Washington :Intact nature offers the best defense against the climate change, according to a recent study.
The study conducted by CSIRO, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the University of Queensland found that worldwide responses to climate change could leave people worse off in the future.
The paper discusses how certain adaptation strategies may have a negative impact on nature which in turn will impact people in the long-term.
In response to climate change, many local communities around the world are rapidly adjusting their livelihood practices to cope with climate change, sometimes with catastrophic implications for nature, according to principal researcher Dr. Tara Martin.
The authors say that in Australia and Canada, conservation reserves are being used as drought relief to feed livestock, while forests in the Congo Basin in Africa are being cleared for agriculture in response to drought, and coral reefs are being destroyed to build sea walls from the low-lying islands in Melanesia.
The paper states that intact native forests have been shown to reduce the frequency and severity of floods, while coral reefs can reduce wave energy by an average of 97 per cent, providing a more cost-effective defense from storm surges than engineered structures.
Likewise, coastal ecosystems such as mangroves and tidal marshes are proving to be a more cost-effective and ecologically sound alternative to buffering storms than conventional coastal engineering solutions.
The study is published in Nature Climate Change. (ANI)