Circular Economy

Report:
Existing Climate Solutions Sufficient to Reach ‘Drawdown’ by Mid-2040s

‘The Drawdown Review’ provides the most in-depth assessment to date of climate solutions and their potential to reduce greenhouse gases and build a climate-safe future.

Published 5 years ago | About a 2 minute read

Image: Girls and boys bike to school in Laos | travelphotographer/Pixabay

A new report from Project Drawdown, the world’s leading resource on climate solutions, demonstrates that ‘Drawdown’ — the point at which greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere peak and begin declining, stopping climate change — is achievable with existing, established technologies and practices.

The Drawdown Review builds on the organization’s inaugural analysis, published in the 2017 New York Times bestseller Drawdown, and takes into account the rapidly evolving landscape of climate solutions available today.

The analysis finds that, along with quickly reducing GHG emissions, a critical component of reaching Drawdown involves supporting nature’s carbon sinks to help sequester the GHGs that have already been emitted — through, for example, regenerative agriculture. Another area of focus is more fundamental societal solutions — such as improved access to education and healthcare for all, but especially for women and girls in developing nations; Project Drawdown’s Katharine Wilkinson discusses the importance of this for building a climate-safe future in a TED Talk in 2018.

In addition to the need for a global shift away from fossil fuels, the report unsurprisingly highlights the need for similar systemic shifts that eliminate food waste, lean heavily on plant-based diets, restore forests and biodiversity, improve containment and disposal of chemical refrigerants, and dramatically improve the energy performance of buildings and cities — through renewable energy sources, of course.

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"What these results show is the utmost importance of all solutions implemented in parallel. The impacts of these technologies and practices occur only as part of an interconnected, integrated system. It is the implementation of this system of solutions that is the real solution to climate change." — Chad Frischmann, VP & Research Director at Project Drawdown

The Drawdown Review shows that meeting the goals outlined in the Paris Agreement is technologically and economically feasible — but will require much more aggressive and immediate action worldwide.

Download The Drawdown Review here.