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Overlook Screenshot

Climate Change Adaptation—Designing for Change

In case you missed it...something unexpected.

Harvard’s Design Program talks about adapting to climate change and design thinking…

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Brooklyn Bridge Covid Times
VICTOR J. BLUE/GETTY IMAGES

After the Coronavirus, two sharply divergent paths on climate

Some policy experts are optimistic that victory over the Coronavirus will instill greater appreciation for what government, science, and business can do to tackle climate change. But others believe the economic damage caused by the virus will set back climate efforts for years to come.

A year from now, how will the battle to slow global warming look in a post-Coronavirus world? That’s a question being asked a lot these days by policy experts and activists, and it’s one with huge implications.

Some hope it will bring out the best in us and our leaders, and that the resurgence of government action during the pandemic offers a way forward for fighting climate change. Others fear the worst, that the rush to resuscitate a badly battered global economy will push climate back down the international agenda…

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Pollinator Friendly Solar
RTPeat / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A Practitioner’s Guide to Pollinator-Friendly Solar Development

With Natural Climate Solutions estimated to be 21% in this country, we need renewables—and fast—to save the places we love. Yale's Center for Business in the Environment is working to add clarity to both solar developers and community members by sharing the financial realities as well as ecological opportunities. For example, early and ongoing research suggests that planting deep-rooted vegetation beneath solar panels creates cooler microclimates that help improve efficiency and energy output.

This toolkit provides background on pollinator-friendly solar and its advantages, and tips, resources, and important considerations to kick-start the integration of pollinator habitat into a solar development portfolio.

In addition to the diverse environmental benefits that pollinator-friendly solar projects can produce, there are an array of private benefits for solar developers to reap from planting perennial vegetation under their solar panels.

The guide offers a set of best practices for understanding local context, building support for a project, designing a site, financing, and development…

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Earth Day Challenge Screenshot

You and your land trust can be part of a new initiative for Citizen Science

This might be something to promote throughout the year—not just this month—as a way to help get people involved.

Fifty years ago, Earth Day became the largest people’s protest in the history of the world.

And we changed the world for the better, by creating clean air and clean water laws—with the help of scientists, policy leaders, and a movement that couldn’t be stopped.

Today’s environmental threats of extreme climate change, pollution to our air and water can feel overwhelming…but together, with people like you and the land trust community, we can provide change and hope.

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Irish Herder

The spellbinding Swedish song that calls cows home

This is not what we did growing up in Vermont. I did whistle to call my horses in...until the catbird learned the call and totally confused them.
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Beescape
Beescape

Get a bee’s eye view of your landscape

Managed honey bees and wild bees travel long distances from their nests to find food and water.  What are your bees experiencing during their journey? This tool will help you understand how the landscape surrounding your apiary, garden, or farm stacks up in terms of floral resources bees can find, the insecticides they encounter, and for wild bees, the nesting sites that are available.

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Bee On Yellow Flower
Pixabay

Introducing Beescape: A new online tool and community to support bees

I wonder if your land trust, or those in your community, would be interested in this...

A new online tool and community, called Beescape, enables beekeepers, or anyone interested in bees, to understand the specific stressors to which the bees in their managed hives, home gardens, or farms are exposed, according to researchers at Penn State…

“With data provided by beekeepers from agricultural, rural, and urban landscapes across multiple states, we will be able to develop high-quality predictive models that will be included in the website in the future,” said Melanie Kammerer Allen, graduate student in ecology at Penn State, who is involved in the project.

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Smoke Stacks Video Screenshot

Your land trust has a chance to be strategic and proactive

This video from Yale Climate Connections may be helpful to your board and/or those involved in financial decisions. No longer is divestment just a moral decision. Increasingly, it's a strategic financial decision—and many donors are looking for land trusts to walk the walk.

Calls for decarbonization are now coming from the boardrooms and executive suites of the world’s largest corporations and investment funds, in a fast-moving change that could reshape the global energy system and economy. Listen to why investment firms and companies are divesting.

I’ll be posting more about alternatives, but in the meantime, check out PIMCO’s climate investment funds.

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Farmers And Pups
Judy Anderson

Effective Communications: The power of reframing

Reframing, as Steve explains it, hinges on “deeper listening, connecting on values, and finding a better frame for productive collaboration.” At its core, there are four main steps to the reframing process when we are in dialogue with someone who may oppose our ideas.

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Clouds Breaking
Bridget Besaw

Nature’s sleeping giant

Climate change is a global problem, and it requires solutions on a global scale. One of those is hiding in plain sight. Our lands provide an untapped opportunity – proven ways of both storing carbon and reducing carbon emissions in the world’s forests, grasslands and wetlands: natural climate solutions.

Natural climate solutions can help address climate change in three ways:

  • Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), related to land use and changes in land use
  • Capturing and storing additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
  • Improving resilience of ecosystems, thereby helping communities adapt to the increase in flooding and dry spells associated with climate change…
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