On this episode we discuss mangrove restoration and other "nature based solutions" (NBS) to climate change.

Now promoted as the best strategy to slow climate change--and encompassing an array of solutions from reforestation to ecosystem restoration--critics point out that they also have numerous pitfalls that must be guarded against.

Mangrove restoration and other 'blue carbon' projects are a common NBS program one hears about, so host Mike G. speaks with Alfredo Quarto, co-founder of the Mangrove Action Project, who shares why mangrove forests are so globally important & what successful restoration projects look like.

Norah Berk also joins the show: she's a policy advisor on climate change and forests at the Rainforest Foundation UK, who explains that NBS have, in many cases, been co-opted by corporations that are using them as carbon offset schemes, and discusses why she thinks land titling for Indigenous and local communities is a better solution to climate change which the world should be focusing on.

Further reading:

• “At a plantation in Central Africa, Big Oil tries to go net-zero” 

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Episode artwork: Mangrove trees growing on a beach. Photo via Pixabay.

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