We know that land trusts make a significant contribution to climate resilience, but this contribution can be hard to quantify. A recent study by members of OLTA’s Climate Action Working Group seeks to address this problem, and offers recommendations for how land trusts can increase our impact.
Helping land trusts prepare for a new climate: experiences of challenges and faciliators for translating knowledge about climate change adaptation in Ontario, Canada by Dr. Michael Drescher of the University of Waterloo, Daria Koscinski (TTLT), Jenna Quinn (Ontario Nature) and Morgan Roblin (OLTA) was published this spring in the Facets Journal.
The land trust Climate Action Working Group was established in 2019 to support land trusts in their climate action goals. A key piece of the work was to collaborate with Dr. Michael Drescher of the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo to develop a framework to monitor how land trust properties are contributing to climate resilience – through mitigating the effects of extreme weather, providing natural carbon storage, and protecting biodiversity. The working group identified many of the factors that influence how land trusts engage on climate change. The article reflects this project, and offers pathways for continuing our climate resilience work, as individual land trusts and as a community.
The research project included the opportunity to create a series of videos to reflect the climate impact of land trusts. This is one of those videos.
Recommendations:
1. More regular communication and collaboration amongst land trusts to help land trusts take advantage of existing resources, reduce costs and time, increase resource use efficiency, and coordinate regional scale responses to climate change adaptation needs.
2. Make modest modifications to existing land trust work to make it more climate change adaptive.
3. Given the projected changes in biophysical conditions and the introduction of invasive species, consider a shift from more passive to more active management styles.
4. Consider management objectives that are less readily affected by climate change — such as high levels of species richness or ecosystem functioning.
Read it here or in our Resource Centre!
