Climate-relevant achievements in 2022: renaturation
Nature finds ways to adapt to climate change - as can be beautifully observed in the tropical coral reefs of Hawaii.
In March 2022, researchers discovered that two common coral species here are able to survive even when the water temperature rises.
We think this is a glimmer of hope for the world's reefs, large parts of which have been dying off due to recent heatwaves.
Renaturation (rewilding) projects
These projects support nature in its efforts to return the lost animal and plant species to their original habitat.
Scotland has set out to become the world's first rewilding nation and has started to reforest forests that disappeared centuries ago.
In the US states of California and Louisiana, there are projects that give nature back the space it needs to follow its natural course:
Following approval by the energy authorities, four dams are to be demolished near the mouth of the Klamath River in order to create important habitats for salmon.
On Louisiana's Gulf Coast, there are plans to reclaim the course of the Mississippi River so that river sediment can run off to the estuary - a last-ditch attempt to preserve the state's heavily eroded coastline.
There are renaturation projects of this kind all over the world; their aim is to give nature back its right to "run wild" by creating space.
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