Finding climate solutions in land
Land conservation has a key role to play in tackling the climate crisis. Countries the world over need to quickly and efficiently increase renewable energy capacity, protect disappearing biodiversity, improve carbon storage and sequestration, secure clean and plentiful air, food and water supplies, build equitable access to open space, and prevent deforestation that leads to additional greenhouse gas emissions.
Achieving each of these objectives depends on the sustainable use and management of land and water.
In response to the urgent need for trusted and experienced organizations to ramp up land-based climate solutions, land trusts and conservation organizations in the United States and abroad are implementing innovative, measurably effective and strategically significant solutions to the climate crisis grounded in land conservation.
How?
Through strategic, multi-sectoral proof-of-concept projects that serve as models for civic sector (nonprofit and non-governmental) organizations around the globe. Here in the United States, a multi-consortium partnership led by the Vermont Land Trust and its subsidiary, the Vermont Forest Carbon Company, is demonstrating the power of aggregation to enable landowners to enter voluntary carbon marks and commit to carbon stocking targets that keep vital forests intact across 8,600 acres in the Cold Hollow Mountains.
In Australia, the environmental nonprofit Greening Australia sequestered more than 66,000 tons of carbon dioxide in 2020 through forest restoration and forestation, protecting over 15,000 acres of habitat. They aim to protect an additional 150,000 acres by 2030.
And in Africa and the Middle East, Birdlife International is working with 16 countries in the Rift Valley-Red Sea Flyway that have high wind energy potential to develop guidelines for the responsible siting of solar and wind energy facilities. By advancing the use of emerging shutdown-on-demand protocols to prevent collisions and electrocution for 1.5 million migrating birds, Birdlife is addressing the interlinked climate and biodiversity crises in tandem.
These are just a few of the cases profiled in the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s report titled “From the Ground Up: How Land Trusts and Conservancies Are Providing Solutions to Climate Change.” The report, authored by James Levitt and Chandni Navalkha, features contributions from experts such as Kelly Watkinson, land and climate program manager at the Land Trust Alliance.
By sharing examples of innovative and effective initiatives, as well as lessons learned and policy recommendations, the report demonstrates that land trusts and conservancies can act quickly and flexibly at all levels, from local to global.
We hope that sharing these cases will inspire and help land conservation organizations large and small to act with speed to implement critically needed nature-based solutions.