This summer's news has been anything but encouraging for the environment. Forest fires. Heat waves on several continents, including 100-degree ocean temperature in Florida. Catastrophic flooding. Reports of polar ice sheets melting faster than expected.
But never has public funding, at least in the US, been greater for land and resource conservation, including programs aimed at countering climate change. Thanks to the reauthorization of the federal Land and Water Act and passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, record sums are being allocated for programs that protect land, ensure clean water, increase access to the outdoors and target resources to underresourced communities and populations.
And among federal agencies, the Department of Defense, the nation’s fifth largest landowner that owns or leases almost 9 million acres of land, has been a leader in responding to the climate crisis. Some 800 DOD employees and partners, including the Conservation Finance Network (CFN), gathered in St. Louis earlier this month to take stock of promising strategies to adapt and mitigate threats of climate change. The session highlighted the significant role that nature-based solutions to wildfire and flooding, among other threats, are playing in facilitating military readiness.
But public funding, however plentiful and enlightened, cannot do the job alone. CFN was also present at a major conference in Denver to explore the state and potential of environmental markets to ensure clean water, a decarbonized economy and protection of biodiversity (photo of panel I moderated on private finance and environmental markets). Not always easy to navigate and in different stages of development, such markets complement public funding and could leverage significant new sources of finance for nature.
Enjoy the rest of the summer.
Peter Howell
Interim Executive Director
The Conservation Finance Network
