A functional habitat meets all the environmental conditions an organism needs to survive and is a key consideration in Earth Active’s work in designing and creating biodiversity mitigation and offsets with its clients. However, EA also recognises that as well as providing habitat for fauna and flora, managing our natural landscapes is critical for sequestering carbon. A recent study by Natural England has demonstrated that a hectare of English woodland can store the equivalent amount of CO2 released from 13 flights between London and Rome but habitat that is functional can store even more.
In the Central African rain forests, 95% of trees rely on animals for the dispersal and germination of their seeds. The over-hunting of charismatic species crucial to these processes – often termed the bushmeat trade – is resulting in changes to the structure, composition and diversity of these especially biodiverse forests.
In addition, large herbivores, specifically Forest Elephants have an important effect on the forest ecosystem, with carbon stocks enhanced by elephant disturbance. Trampling by forest elephants favours the emergence of fewer, larger trees that store more carbon. Compared to the Amazon in South America, which lost its megafauna about 10,000 years ago, the African rain forests are unique in terms of their carbon storage capacity.
Forest elephants have declined dramatically throughout their range in Central and West Africa, for example, falling by over 60% within a 10-year period between 2002 and 2011. Protecting this species is crucial to safeguarding a global natural asset. illustrating the need to understand the ecological roles that key species play, as well as demonstrating the close relationship between climate change and biodiversity loss. The existential threat that these two human-induced processes represent is why the Earth Active team strives for development projects to be sustainable. And why the Earth Active team supports clients by understanding their impact on these two inextricably linked issues.
The EA team does this through various ESG services such as:
· ESDD (Environmental and Social Due Diligence)
· Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA)
· Environmental and Social Action Plan (ESAP)
· Critical Habitat Assessments (CHA)
· Biodiversity Action Plans (BAP)
· RIAs, OFS (Offset Feasibility Study)
· ESMS (Environmental & Social Management System).
Currently, EA is working on a very exciting project in the lowland tropical rainforests in south-east Asia, carrying out a Critical Habitat Assessment (CHA), a Residual Impact Assessment (RIA) and an Offset Feasibility Study (OFS) to maintain and enhance biodiversity, and achieve site level objectives of no net loss and net gain.
