Climate Change

Climate change and biodiversity are the global issues of our time. Our climate change research spans a breadth of issues including its effects on, adaptations of and mitigations by plants and the people who manage and depend upon them. We inform and collaborate with the scientific community, the public, conservationists, sustainable development workers and policy makers. We address climate change around the world: in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, in Oceania and in the United States including our home state of Missouri. We will not address the fundamental evidence for climate change well documented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Plants are affected by climate change in many ways, and many of the solutions depend on plants. Most basically, the climate change research of the Missouri Botanical Garden monitors the effects of and details solutions for climate change.

These are the various research efforts by topic and link to projects within the Missouri Botanical Garden and amongst our collaborators:

Policy

The Missouri Botanical Garden provides leadership (Raven, Wyse-Jackson) nationally and internationally for environmental policy development, providing scientific advice to inter-governmental organizations, governments and non-governmental organization on climate change. For example, the Copenhagen Accord recognizes “the crucial role of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals of greenhouse gas emission by forests.” 

The Missouri Botanical Garden is a leader not only in forming policy to prevent tropical deforestation but also in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD, Himalayas). With our expertise in plant research and conservation, the Missouri Botanical Garden boasts highly qualified and experienced scientists and unique resources with which to develop science based policy on climate change.
Additional Climate Change Links