Ever-rising CO₂ emissions and declining biodiversity are among the harbingers of today's climate change, raising concerns about whether a healthy environment can be preserved for future generations. Although governments in many parts of the world have already adopted both regulations and directives to mitigate these effects, these can sometimes be ineffective and require public involvement and changes in habits. But there is another solution that is gradually gaining recognition and driving innovation in this field – environmental technologies.

Data on humanity's impact on the environment shows that over the past 50 years we have lost 69% of wildlife populations, and since 2010 an average of 4.7 million hectares of forest have also disappeared each year. At the same time, however, the number of entrepreneurs and scientists in the field seeking new solutions to both current and future challenges is growing. One of these solutions is environmental technologies, which help to protect and restore the natural environment by combining knowledge and tools from biology, programming, botany, genomics, forestry and data science. Although these fields differ from one another, bringing them together fosters significant innovation in environmental protection and restoration – from reducing the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) released by agriculture to increasing carbon stocks in the oceans.

Satellite technology monitoring and the use of drones for afforestation are just a few of the better-known examples of environmental technologies. Open-source software is also being developed to improve accuracy and reduce system development costs for measuring emissions generated by various types of land use, while the advantages offered by machine learning are being harnessed to restore forests and connect them with carbon markets.

Naturally, there are obstacles too – while in the world of data, problems based on bits and bytes can often be solved with the help of logic, the natural world is subject to the complex interaction of living creatures. The more we learn about nature, the clearer one thing becomes: we actually know very little about it. Today, for example, sensors and satellite images make it possible to observe from a distance how a seedling in a forest grows into a young tree. That data can then be used to model the effect of this tree on the trees around it and the resulting forest type. Yet it is still not possible to measure or determine precisely how trees communicate with one another, or how they can use their symbiotic relationships to influence climatic conditions.

It should be noted that forests have a special role to play in tackling the challenges posed by climate change. They are too often undeservedly regarded merely as a source of profit, when in fact their potential is far greater – together with the carbon found in the soil, forests form natural ecosystems that help to reduce the negative impact of fossil fuels, absorbing around 2.2 gigatonnes of CO₂ a year (global CO₂ emissions reach around 37 gigatonnes a year). As Arbonics has found from its experience to date, environmental technologies and natural ecosystems hold promising potential that has yet to be fully realised. Forecasts suggest that the ability of environmental technologies to assess and report on the processes taking place in nature will improve considerably, delivering ever greater benefits to those who protect, restore and manage natural ecosystems and landscapes.