaboration with local knowledge, to anticipate future community safety threats. The analyses have brought to light growing threats from flooding, heat, storms, and more. The team provides assessments, free of charge, to states, cities, and countries across the world.

Just Access serves what Risk Program Director Christopher Schwalm calls “frontline communities.” The term describes groups of people who are over-exposed, under-resourced, underserved, historically marginalized, and therefore the most at-risk to the repercussions of climate change. In the risk assessment for Las Vegas, people experiencing homelessness are front and center. 

“Between May 20th and the first week in July, about 20 people who were experiencing homelessness died of heat,” says Dr. Catrina Grigsby-Thedford, Executive Director of the Nevada Homeless Alliance (NHA) and community partner in Las Vegas. 

The NHA estimates that almost 8,000 people are experiencing homelessness on any given night in southern Nevada. The number is only growing. Grigsby-Thedford says that this year’s unhoused population is up 1,300 people compared to 2023. 

“Often our shelters are full,” Grigsby-Thedford says, “We’re limited by shelter beds and space.”

The NHA’s shelters do open all day in extreme heat, but so many people packed tightly together is still unsafe. 

With nowhere to go, some seek shelter underground in Las Vegas’s stormwater infrastructure. While the tunnels are cooler out of the sun’s reach, they are at risk from flooding. Across the region, extreme precipitation is expected to increase by 12-14% by 2050, raising flood risk in the city and especially within the tunnels.

To combat lack of space and shelter, the NHA hosts 4-8 one-stop resource fairs per month. The events, called Project Homeless Connect, serve both people experiencing homelessness and low-income residents in Las Vegas. Grigsby-Thedford says these events “fill in gaps”—offering housing assistance, medical care, hygiene care, and other resources. 

Despite all of this work, many unhoused people are hesitant to engage with organizations like the NHA. Grigsby-Thedford says “choice is often a challenge,” and that when people grow accustomed to the way things are, they often accept it and choose to stay. 

Picturing risk

Building trust with communities, especially those predisposed to mistrust outside actors, is essential in this work. Which is why, Schwalm says, Woodwell Climate approaches risk work with the goal of “meet[ing] people where they are.” 

That means “scoping,” the team’s word for listening to what community and government leaders want out of the risk analysis—what concerns they have, weak points they’ve identified, and what help might be needed post-analysis.

“Two-thirds of the time we spend from start to finish falls into this scoping idea, rather than doing analysis itself,” Schwalm says. 

Scoping frames the data the risk team collects, as well as who their partners will be during the risk analysis process. 

“We find people who are practical and recognize that there’s a problem,” Schwalm says, “We only work with communities who want to work with us.”

Following the scoping process, the Risk team compiles an analysis of extreme weather events and subsequent risks each community will face as climate change progresses. 

“We perform a stress test of that particular geography to identify weak points,” Schwalm explains.

Then, the Risk team uses the most up-to-date climate models possible to predict changes in extreme weather and regional climate. By using predictive models, the team focuses efforts on what the future will hold, as opposed to using past strategies.

“We need to use the future to predict the future,” Schwalm says simply. 

Making climate risk data accessible to all

Over the past three years, Just Access has provided 50 communities—that’s about a quarter billion people—with risk analyses. These communities span the U.S., Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. They’ve worked with countries, like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they helped update the country’s National Adaptive Plan, states like Chiapas in Mexico, groups like Cree Nation in Canada, and other communities, now including Las Vegas.  

Despite all of this work, though, Schwalm says there is still room to grow. 

“Fifty communities is kind of only a drop in the bucket,” he says, “We’re not going to make a huge dent in this unless we move beyond working community-by-community.” 

Two major roadblocks for Just Access are finite resources: time and money. Individual risk analyses require a lot of time and communication to address risks in relatively small areas. 

The other obstacle, money, is something climate research could always use more of. Grants and donations are crucial in order for analyses to remain free, and those sometimes come with limitations. 

“There’s a tension from the funder to work in a specific geography sometimes,” Schwalm says, “It’s a juggling act.”

Climate change can also be a politicized topic. In order to meet people where they are, sometimes the Risk team implements changes in language used to communicate with community leaders. This can be a change as simple as using “extreme weather” instead of “climate change.” As long as everyone in the room is ready to confront what the future holds, they’re all working on the same page towards the same goal. 

“We’ve done red states, blue states, rural, urban,” Schwalm continues. “We’ve learned how to read the room.” 

Creating the foundations for change

Woodwell Climate’s involvement in Las Vegas brings to light the way justice issues, like homelessness, interact with growing threats from climate change.

“In the Las Vegas risk assessment, we are focusing on the disproportionate impacts of the climate crisis on communities already facing systemic socio-economic inequity,” says Caparas. “We must think about intersectionality in order to address climate justice.”

Not only does climate change represent a current crisis for those experiencing homelessness, communities with fewer resources are now at greater risk of being made homeless by future climate-related disasters. Accurate climate risk information can support organizations like NHA as they develop strategies to serve people experiencing homelessness in a more extreme future. 

Grigsby-Thedford says that NHA members, especially those with lived experience of homelessness who work as Lived X Consultants, are always looking to be involved in projects like the one Caparas leads. 

“We always talk about weather in our meetings,” she says, “So this is perfect, someone’s actually doing research about this. Anything that impacts [Las Vegas’s homeless population], we want to make sure we’re involved in that.”

For the Las Vegas risk assessment, Caparas is working with the NHA and Southern Nevada Lived X Consultants to understand climate risks around cooling stations in public buildings, which are a vital, air-conditioned shelter when the heat index is too high. Grigsby-Thedford says there were many more cooling stations in 2023 and 2024 compared to previous years.

Caparas also forged a connection with Miguel Dávila Uzcátegui, Southern Nevada’s Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) Senior Planner and board member of Help Hope Home. Together, they are developing a database of flooding infrastructure and updating the city’s flooding model with future climate projections. The RTC will integrate the Risk team’s model into regional planning work, updating Las Vegas’s flooding and transportation infrastructure for community safety. 

None of this work would have been possible without Caparas’s diligent bridge building between the scientific resources of Woodwell Climate and the needs of people in her own community. Those connections allow science to be informed first and foremost by those most affected by climate change. 

“The people closest to the problem are the people closest to the solution,” says Grigsby-Thedford. 

Woodwell Climate Research Center and UN Climate Change are collaborating to develop a new training course—announced November 14 at COP29 in Azerbaijan—to prepare experts for a voluntary review of adaptation reporting by Parties under the Paris Agreement.

Countries submit Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) every two years to inform the world about their national climate efforts. These reports are vital enabling tools for governments, helping to build a robust evidence base critical to strengthening climate policies and climate action over time. The first BTRs are due at the end of 2024.

“Transparency is a priority for the COP29 presidency, because transparency is a cornerstone of climate action,” said a representative for the COP29 presidency at the Together for Transparency event on Thursday. 

Each BTR will be reviewed by teams of technical experts coordinated by UN Climate Change, which provides a set of training courses for experts to prepare for that task. A country can request a voluntary review of the information it has reported on adaptation efforts, which requires special expertise on climate risk and adaptation to execute. 

This collaboration draws on Woodwell expertise on climate change impacts and adaptation reporting, as well as climate risk and vulnerability assessments. Woodwell Climate’s Director of International Government Relations, Dr. Matti Goldberg, was responsible for spearheading this collaborative effort.  

The training will encompass a set of five lessons and accompanying exams that help future expert reviewers learn key aspects of vulnerability assessments, adaptation planning, monitoring and evaluation, and loss and damage, among other issues. These lessons will be launched in a PDF downloadable format by the end of 2024.

Squabbling, compromise, disappointment, hope, and incremental change— these are features of any decision making process, but especially one requiring the cooperation and agreement of nearly 200 countries with varied interests, resources, and desire for change. 

At the annual Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), member countries gather to hash out the gritty details of international agreements concerning climate change. These COPs have become the world’s most prominent stage for climate action, drawing not only heads of state and diplomats, but also scientists, activists, businesses, journalists, financial organizations, Indigenous knowledge holders, artists, and spiritual leaders, just to name a few. All are in attendance to influence the future of planet Earth. 

Here’s how climate’s biggest event of the year steers the international framework for combating climate change.

What is COP?

Formally, the COP is the decision-making platform for signatories of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC is a legally binding agreement between UN member countries, created specifically to tackle the crisis of climate change. Each year since its creation, delegations from participating countries (called Parties) have met at the COP to discuss the agreements and mechanisms by which to address climate change. 

After two weeks of negotiation, conference delegates produce text that becomes binding for UNFCCC Parties. These texts have legislated things from the commitment of industrialized nations to reduce emissions, to the direction of funding for climate action, to the upper limit of acceptable warming. 

The prominence and importance of these conference proceedings have grown with each year and each increment of warming. The conference itself has expanded to encompass climate action across multiple channels at once.

“There are actually three COPs happening in parallel,” says Woodwell Climate’s Director of International Government Relations, Dr. Matti Goldberg, who has learned the ins and outs of the conference over 15 years spent working for the UN’s Climate Change Secretariat.

The first layer is the core of the conference— the negotiations. This is the space where each participating country sends delegates to argue on their behalf. The agenda for each year’s negotiations is developed during preparatory meetings of the delegates, with planning sometimes starting two years in advance, and resulting in agendas of 50-60 interlinked issues. COPs are typically judged as successes or failures based on the strength of the resulting text from the formal negotiations. The complexity of the issues, and the negotiating tactics of different countries, tend to push final agreements well beyond the scheduled closing of the COP.  

Then there’s what Goldberg calls the “high-level COP.” This is the platform for heads of state to showcase their country’s progress on various issues. Think, speeches from the president, announcements of new coalitions, hand-shaking between ministers, or denunciations of other countries’ lack of action. Although the high-level COP can feel like superficial performance, deals between countries can help move the negotiations forward— or delay them, depending on a country’s interests.

Surrounding both the formal negotiations and closed door deals is the “third COP” — also referred to as the “Blue Zone”: a space open to scientists, NGOs, activists, and companies for hosting side events, pavilions with panel talks and presentations, forge new partnerships, hold protests, and apply pressure on negotiators. The third COP also spills out into a “Green Zone”, a space where those not badged for the official conference can organize events and contribute to the momentum of the moment.

What does an NGO do at COP?

For an organization like Woodwell Climate, the third COP is the main stage on which to contribute to the conference. 

“Our first priority is to showcase our research and its relevance to the key questions of each year’s COP,” says Goldberg.

At COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Woodwell Climate will host a pavilion to showcase the organization’s work in several key areas, including climate risks and national security, accounting for growing natural emissions sources like permafrost thaw and wildfires, as well as emerging collaborations with new partner countries such as Ethiopia. The pavilion also serves as a convening place to discuss work with partners.

“The sheer scale of participation at COPs makes them critical annual opportunities to solidify existing partnerships and build new ones,” says Goldberg.

While participants of this third COP aren’t officially part of negotiations, Woodwell Climate scientists still have opportunities to participate in the more formal COP processes. Each COP hosts an “Earth Information Day” where scientists exchange data and research with country delegations to better inform decision making. At COP29, Woodwell has proposed to highlight the latest research on wildfire emissions.

Scientists also have a role to play in ensuring national emissions reductions plans are based on accurate numbers—a point that Woodwell Climate will be emphasizing both at this COP and beyond. In 2025, countries must submit their updated 5-year climate targets (called Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs) to the UNFCCC. The adequacy of those targets depends on how much carbon can still be emitted without surpassing the agreed-upon maximum limit of warming.

“Our research on permafrost and wildfires indicates that the global carbon budget available for staying below the 1.5 degrees Celcius temperature limit might be much smaller than countries are thinking right now,” says Goldberg. “From the Woodwell perspective, it would be great to remind the international community that the numbers need to add up. We need to take into account these emissions that are not being discussed.”

Successes and failures in three decades of COP

Over his tenure with the UN Secretariat, Goldberg has witnessed both promising action and frustrating setbacks, sometimes at the same conference. 

COP15, held in Copenhagen in 2009 was one of those moments for him. Here negotiations decayed, and the weak resulting agreement failed to legally bind countries to emissions reductions.

“Turkeys don’t vote for Thanksgiving,” Goldberg jokes. “Countries will generally not agree to a regime that will force them to take on targets determined at the UN or by others.”

But Goldberg says that Copenhagen did, at least, define a new paradigm where every country would commit to doing something. Voluntarily, and perhaps not ambitiously enough, but in a year widely considered a failure, steps towards universal climate cooperation were still made.

Each successive COP built upon this new paradigm and in 2015 the conference arrived at another milestone— the Paris Agreement. This is the framework under which the world operates today, with every country creating NDCs appropriate to their size and resources, with the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. 

The agreement spurred more conversation around how that goal would be achieved, and in 2018 the parties adopted a rulebook for its implementation. Since then, however, Goldberg says many of the conferences have been “searching for real purpose” — some kind of action to match the ambition of the Paris Agreement. But, in Goldberg’s mind, that doesn’t necessarily indicate a failure of the process.

“You can’t have a spectacle forever,” says Goldberg. “At some point the pressure should be less on the COP itself and more on countries actually working under the Paris Agreement to get more ambitious about what they’re doing, and probably making some very painful decisions at the national level.”

Climate has the world’s attention

But of course, policy making moves slowly, both for the UN and national governments. And with each year that passes, cooperation and increased ambition becomes more urgent. In 2023, record high temperatures spurred conversations about whether the 1.5 degree limit has already been surpassed. In five years, Goldberg states, “it might be way too late even to pretend that we are under that limit.”

But Goldberg remains hopeful. Before the COPs, before 30 years of tough conversations attempting to find a way through the climate crisis, Goldberg says, the prevailing thought among political scientists was that international cooperation on this scale was a fantasy. But despite its failures, the process has persisted, inching the world towards climate action. Other international treaties have taken their lead from this process as well, hosting COPs to address issues like plastic pollution and biodiversity.

“The fact that there are so many people dedicated to solving this and to working through mutual disagreements, that people haven’t walked away, makes me hopeful,” says Goldberg. “This is possibly the hardest global policy problem there is, and it has the world’s attention. I think that’s very positive.”

In the US, state and federal governments regularly fight wildfires that threaten people and property, but Alaska’s Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge recently began piloting a novel strategy: putting out fires to prevent climate-warming carbon emissions from being released from trees and soils.

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