The Climate Industry Is Pitting Nature Against Tech. These Researchers Say That’s Wrong.

A new academic paper on carbon-dioxide removal says both nature-based and technical solutions are needed to limit global warming

The fight against global warming should take a more unified approach to carbon removal that pursues both technical and nature-based solutions, researchers from some of the world’s largest companies, charities and leading academic institutions say.

In a paper published in the journal Climate Policy, researchers said that the current climate policy landscape, which pits engineered carbon-removal solutions such as capturing CO2 directly from the air against nature-based solutions such as reforestation, stifles investment and confuses policy.

"This binary approach that suggests that we have to choose between one or the other is not useful to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and the [climate] goals of companies," said Charlotte Streck, co-founder and managing partner of Climate Focus, an international advisory company on climate policy, and the lead author of the research paper.

"We have one goal—the goal is to reduce emissions and remove carbon from the atmosphere," she added.

The paper includes contributions from researchers from the World Wildlife Fund, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Meta Platforms among others.

Some estimates say the carbon-removal market could be worth $250 billion a year. But a shortage of investment, confusing policy and a lack of technological readiness have been touted as issues holding the market back.

However, another key feature of discussions has been whether to back nature-based or technical solutions.

Technical or engineered solutions for carbon capture, such as direct air capture, enhanced rock weathering and biochar, focus on removing carbon from the atmosphere for hundreds if not thousands of years. Many startups have emerged trying to pitch for the small volumes of cash available to scale these solutions, but because of the relative newness of the technologies, costs are often high. Some carbon credits from these solutions have been sold for close to $1,000 per ton of carbon removed.

Proponents of technical solutions say that once proven, these methods are as good as permanent in terms of locking in atmospheric carbon. However, most of these technologies are still in testing or at a laboratory stage, meaning getting them to scale quickly remains an issue.

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Nature-based solutions, meanwhile, include tree planting; regenerative agriculture practices, such as no-till farming; and ocean-based solutions, such as capturing carbon through growing seagrass and seaweed. In most of those solutions, the science is well established and known, but carbon sequestration is considered less durable, storing carbon for decades rather than centuries. Crucially, those credits sold are much cheaper, usually for well below $100 a ton.

Backers of nature-based solutions highlight that the process of locking in carbon through photosynthesis has existed in nature for millions of years, and so can scale with ease. The issue is that some projects can have high “reversal risk,” meaning that projects don’t deliver on their goals. Issues such as wildfire, drought or even the volume of carbon being removed not being as high as expected mean that investing in those projects can be seen as a risk.

"Nature is hard to make bankable and technical solutions when they are able to scale are bankable," said Streck. She, however, added that because nature-based solutions are quicker to scale, they come with their own advantages.

Streck said that part of the reasoning for publishing the paper was to bring together a multitude of voices from within the industry to argue both solutions would be needed. "Nature wins on sustainability and scalability. Technical [solutions] are more durable."

Daniel Zarin, executive director for Forests and Climate Change at the Wildlife Conservation Society who co-wrote the paper, added that for investors it’s important to see the two methods as complementary.

"In an investment portfolio, you would want to have both to hedge against the risks of each other," he said. "Investors ought to be thinking how these things can work together, so it’s really recasting this as complementary risk profiles."