This session features climate solutions expert Dr. Jonathan Foley, Executive Director, Project Drawdown. Jon will present the Drawdown Roadmap — a science-based strategy for accelerating climate solutions. The roadmap points to which climate actions governments, businesses, investors, philanthropists, community leaders, and others should prioritize to make the most of our efforts to stop climate change. By showing how to strategically mobilize solutions across sectors, time, and geography; engage the power of co-benefits; and recognize and remove obstacles; the Drawdown Roadmap charts a path to accelerate climate solutions before it’s too late.
Jon will share a framework for prioritizing climate solutions across the following five dimensions:
Across Sectors: The contribution of greenhouse gases and the potential for reduction varies tremendously across sectors. To put the brakes on climate change, we need to reallocate our investments of time, energy, and money so they align correspondingly.
Across Time: You’ve heard of the time value of money: It’s why we start to save for retirement in our 20s rather than our 60s. It’s the same with greenhouse gases – even a tiny reduction now compounds over time to make a massive difference down the road. Where we apply climate solutions is as important as when.
Across Geographies: Whether halting deforestation, reducing methane emissions, upgrading agricultural practices, or something else, every climate solution has hot spots, and we need to focus there first.
To Maximize Co-Benefits: Climate change is a huge problem, but it’s not the only one. Preferentially deploying solutions that also reduce poverty, conserve biodiversity, cleanse water and air, and advance justice can increase the appeal of, and resources allocated to, solving climate change.
To Eliminate Barriers: Policies, habits, worldviews, misperceptions, and more hamper the application of climate solutions. Identifying and eliminating such barriers will grease the skids and enable rapid movement toward a stable climate.
If accepted, Jon Foley will elaborate on “Emergency Brake” Climate Solutions, a component of the Drawdown Roadmap, in an additional SOCAP panel presentation featuring leaders across several of these emergency brake climate solutions. This additional proposed panel will include Lindsey Allen, Executive Director of the Climate & Land Use Alliance, which is focused on deforestation, Dana Gunders, Executive Director of ReFED, which is working on food waste reduction, and Stephan Nicoleau, Managing Director at Full Cycle, where he is focused on methane.
