来源：《新科学家》
原文刊登日期：2021年10月27日
Humanity’s connections to grasslands run deep. Our ideas of the perfect habitat lean heavily on the meadow, brimming with bumblebees and butterflies flitting between wild flowers. As the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi wrote: “When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”
人类与草原的联系是很深的。我们对于完美栖息地的想法很大程度上依赖于草地，那里到处都是大黄蜂和蝴蝶在野花间飞舞。正如13世纪波斯诗人鲁米(Rumi)所写的那样：“当灵魂躺在那片草地上时，这个世界太过充实，难以名状。”
Permanent grasslands hold about a third of Earth’s land carbon, meaning they can’t be overlooked when we talk about slowing climate change. More grasslands, and especially more biodiverse ones, means more natural carbon storage. Yet instead of expanding these habitats, we risk losing them entirely.
永久性草原储存了地球陆地碳的三分之一，这意味着当我们谈论减缓气候变化时，它们不能被忽视。更多的草原，特别是更多生物多样性的草原，意味着更多的自然碳储量。然而，我们非但没有扩大这些栖息地，反而冒着完全失去它们的风险。
The past 100 years has seen this terrain destroyed on a terrifying scale. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the UK alone has lost at least 97 per cent of its meadows. Tall grass prairie in the US once covered 170 million acres, less than 4 per cent of which survives. Pollinators, such as butterflies and bumblebees, that create and depend on these biodiverse environments are also at risk.
在过去的一百年里，草地遭到了巨大的破坏。自20世纪初以来，仅英国就失去了至少97%的草地。美国的大草原曾经覆盖了1.7亿英亩，现存不到4%。蝴蝶和大黄蜂等创造并依赖于这些生物多样性环境的传粉昆虫也面临种群消失的风险。
Often, grasslands are seen as empty spaces. They are there to be ploughed and sown and built on. Their destruction isn’t met with the same anxiety as deforestation by the public or politicians. While one of the goals of the COP26 climate conference is the halting of deforestation, there is no such stated aim to protect meadows.
通常，草原被视为空旷的空间。它们是用来耕田、播种和建造的。它们的破坏没有像砍伐森林那样被公众或政客担忧。尽管COP26气候大会的目标之一是阻止森林砍伐，但并没有明确表示要保护草原。
While we are all familiar with the idea of forests as Earth’s “lungs”, reforestation isn’t the sole or simple solution to the problems we face. Mass planting of trees isn’t feasible in many human-inhabited areas of the world, and a lot of land that may have had potential for forestry is ultimately lost to grazing and cultivation. On the other hand, even small grazed meadows contain a greater biodiversity than equivalent areas of forest.
虽然我们都知道森林是地球的“肺”，但植树造林并不是解决我们所面临问题的唯一或简单的办法。在世界上许多人类居住的地区，大规模植树是不可行的，许多原本有潜力发展林业的土地最终被放牧和耕种所取代。另一方面，即使是小的草地也比同等面积的森林拥有更大的生物多样性。
One recent study suggests that the cultivation of species-rich grasslands on degraded and deserted farmland, of which there are 430 million hectares globally, could “greatly increase carbon capture and storage rates on degraded and abandoned agricultural land”.
最近的一项研究表明，在退化和废弃的农田(全球有4.3亿公顷)上种植能承载丰富物种的草地，可以“大大提高退化和废弃农田的碳捕获和储存速率”。
It is vital that world leaders at the COP26 summit put international protections for grassland on the agenda, to mitigate the effects of climate change, increase biodiversity and ensure that these areas of natural beauty are preserved for future generations to enjoy.
在COP26峰会上，世界各国领导人把国际草原保护列入议程至关重要，以减轻气候变化的影响，增加生物多样性，并确保草原的自然美景被保护起来，供子孙后代享用。
It would be tragic if, in the rush for big solutions to our big problems, the power of the modest wild grasses and flowers, with their bumblebees and butterflies, was overlooked.
如果在急于解决重大问题的大方案时，忽视了不起眼的野草和野花及其大黄蜂和蝴蝶的力量，那将是一场悲剧。