CPAWS' position on climate change
- Climate change is real, accelerating and poses a significant threat to the wild ecosystems CPAWS works to protect.
- Protecting terrestrial and marine ecosystems can decrease stresses on natural ecosystems and increase ecological resilience. CPAWS promotes the protection of wild ecosystems as a strategy for supporting the ability of biodiversity to respond and survive in the face of climate change.
- CPAWS supports a massive global scaling up of efforts to deeply cut greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophic impacts of climate change.
- CPAWS promotes the protection of wild ecosystems as a climate change mitigation strategy complementary to deep reductions in fossil fuel emissions.
- CPAWS continues to promote the protection of wild ecosystems for the primary purpose of protecting biodiversity.
- CPAWS believes that considerations of ecosystem resilience and the susceptibility of areas to emit carbon in response to development can usefully be incorporated into land-use/marine-use and conservation planning.
- CPAWS supports the inclusion of land use, land use change and forestry within an international climate change framework provided that the framework is rigorous, supportive of wilderness conservation and complementary to the need for deep cuts in direct fossil fuel emissions.
- CPAWS supports the development of strong carbon trading frameworks at the domestic and international level. CPAWS supports the inclusion of land use, land use change and forestry within carbon markets where it is rigorous, supportive of wilderness conservation and complementary to the need for deep cuts in direct fossil fuel emissions.
- CPAWS supports the use of forest offsets within carbon frameworks only where it is demonstrated that it is rigorous, supportive of wilderness conservation and does not undermine required reductions in overall emissions.