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  • Perspective
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Towards more effective nature-based climate solutions in global forests

Nature volume 643, pages 1214–1222 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Terrestrial ecosystems could contribute to climate mitigation through nature-based climate solutions (NbCS), which aim to reduce ecosystem greenhouse gas emissions and/or increase ecosystem carbon storage. Forests have the largest potential for NbCS, aligned with broader sustainability benefits, but—unfortunately—a broad body of literature has revealed widespread problems in forest NbCS projects and protocols that undermine the climate mitigation of forest carbon credits and hamper efforts to reach global net zero. Therefore, there is a need to bring better science and policy to improve NbCS climate mitigation outcomes going forward. Here we synthesize challenges to crediting forest NbCS and offer guidance and key next steps to make improvements in the implementation of these strategies immediately and in the near-term. We structure our Perspective around four key components of rigorous forest NbCS, illuminating key science and policy considerations and providing solutions to improve rigour. Finally, we outline a ‘contribution approach’ to support rigorous forest NbCS that is an alternative funding mechanism that disallows compensation or offsetting claims.

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Fig. 1: Key criteria for effective climate mitigation in forests.
Fig. 2: Key fluxes that mediate climate benefits of forests.

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Acknowledgements

This article is the product of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy at the University of Utah’s Working Group on Rigorous Nature-based Climate Solutions in Forests. We thank S. Cook-Patton, who was a co-author on the initial manuscript and contributed to idea generation, writing and revisions, but is not listed in the final draft owing to differences in opinions about final recommendations. We thank K. Riley and P. Ellis for providing feedback on this work. W.R.L.A. acknowledges support from US National Science Foundation grants 2003017, 2044937 and 2330582 and Alan T. Waterman Award IOS-2325700.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    William R. L. Anderegg, Libby Blanchard, Meng Liu & Linqing Yang

  2. School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    William R. L. Anderegg, Libby Blanchard, Meng Liu, Jonathan A. Wang & Linqing Yang

  3. World Wildlife Fund, Washington, DC, USA

    Christa Anderson

  4. CarbonPlan, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Grayson Badgley

  5. Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Danny Cullenward

  6. Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, USA

    Peng Gao

  7. Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Michael L. Goulden & James Randerson

  8. Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Barbara Haya

  9. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Jennifer A. Holm

  10. Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Matthew D. Hurteau

  11. Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Marysa Lague

  12. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Kimberly A. Novick

  13. Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Anna T. Trugman

  14. Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA

    Christopher A. Williams

  15. Department of Earth System Science, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Institute for Global Change Studies, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Chao Wu

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  1. William R. L. Anderegg
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Contributions

W.R.L.A. and L.B. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. W.R.L.A., L.B., C.A., G.B., D.C., P.G., M.L.G., B.H., J.A.H., M.D.H., M. Lague, M. Liu, K.A.N., J.R., A.T.T., J.A.W., C.A.W., C.W. and L.Y. contributed to idea generation, literature synthesis, writing of several drafts and revisions.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to William R. L. Anderegg.

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Competing interests

D.C. previously consulted for Isometric and is a member of the Milkywire Climate Transformation Fund Advisory Board, the UNFCCC Article 6.4 Mechanism Methodological Expert Panel and California’s Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature thanks Jiehong Lou and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Anderegg, W.R.L., Blanchard, L., Anderson, C. et al. Towards more effective nature-based climate solutions in global forests. Nature 643, 1214–1222 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09116-6

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