NCS World Atlas
Welcome to the Natural Climate Solutions World Atlas
Welcome! Meet our NCS World Atlas. This online tool developed by Nature4Climate with support from The Nature Conservancy demonstrates opportunities for countries around the world to view how natural climate solutions (NCS) alongside emission reduction strategies, can help them reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions. NCS are effectively a subset of nature-based solutions geared toward climate change mitigation.
The Atlas is designed to help us understand nature’s role in mitigating climate change through 16 “pathways,” activities that enhance the protection, restoration, and management of natural and working lands. In addition, the Atlas displays the maximum mitigation potential for each pathway as well as the cost-effective potential (at $100 USD/ton CO2e) which aligns with the UN Paris Climate Agreement goal of limiting warming below 2°C (more information).
How does it work? Toggle between ‘protect, manage, and restore’ categories to see the combined power of pathway groupings, or select individual areas of specific interest. The emissions reduction potential of aggregated selected pathways is displayed as a global total on the upper left. Selecting a country from the dropdown list, or on the map will show the total for that country in the map window. After selecting a country, you can also download a summary report that shows how this all adds up as part of the Paris Agreement commitments and targets.
To highlight high-potential NBS areas, you can see how these add up based on 11 global indicators. For example, select all of the countries that include nature in their Nationally Determined Contributions to see how significant nature is part of the overall picture. Filter by ecological or socioeconomic indicators to see opportunities for finance and investment, or what it would mean to implement natural climate solutions based on different priorities. The NCS framework was crafted to encompass most of the world’s terrestrial systems and avoid double-counting among pathways.