By Conservation International Staff
May 1, 2025
Heal our planet: Protecting nature for climate
4 min
Editor’s note: “Heal our planet, protect our future”: six words driving a global movement to protect nature. Conservation International and our supporters are meeting the moment in an ambitious new campaign. In recognition of this campaign, Conservation News is spotlighting some of our stories and successes from around the world. Click here to make a gift and support this critical work.
For years, Conservation International has sounded an urgent call to humanity: We can’t prevent the worst impacts of climate change if we don’t protect nature. With climate tipping points closer than ever before, we must work swiftly to secure a sustainable future for us all.
To that end, Conservation International is moving faster than ever before, partnering with countries, companies and communities to expand natural climate solutions at a larger scale. In the past year, we’ve made remarkable progress. Here are some highlights.
Planting crops and grazing livestock often means cutting down trees. But are forests and farms really at odds? A groundbreaking study published last year by Conservation International says no. In fact, researchers found, farmland worldwide could stash away as much planet-warming carbon as the global emissions of all cars combined — just by adding some trees.
A farm using agroforestry practices in Indonesia.
Last year, in the remote lowland forests of northwestern Bolivia, a small town took a big step to protect one of the Amazon’s most biodiverse regions. With support from Conservation International, the municipality of Sena has legally protected 450,000 hectares (1.1 million acres) of Amazon rainforest — the most recent piece in a massive, interconnected “conservation mosaic” created largely by local municipalities and Indigenous communities that are taking forest protection into their own hands. In the past 25 years, Bolivian towns have protected 10 million contiguous hectares (25 million acres) of the Amazon — an area nearly the size of Iceland.
"Piece by piece, we are knitting together the fabric of conservation in the Amazon,” said Conservation International-Bolivia Vice President Eduardo Forno.
Mist shrouds the mountains of West Bengal, India.
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