Everything we buy comes at a carbon cost – from extracting raw materials and manufacturing goods, through shipping them worldwide. You can reduce your impact by purchasing less, shopping second-hand and fixing what is broken.

Take action by avoiding products from major polluters, voting for climate-friendly leaders and institutions, and supporting community initiatives that restore forests that store vast quantities of planet-warming carbon or create climate resilient infrastructure.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions

Climate change mitigation begins by decreasing emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, such as through switching from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources and improving carbon sinks that remove gases from the air.

These efforts are also producing numerous indirect benefits, including improved public health, lower fuel costs for drivers who opt for electric vehicles, or healthier trees that contribute to water management and increase land productivity.

Actions to reduce short-lived climate pollutants — black carbon, methane, hydrofluorocarbons and tropospheric ozone — can be swift and cost-effective ways of slowing global warming, protecting air quality and food security by averting millions of premature deaths each year and helping avoid irreversible climate tipping points and feedback loops.

CGS modeling illustrates that through comprehensive actions at all levels of government and society – including federal policies like expanding the Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and recent EPA regulations; as well as non-federal ones like 100% clean power generation, lowering methane intensity reduction measures and halving landfill methane emission levels — comprehensive efforts could put America on a course to reduce emissions by 65-75% by 2035.

Adapting to the changing climate

At the same time as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, adapting to climate change requires adapting accordingly. This includes creating flood defenses or insurance schemes against its effects; switching crops over to drought-tolerant varieties; redesigning communication systems, business operations and government policies accordingly.

National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) are country-led strategies designed to prioritize adaptation needs and plan for the future in light of interlinked impacts from climate change across sectors. NAPs can also serve as an effective mechanism for mobilizing and allocating financing.

Everyone can play their part to reduce climate change’s effects. Home insulation upgrades and switching to renewable energy sources are great ways to lower carbon footprints; selecting plant-based foods over animal-based ones also help save on greenhouse gases. Furthermore, nature-based solutions – an umbrella term which encompasses ecosystem adaptation as well – offer one of the fastest solutions against climate change; from protecting mangroves and reforestation to building seawalls and flood defences, nature-based solutions can provide solutions quickly enough for many to implement and take effect quickly enough for climate change mitigation efforts to combat it quickly enough.

Restoring ecosystems

Ecosystems of all kinds – forests, freshwater wetlands, coral reefs, seagrass meadows and mangrove forests among them – play an invaluable role in keeping our water and air clean, storing carbon for future use, supporting biodiversity and helping us adapt to climate change. However, their existence is threatened by overexploitation, pollution and habitat loss; hence restoration forms part of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration initiative.

Restoring ecosystems takes many forms. For instance, decreasing pressure on forest ecosystems by shifting our eating patterns and cutting back on hunting or logging activities can help them recover, while stopping people from extracting peat from wetland ecosystems for fuel can enable these habitats to regenerate themselves.

Restoring ecosystems provides scientific, environmental and economic advantages – from job growth in forestry, wetland conservation and ecotourism to mitigating climate change by decreasing greenhouse gas emissions – that make this one of the key tenets of The Bonn Challenge. Restoring ecosystems therefore lies at the center of our efforts towards its achievement.

Building resilience

Resilience refers to a community’s ability to anticipate, adapt and recover from climate hazards. Resilience approaches emphasize anticipatory planning that enhances social, human, natural and financial capacities for resilience.

Mitigation efforts include transitioning to renewable energy sources, cutting energy waste and adopting regenerative agricultural practices – measures which not only lower greenhouse gas emissions but also offer additional benefits like biodiversity conservation and better water management.

Reducing greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuels is an essential element of mitigation, with global emissions needing to decrease by at least 45 percent from peak levels by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 in order to limit global warming to 1.5degC and reduce extreme weather events, sea level rise, biodiversity loss, food and water supply stresses as well as improve people’s health and quality of life. Achieve this requires international cooperation among countries, cities, states, stakeholders and businesses alike.