Transparency is what the global environment movement needs

Scaling up by standardising

Did you know that since 1990, Costa Rica has doubled the size of its forest? Costa Rica is the first tropical country to reverse deforestation, going from 34% forest cover in 1977 to 52% today.?

It’s been a rollercoaster year. Our lab has spent time working in an intact old growth tropical forest in Costa Rica, we were present in the chaos of COP26, and we launched a startup NGO - Restor - which was recognized by HRH Prince William as an Earthshot Finalist. Through all the chaos, I’m full of hope and optimism that we can change the way the world engages with nature, and respond to the growing threat of climate change.?

And I am more convinced than ever about the need for ecosystem science. We need to work with local communities to find the solutions that make nature the economically sustainable option. We need to protect and restore nature for the local biodiversity and the people who depend on it.

For that reason, I’m beyond excited that Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich is partnering with the government of Costa Rica and Restor to develop and implement scientific tools and methods to enhance transparency around ecosystem management.

This collaboration has the potential to change the way we think about the quality of climate and biodiversity data. This is data that we desperately need to support data-driven climate change. This is data that will enable us to make better decisions about land use and restoration and will put environmental integrity at the heart of nature-based solutions to address climate change.?

It’s inspiring to see a country commit so much to environment transparency. Costa Rica is an example of what the environmental movement needs. Through Costa Rica’s commitment to standardising the way that we collect, measure and monitor data, we’re going to be able to learn more quickly about what’s not working – and what is working. This is going to speed up our response to climate change and help us focus on solutions that will benefit the environment, local communities and local biodiversity.

That’s why right now, our team is supporting the development of standardised biodiversity monitoring. We’re also supporting the development of a toolkit that will help the Costa Rican government monitor biodiversity. We have an end goal in mind: we’re putting all our knowledge and expertise together to develop tools that can be useful for integrating national and international monitoring datasets.?

We’re also studying the impact of different land use strategies on natural resources in different regions across the country. The analysis of national forest cover, carbon storage and water sequestration will offer a tool for aligning national and international deforestation monitoring efforts – developing an approach that can be used by others for globally standardised forest monitoring.?

But we are not only measuring water and carbon. We will also be exploring the tangible changes in biodiversity, through bioacoustics monitoring of sounds, and the use of environmental DNA. The government of Costa Rica will promote the tools and methods that result from the collaboration with other countries and interested stakeholders.?

Working in partnership with Restor we are now working to gather thousands of Costa Rican nature-based projects into the single open-access platform. This will facilitate transparency and project-to-project connections. This can be the basis for collective learning that is needed to improve the success of nature-based solutions across the region that is so important to the world.

In this world of global change, there are so few examples of large-scale restoration successes. And even fewer opportunities study changes in the ‘beauty’ of biodiversity and nature. We are so excited to get the opportunity to take learnings from this incredible national program, and to see how it might be scaled to other countries to protect and restore the magic of nature for all of us.

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Are you interested in learning more??

Visit www.restor.eco or reach out to the Restor team at [email protected] to onboard your restoration or conservation project!

Visit www.crowtherlab.com for more information

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