Nature: The Climate Ally We Can’t Afford To Lose

Forests, wetlands, grasslands, and oceans are Earth’s original climate defense system — vast carbon sinks that absorb billions of tons of CO₂ each year. But rising temperatures, deforestation, and ecosystem degradation are eroding these systems’ ability to store carbon, and in some cases even risk turning them into mega-emitters. The good news: technology can help. Protecting nature means leveraging innovation to monitor, conserve, and restore these critical systems. Drones could replant forests; measurement tools could safeguard carbon in soils, mangroves, and peatlands. If successful, these interventions could deliver up to one third of the emissions cuts needed to meet global targets, all while preserving the precious living systems humanity can’t live without.

Nature is vital. It sustains the systems that make life and civilization possible. Forests and oceans regulate Earth’s climate. Soils and waters grow our food. Ecosystems buffer communities from floods, fires, and storms. These living systems, and the climate stability they support, are the foundation for livelihoods, cultures, and economies around the world. 

There are countless reasons why nature is well worth protecting. In the context of Climate Tech Atlas, though, our focus is on one especially critical role: regulating greenhouse gas emissions. For millennia, our climate has been stabilized by nature’s own carbon sinks. These precious ecosystems quietly absorb vast volumes of carbon dioxide, storing it safely for centuries and balancing Earth’s atmosphere. 

• Forests and vegetation (terrestrial biomass) absorb CO₂ during photosynthesis and store it in their trunks, roots, and leaves. Forests currently absorb close to 8 billion tons of CO₂ per year (~20% of human emissions). Tropical, temperate, and boreal forests all play critical roles, though tropical forests are particularly dense carbon stores. 
• Soils store nearly 2,500 gigatons of carbon, or about three times more than the atmosphere. When healthy, they capture and retain carbon through root systems, microbial activity, and the buildup of organic matter and mineral compounds, such as calcium carbonate.
• Wetlands and peatlands are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth, storing centuries of accumulated organic matter. Though they cover only 3% of land area, peatlands store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined. 
• Permafrosts, which are frozen soils mainly located in Arctic regions, store ~1,500 gigatons of carbon — nearly twice what’s now in the atmosphere.
• Blue carbon refers to coastal and marine ecosystems at the land–sea interface: mangroves, seagrasses, salt marshes. Though relatively small in area, they are disproportionately powerful carbon sinks, storing up to four times more carbon per acre than terrestrial forests. 
• Oceans absorb up to 30% of human CO₂ emissions each year. The marine carbonate buffer system enables the ocean to absorb far more CO₂ than solubility alone would permit, regulating both carbon storage and ocean pH. Phytoplankton absorb CO₂ through photosynthesis; when they die, some of the carbon descends into the deep ocean via the biological pump. Alongside these mechanisms, ocean circulation physically carries CO₂-rich waters into the deep sea, where carbon can remain stored for centuries. 

Together, these systems absorb and store more than half of human-caused CO₂ emissions each year. 

But human activity is pushing these systems beyond their limits. The mechanisms that balance the planet’s climate have been weakened by deforestation, overfishing, industrial agriculture, and fossil fuel emissions. In the worst-case scenario, if pushed past critical tipping points, these ecosystems could even flip from carbon absorbers into carbon emitters. For instance, thawing permafrost exposes long-frozen organic matter that decomposes into CO₂ and methane. Draining peatlands dry out and release centuries of accumulated carbon. Dying tropical forests devolve from sinks into sources of emissions. Together, these shifts could unleash hundreds of gigatons of stored carbon.

For millennia, nature has protected humanity from climate catastrophe. Now humanity needs to return the favor.

Innovation is urgently needed to restore and safeguard nature’s role as a climate stabilizer, a vital public good. The imperatives below focus on technologies that can help public stewards monitor ecosystems in near-real time, prevent warming-driven emissions from natural systems, and accelerate restoration at a scale that meets the climate challenge.