Exploring nature-based solutions to climate change

LAST UPDATED: 12 JANUARY 2024

Climate change presents an enormous threat to our lives and livelihoods.

As the challenge to combat climate change intensifies, it’s important that our solutions accelerate decarbonisation to curb emissions. But they must also help to restore the natural environments that will help to sustainably minimise the long-term effects of climate change.

We know we have a significant carbon footprint. In 2021, we set ambitious new goals to accelerate our decarbonisation.

And while reducing scope 1 and 2 emissions at our mines and smelters remains our priority, we need to look at all possible solutions to help us reach our goals.

Especially if some of those solutions offer opportunities to restore and create new natural environments, and work with communities and governments to improve their livelihoods and resilience to the effects of climate change.

In April 2022, we launched a new team of specialists focused on nature-based solutions, who are exploring and investing in high quality projects that implement internationally accepted social and environmental safeguards. As part of this work, we are partnering with host communities and other local stakeholders to learn from them and jointly find ways to improve the resilience and protect biodiversity of land in and around our operations.

Through these projects, we hope to contribute to sustaining communities’ current and future livelihoods, while also contributing to our larger efforts to reduce our footprint.

Theresia, Chief Adviser of Nature Solutions, and Simon, General Manager Nature Solutions, who are leading our nature solutions work, explain how nature-based solutions could help tackle a range of challenges.

How can nature-based solutions help accelerate the journey towards decarbonisation?

Simon: A wide range of international bodies and consultancies have concluded that nature-based solutions will be one of the key ways to limit warming to less than 2°C.

Nature-based solutions are scalable now and can yield benefits very quickly, while many other solutions being explored aren’t yet scalable, particularly engineering-based ones. If we don't implement nature-based solutions as soon as possible, we risk losing valuable time to ‘turn back the tide’, given climate change will continue to degrade biodiversity and the land’s ability to recover.

At Rio Tinto, we’re lucky to be connected to a very large and varied landholding – around 4 million hectares – and we have a duty of care to effectively manage the natural assets on that land.

Theresia: Humans rely on nature more than we think we do. As we lose functioning ecosystems, nature loses the necessary resilience to support and provide for people. Developing nations and people who directly depend on nature for their livelihoods feel the effects of this change first, but it is increasingly impacting the value chains of developed economies, so urgent action is required by business to halt nature loss and to protect biodiversity.

Why are nature-based solutions so valuable?

Theresia: Natural climate solutions are about more than just carbon credits. Done well, they can build the resilience and socioeconomic independence of host communities while also building our own climate resilience and futureproofing our operations.

Across our operation regions, we’re fortunate to have access to a range of environments – deserts in Mongolia; subtropical forests, woodlands and wetlands in Australia, Madagascar and South Africa; grass- and shrubland across the Pilbara in Australia; tundra and peat lands in Canada; and prairie habitats in the US, to name just a few.

Having access to this kind of diversity is incredibly exciting. Many people focus on trees as a carbon mechanism, but grasslands, peatlands, mangroves and wetlands can also absorb and store a lot of carbon and form diverse habitats for flora and fauna.

For example, mangroves can prevent damage when there’s a storm event, and wetlands reduce floodwaters because they act like giant sponges. Forests are like enormous air conditioners, moderating extreme temperatures. Healthy ecosystems also maintain healthy soils and pollinators needed to maintain nutritious food crops.

Simon: And currently, there’s a marketplace for carbon, but the marketplace for broader socioeconomic nature-based benefits, or for maintaining biodiversity, is still emerging. I believe we will be able to get high integrity projects off the ground, just valuing the carbon component of it. But our biggest contribution can then be the fact that because we are a large landholder with access to a large balance sheet, we can effectively contribute to the broader discussion about how you value nature and socioeconomics. You can only put a value on them once you have successful case studies that show the impact they've had on biodiversity and on local communities.