Aftab Pureval, elected in 2021, is making history as Cincinnati’s first Asian American mayor. He was raised in Southwest Ohio, the son of first-generation Americans, and worked at a toy store when he was in middle school. After graduating from the Ohio State University and the University of Cincinnati Law School, Pureval held several positions including as counsel at Procter & Gamble before entering public service. He served as Hamilton County Clerk of Courts from 2016 to 2021, and was the first Democrat to hold that office in over 100 years. Pureval resides in the north Cincinnati neighborhood of Clifton with his wife and their two sons and, as has become evident during his time in office, is a big-time Cincinnati Bengals fan. He spoke with Senior Fellow Anthony Flint earlier this year for the Land Matters podcast

Anthony Flint: You’ve attracted a lot of attention for what some have called a “heroic undertaking” to preserve the city’s single-family housing stock and keep it out of the hands of outside investors. Briefly, walk us through what was accomplished in coordination with the Port of Cincinnati.

Aftab Pureval: Just to provide a little more context, Cincinnati is a legacy city. We have a proud, long tradition of being the final destination from the Underground Railroad. We were the doorstep to freedom for so many slaves who were escaping that horrific experience. We have a lot of historic neighborhoods, a lot of historic buildings, and we have a lot of aging infrastructure and aging single-family homes, which—paired with the fact that we are an incredibly affordable city in the national context—makes us a prime target for institutional investors.

Unfortunately, Cincinnati is on national list after national list about the rate of increase for our rents. It’s primarily being driven by these out-of-town investors—who have no interest, frankly, in the well-being of Cincinnati or their tenants—buying up cheap single-family homes, not doing anything to invest in them, but overnight doubling or tripling the rents, which is pricing out a lot of our communities, particularly our vulnerable, impoverished communities.

The City is doing a lot of things through litigation, through code enforcement. In fact, we sued two of our largest institutional investors, Vinebrook and the owners of Williamsburg, to let them know that we’re not playing around. If you’re going to exercise predatory behavior in our community, we’re not going to stand for it.

We’ve also done things on the front end to prevent this from happening by partnering with the Port . . . . When several properties went up for sale because an institutional investor put them on the selling block, the Port spent $14.5 million to buy over 190 single-family homes, outbidding 13 other institutional investors.

Over the past year, the Port has been working to bring those properties into compliance, dealing with the various code violations that the investor left behind, pairing these homes once they’re fixed up with qualified buyers, oftentimes folks who are working in poverty or lower middle-class who’ve never owned a home before.

Just this year we’re making three of those 194 available for sale. It’s a huge success across the board . . .  but it’s just one tool that the Port and the City are working on to increase affordability of housing in all of our neighborhoods.

AF: What did you learn from this that might be transferable to other cities? It takes a lot of capital to outbid an institutional investor.

AP: It does require a lot of funds. That’s why we need more flexibility from the federal government and the state government to provide municipalities with the tools to prevent this from happening in the first place. Now once an institutional investor gets their claws into a community, there’s very little that the city can do to hold them accountable.

The better strategy as we’ve seen this time is to, on the front end, buy up properties. A lot of cities have a lot of dollars from the federal government through ARP [American Recovery Plan]. We have used a lot of ARP dollars not just to get money into the hands of people who need it most, which is critically important in this time, but also to partner with other private-public partnerships or the Port to give them the resources necessary to buy up the land and hold it.

That has been part of our strategy with ARP. This is a unique time in cities where they have more flexibility [with] the resources coming from the federal government. I would encourage any mayor, any council, to really think critically about using the funds not just in the short term but also in the long term to address some of these macroeconomic forces.

AF: Cincinnati has become a more popular place to live, and the population has increased slightly after years of decline. Do you consider Cincinnati a pandemic or climate haven? What are the implications of that growth?

AP: What I love about my job as mayor is my focus isn’t necessarily on the next two or four years, but the next 100 years. Right now, we are living through a paradigm shift because of the pandemic. The way we live, work, and play is just completely changing. Remote work is completely altering our economic lifestyle throughout the entire country, but particularly here in the Midwest.

What I am convinced of is because of climate change, because of the rising cost of living on the coast, there will be an inward migration. I don’t know if it’s in the next 50 or 75 years, but it will happen. We’re already seeing large businesses making decisions based on climate change. Just two hours north of Cincinnati, Intel is making a $200 billion investment to create the largest semiconductor plant in the country.

Two of the reasons they chose just north of Cincinnati are access to fresh water, the Ohio River in the south and the Great Lakes in the north, and our region’s climate resiliency. Now, don’t get me wrong: we’re all affected by climate change. We’re not all affected equally—our impoverished and disadvantaged communities are more affected disproportionately than others—but in Ohio and Cincinnati, we’re not seeing the wildfires, the droughts, the hurricanes, the earthquakes, the coastal erosion that we’re seeing in other parts of the country, which makes us a climate-change safe haven not just for business investment but also for people. Cincinnati is partly growing because our economy’s on fire right now, but we’re going to really see, I believe, exponential growth over the next few decades because of these massive factors pushing people into the middle of the country.

The investments that we make right now to help our legacy communities and legacy residents stay in their homes and continue to make Cincinnati an affordable place for them, while also keeping in mind these future residents, is a really challenging topic. While Cincinnati right now is very affordable in the national context, it’s not affordable for all Cincinnati residents because our housing supply has not kept up with population growth and our incomes have not kept up with housing prices.

In order to make sure that the investments in the future and the population growth in the future does not displace our current residents, we’ve got to stabilize our market now and be prepared for that growth.

AF: What are the land use changes and transportation improvements that you’re concentrating on accordingly?

AP: Oftentimes, people ask mayors about their legacy, and the third rail of local politics is zoning. If we’re going to get this right, then we have to have a comprehensive review and reform of our land use policies. When I talk about legacy, that’s what I’m talking about.

We have, for over a year now, been having meetings with stakeholders to [explore what] a modern Cincinnati looks like. I believe it looks like a dense, diverse neighborhood that’s walkable, with good public transportation and investments in public art. Right now, the City of Cincinnati’s zoning is not encouraging those kinds of neighborhoods. Close to 70 percent of our city is zoned for single-family use exclusively, which is putting an artificial cap on the amount of supply that we can create, which is artificially increasing rents and artificially increasing property taxes, which is causing a lot of our legacy residents, who even own their homes, to be displaced.

If we’re serious about deconcentrating poverty and desegregating our city, then we’ve got to take a look at multifamily unit prohibitions. We’ve got to take a look at parking requirements for both businesses and homes. We’ve got to look at transit-oriented development along our bus rapid transit lines. We’ve got to look at creative opportunities to create more housing like auxiliary dwelling units, but none of this is easy.

It’s not easy because NIMBYism is real, and we’ve got to convince people that I’m not going to put a 20-floor condo building on your residential cul-de-sac . . . . Zoning is very, very difficult because change is very difficult, and people are afraid of what that will turn the city into. That’s why we’ve been doing a year-long worth of community engagement, and I am confident we can make some substantive changes to our zoning code to encourage more affordability, encourage more public transportation, and just be a greener city.

On that note, we have made a commitment that we will only buy city vehicles that are electric vehicles when they become available. We have the largest city-led solar farm in the entire country, which is significantly contributing to our energy consumption.

AF: A little bit of this is back to the future, because the city had streetcars. Do you have the sense that there’s an appreciation for that, that those times actually made the city function better?

AP: The city used to be dense, used to have incredible streetcars, public transportation, and then, unfortunately, cities—not just Cincinnati but across the country—saw a steady decline of population, losing folks to the suburbs. Now people want to come back into the city, but now we have the hard work of undoing what a lot of cities tried to do, which was create suburban neighborhoods within a city to attract those suburban people back, right? It’s a little bit undoing the past while also focusing on what used to exist. When I share this vision with people, they say, “Yes, that’s a no-brainer, of course, I want to do that,” but they don’t want to do it on their street.

AF: What worries you most about this kind of transition, and what do you identify as the major issues facing lower-income and communities of color in Cincinnati?

AP: Displacement. If we cannot be a city that our current residents can afford, they will leave, which hurts everything. If the city is not growing, then a city our size, where we’re located in the country, we are dying, and we are dying quickly. Cities our size have to grow, and in order to grow, not only do we need to recruit talent, but we have to preserve the families and the legacy communities that have been here in the first place.

No city in the country has figured out a way to grow without displacement. The market factors, the economic factors are so profound and so hard to influence, and the City’s resources are so limited, it’s really difficult. Getting back to our institutional investor problem, the City doesn’t have the resources to just go up and buy property and make sure that we’re selling to good-faith owners, right? If we had that power, that market influence, we would do it. Oftentimes, I guess I get frustrated that I don’t have enough resources, enough authority to make a meaningful impact on the macroeconomic forces that are coming into the city. Because if we get our dream, which is more investment, more growth, that comes with negative consequences, and it’s really difficult to manage both.

AF: Finally, back to climate change, the mayor’s website says Cincinnati is well-positioned to be a leader in climate change at home and abroad. What do you think the city has to offer that’s distinctive in terms of climate action?

AP: All of our policy initiatives are looked at through two lenses. The first is racial equity and the second is climate. Everything that we do, whether it’s our urban forestry assessment, looking at a heat map of our city and investing in trees to not just clean the air but also cool our neighborhoods, [or] our investments in biochar. We are one of only seven cities in the entire world that received a huge grant from the Bloomberg Philanthropies to continue to innovate in the world of biochar, which is a byproduct of burning wood, which is an incredible carbon magnet that helps with stormwater runoff but also pulls carbon out of the air.

Our parks department, which is one of the best in the country, continues to innovate on that front . . . . Continuing to have some of the best testing and best preservation in the country for our water supply will be important. Ultimately, businesses and people who are looking to the future consider climate change in that future. If you’re looking for a city that is climate-resilient but also making massive investments in climate technology, then Cincinnati is that destination for you.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Lead image: Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval. Credit: © Amanda Rossmann – USA TODAY NETWORK.

By many accounts, Costa Rica has been a unique Central American success story—“a beacon of Enlightenment” and “a world leader in democratic, sustainable, and inclusive economic growth,” according to the prominent economist Joseph Stiglitz.

A nation of about 5 million people roughly the size of West Virginia, Costa Rica has been punching above its weight particularly in the realm of sustainability and climate action: a pioneer in eco-tourism; successful in getting nearly all of its power from renewable sources, including an enterprising use of hydro; and a leader in fighting deforestation and conserving land with its carbon-soaking rainforests.

The Land Matters podcast welcomed two special guests recently who know a thing or two about this country: Carlos Alvarado Quesada and Claudia Dobles Camargo, the former President and First Lady of Costa Rica. They are both in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, area this year—she is a Loeb Fellow, part of a mid-career fellowship program based at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and he is a visiting professor of practice at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Also in the studio was Enrique Silva, vice president of programs at the Lincoln Institute, who oversees the organization’s research and activities globally, and has years of experience in and familiarity with Latin America.

The conversation, recorded at the Podcast Garage in Allston after a visit by the couple to the Lincoln Institute, included reflections on leadership and climate action, and what it’s been like to take a year to decompress after an eventful time in office, from 2018 to 2022.

Costa Rica has much to show the world when it comes to the implementation of targeted sustainability practices, Quesada said. “We’re not saying people have to do exactly the same [as we did], but we can say it’s possible, and it’s been done in a model that actually creates well-being and economic growth,” he said. “Back in the day, people would say it’s impossible—‘if you’re going to create protected areas, you’re going to destroy the economy.’ It turned out to be the other way around, it actually propelled the economy.”

After seeing big successes in the countryside, the interventions have turned to urban areas. “Costa Rica has done such an amazing job in nature-based solutions, not so much on urban sustainability,” said Dobles, noting the ambitious National Decarbonization Plan she launched with Quesada, which aims to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. “In order to decarbonize, we really needed to focus also on our urban agenda.”

A big task was reinvigorating public transit, starting with a new electric train that would have spanned the city of San Jose. Quesada’s successor shelved the $1.5 billion project, demonstrating the common mismatch between long-term projects and limited time in office. A pilot project to electrify buses was implemented, however, to rave reviews. The couple says they are hopeful the train will be revived.

“I know that this is eventually going to happen. Sometimes you have political setbacks,” said Quesada. “Your administration cannot own throughout time what’s going to happen, but you can plant positive seeds.”

Costa Rica has been nothing if not creative in addressing the many dilemmas inherent in climate action. Open-ore mining is banned, for example, but entrepreneurs figured out a way to extract lithium from recycled batteries.

“That’s very linked to the discussion of the just energy transition, where the jobs are going to come from, where the exports are going to come from. While there’s a huge opportunity for many developing countries which are rich and are endowed with minerals and metals . . . we need to address those complexities,” said Quesada.

Dobles added, “When we talk about decarbonization, we cannot exclude from that conversation, the inequality conversation. This is supposed to provide our possibilities of survival as humankind, but also it’s a possibility for a new type of social and economic development and growth.”

Reflecting on being in the land of Harvard, MIT, and Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage, Dobles said she has been immersed in “the whole academic ecosystem that is happening here . . . just to be, again, in academia, sometimes just to receive information, not having the pressure of having the answers . . . . It’s been wonderful.”

“Being a head of state for four years of a country, it’s an experience that I’m currently unpacking still,” said Quesada. “I’m doing a little bit of writing on that, but you get to reflect a lot, because it’s a period of time you live very intensely. In our case, we were not only working with decarbonization, with the projects we mentioned, we [were also working] with the fiscal sustainability of the country. We had COVID. We had [the legalization of same-sex marriage].

“We tend to train ourselves for things that are outside of us, like methods, tools, knowledge,” he said. “There’s a part of it that has to do with training ourselves, our feelings, our habits, our framing, our thinking . . . to address those hard challenges.”

Carlos Alvarado Quesada served as the 48th President of the Republic of Costa Rica from 2018 to 2022, when his constitutionally limited term ended. He won the 2022 Planetary Leadership Award from the National Geographic Society for his actions to protect the ocean, and was named to the TIME100 Next list of emerging leaders from around the world. Before entering politics, he worked for Procter and Gamble, Latin America.

Claudia Dobles Camargo is an architect with extensive experience in urban mobility, affordable and social housing, community engagement, climate change, and fair transition. As First Lady, she was co-leader of the Costa Rica National Decarbonization Plan. Her architecture degree is from the University of Costa Rica, and she also studied in Japan, concentrating on a sustainable approach to architecture.

You can listen to the show and subscribe to Land Matters on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
 

Further Reading

Showing the Way in San José – How Costa Rica Gets It Right (The Guardian)

Former President of Costa Rica Talks Climate Change, Public Policy During Northeastern Campus Visit (Northeastern Global News)

Costa Rica’s ‘Urban Mine’ for Planet-Friendlier Lithium (Agence France- Presse)

How Costa Rica Reversed Deforestation and Raised Millions for Conservation (Diálogo Chino)

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Lead image: San José, Costa Rica. Credit: Gianfranco Vivi via iStock/Getty Images Plus.

La alcaldesa Yvonne Denise Aki-Sawyerr asumió su cargo en Freetown, Sierra Leona, en mayo de 2018, después de desempeñarse como jefa del Ayuntamiento de la ciudad de Freetown. La profesional de las finanzas con más de 25 años de experiencia en los sectores público y privado, previamente había participado en la campaña contra los “diamantes de sangre” y tuvo un papel fundamental en la respuesta a la crisis del ébola en 2014. Presentó dos charlas TED sobre cómo transformar la insatisfacción en acción y sobre la iniciativa de la ciudad capital para plantar un millón de árboles, y recibió nominaciones para la lista Time100 Next de líderes emergentes y la lista 100 Women de la BBC.

Como líder en la red mundial C40 Cities, Aki-Sawyerr lanzó la iniciativa Transform Freetown y nombró al primer director de calor de África. Se graduó en la Facultad de Economía de Londres y en la universidad Fourah Bay College de Freetown. En otoño, habló con el miembro sénior Anthony Flint. La conversación, que se editó por motivos de espacio y claridad.

Anthony Flint: ¿Podría hablar sobre la iniciativa Transform Freetown como una planificación urbana y un marco de acción, y contarnos qué opina sobre cómo progresó? 

Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr: Me postulé para el cargo en 2018, motivada por mis preocupaciones en torno al medioambiente y el saneamiento. Mi mensaje para la campaña, “por la comunidad, por el progreso, por Freetown”, se tradujo en Transform Freetown. La iniciativa se centra en cuatro categorías: resiliencia, desarrollo humano, ciudad saludable y movilidad urbana.  

La resiliencia incluye la gestión medioambiental; además incluye el planeamiento urbano, porque no es posible separar las dos cosas, y la organización de la renta, porque la sostenibilidad solo se logrará si la ciudad es capaz de mantener y generar una renta por sí misma. El punto sobre la ciudad saludable incluye el saneamiento, que está estrechamente relacionado con la gestión medioambiental para Freetown y muchas ciudades de África. Si pensamos en el cambio climático, en nuestro aporte diminuto al cambio climático, gran parte de este proviene del metano, del vertido de basura a cielo abierto, pero, a su vez, esto tiene implicaciones inmensas para la salud. Así que, en la categoría de ciudad saludable se incluyó el saneamiento, la salud y el agua.

Lo que hicimos fue, habiendo asumido el cargo con esos focos prioritarios de preocupación, organizar 322  grupos de sondeo con alrededor de 15.000 residentes, para escuchar sus opiniones sobre la capacidad de pago, la accesibilidad y la disponibilidad de servicios en esos sectores. Invitamos al sector público, al sector privado y a la comunidad internacional, por medio de socios de desarrollo y ONG, a participar en debates.

De ese proceso surgieron 19 objetivos específicos y mensurables en los que estamos trabajando en el marco de Transform Freetown. Todo los años informamos sobre la situación de los objetivos a la ciudad, a nuestros residentes. Fue una forma de generar un mayor grado de responsabilidad, de ponernos a prueba, y existe un fuerte sentido de propiedad por parte de la comunidad que es quien impulsa la iniciativa. 

AF: Entre todas las amenazas climáticas que la ciudad enfrenta, usted nombró un director de calor. ¿Por qué se necesitó un director de calor, y qué resultados se observaron hasta ahora? 

YA: A menudo me preguntan: ¿cómo logras que la gente común se interese en el cambio climático? En nuestro caso, no es difícil, porque, en estos pagos, las consecuencias del cambio climático se sienten con intensidad, y sufrimos intensas inundaciones y derrumbes. A esto se debe mi preocupación por el medioambiente y nuestra habilidad para mitigar esos impactos. 

El [Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center] nos hizo pensar de verdad sobre el hecho de que muere más gente a causa del calor extremo que de los desastres tangibles y visibles como las inundaciones y los derrumbes. El calor extremo, sobre todo en lugares donde el agua escasea, es un efecto importantísimo del calentamiento climático.  

En nuestro caso, las personas vulnerables son, principalmente, aquellas que viven en asentamientos informales. Estas representan el 35 por ciento de la población de nuestra ciudad, y en esos asentamientos urbanos, las estructuras de las viviendas son, por lo general, de chapa corrugada. Con el aumento de la temperatura, viven, literalmente, en un horno. Otro aspecto relacionado con esto es que tenemos una economía informal. Alrededor del 60 por ciento de las mujeres de nuestra ciudad están involucradas en el comercio. La mayoría de nuestros mercados están al aire libre, por lo que te la pasas todo el día sentada al rayo del sol. Si a esto le sumamos el calor intenso, se exacerban otras consecuencias negativas para la salud.

Ahora, con el director de calor, vamos a poder emprender algunas investigaciones y recopilar datos para identificar las islas de calor. Según nuestra experiencia, tenemos una idea de dónde se encuentran, sobre todo en los asentamientos informales, pero es posible que también se encuentren en el medio de la ciudad. Tenemos que ser capaces de generar argumentos para desafiar lo que está sucediendo respecto a la falta de permisos para la construcción, y la delegación de la planificación del uso del suelo a la ciudad y la deforestación masiva que continúa sin amainar.

El director de calor trabajó con las mujeres del mercado y obtuvo financiamiento de la Arsht-Rockefeller [y el Atlantic Council] para instalar toldos que generen sombra en tres de nuestros mercados al aire libre. Es maravilloso ver el entusiasmo de las mujeres y oírlas decir: “¿Esto se va a extender a todo el mercado? Podemos ver donde empieza, dónde termina, pero también lo necesitamos”.

AF: ¿Qué esperanzas tiene para los otros proyectos de mitigación climática, incluida la iniciativa para plantar un millón de árboles? ¿Cómo tuvo lugar y en qué situación se encuentra? 

YA: Bien, el proyecto surgió porque observamos que estamos perdiendo nuestra vegetación, y eso [agrava] los fenómenos meteorológicos extremos, [como cuando las lluvias fuertes generaron avalanchas de lodo en 2017]. La falta de forestación es uno de los principales motivos de eso. El objetivo es aumentar la cobertura de vegetación en un 50 por ciento.

La plantación de un millón de árboles es un plan a largo plazo, pero en el ínterin, la escorrentía de las montañas sigue llenando los drenajes de lodo. A través de nuestro trabajo anual de mitigación de las inundaciones, identificamos cuáles son las peores áreas en este sentido y limpiamos el lodo para que cuando llegue la lluvia, el agua siga corriendo. A una escala menor, también pudimos construir alrededor de 2.000 metros de drenaje en comunidades más pequeñas. Aparte de eso, hicimos inversiones importantes en formaciones y capacitaciones sobre gestión de desastres.

El problema con los efectos del cambio climático es que son profundos. Si las personas están teniendo malas cosechas a las afueras de Freetown, con el tiempo, se producirá una migración del campo a la ciudad porque no pueden mantener sus medios de subsistencia y vendrán en busca de alguna forma de sustento.

Esa presión del crecimiento demográfico en la ciudad es algo más con lo que tenemos que lidiar, ya sea introduciendo el teleférico para mejorar el transporte y reducir la emisión de gases de efecto invernadero [o alentando] al gobierno para que delegue la planificación del uso del suelo y las funciones de los permisos para la construcción a fin de que podamos implementar medidas de gestión del suelo, que salvan vidas y salvan propiedades, pero además protegen el medioambiente y evitan que las personas construyan sus propiedades en vías fluviales, arroyos y canales, que es lo que ocurre hoy en día. Todo esto empeora porque no se utilizan herramientas legislativas y de gestión urbana, como la planificación del uso del suelo y los permisos para la construcción, de forma superadora.

AF: ¿Podría describir los proyectos de reforma del impuesto a la propiedad de Freetown y los resultados que observó en el contexto general de la salud fiscal del municipio? 

YA: Empezamos a trabajar con esta reforma del impuesto a la propiedad en 37.000 propiedades de la base de datos de una ciudad que es la ciudad capital y tiene al menos entre 1,2 y 1,5 millones de personas, 37.000 propiedades. Cuando asumí, estaba claro que esas cifras no reflejaban la realidad, pero, además, el sistema manual que se utilizaba, literalmente un libro de registro, no era apropiado para la tarea en pleno s. XXI.

Uno de nuestros 19 objetivos es quintuplicar el ingreso del impuesto a la propiedad para el 2022. Para lograrlo, nos aseguramos un financiamiento y sociedades a fin de implementar una digitalización. Pasamos de un sistema basado en superficies a un sistema de representaciones puntuales. Nuestro trabajo consistió en tomar imágenes satelitales de toda la ciudad y crear un algoritmo para ponderar características [como los techos, las ventanas y la ubicación], y luego comparar eso con una base de datos de 3.000 propiedades cuyos valores fueron determinados por tasadores inmobiliarios. Logramos implementar la forma antigua de avalúo. Pudimos identificar casos atípicos y perfeccionar el modelo y, con el tiempo, construir un modelo que ahora utilizamos como nuestra base de propiedades.

Durante ese proceso, pasamos de 37.000 propiedades a 120.000. De esta manera, alcanzamos nuestro objetivo de aumentar la renta por impuestos a la propiedad de [US$ 425.000 a más de US$ 2 millones]. Ese es, en sí mismo, el camino hacia la sostenibilidad, al igual que tener la capacidad de invertir. Una gran parte de la salud fiscal se basa en esa sostenibilidad, pero . . . lamentablemente, el Ministerio de Gobierno Local [detuvo la recaudación mientras desarrollaba pautas para la reforma tributaria nacional]. Estuvimos sin recaudar rentas durante casi un año. Empezamos a recaudar otra vez, pero como se imaginará, nos llevará bastante tiempo recuperar los niveles de cumplimiento.

AF: ¿Dónde encuentra inspiración frente a tantos desafíos? 

YA: En el hecho de que fuimos capaces de marcar una diferencia en las vidas de las personas de Freetown. Pudimos evaluar y comprobar cuánto se puede lograr si se nos da el espacio para hacerlo. Sabemos que hay mucho por hacer, así que seguimos adelante. 

 
Anthony Flint es miembro sénior del Instituto Lincoln, conduce el ciclo de pódcasts Land Matters y es editor colaborador de Land Lines. 

Imagen: La alcaldesa Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr.

Cuando pensamos en innovaciones en la urbanización y la construcción, la madera no suele ser lo primero que se nos viene a la mente. Para que no suene tan agresivo, es un material de la vieja escuela. Pero, en el último tiempo, la construcción con masa de madera (mass timber) (que consiste en paneles, vigas y columnas de madera fabricados con técnicas modernas y herramientas de diseño digital avanzadas) ha tenido un crecimiento destacado. Entre otros atributos, los defensores señalan su potencial con relación al impacto climático: al usar masa de madera extraída de forma sostenible, la huella de carbono se puede reducir a la mitad, en comparación con la de una estructura similar hecha con acero u hormigón.

Según el grupo de comercio de madera WoodWorks, hasta septiembre de 2022, se construyeron o diseñaron más de 1.500 proyectos multifamiliares, comerciales o institucionales con masa de madera en los 50 estados del país. Esto representa un aumento de más un 50 por ciento desde el 2020. El Wall Street Journal, en base a los datos del Servicio Forestal de los Estados Unidos, informa que desde el 2014, abrieron al menos 18 plantas de fabricación de masa de madera en Canadá y los Estados Unidos.

Los componentes básicos de la construcción con masa de madera son las placas, columnas y vigas de madera. Son mucho más sostenibles que, por ejemplo, los conocidos tablones de cinco centímetros por diez, gracias a procesos especiales que se utilizan para unir pedazos pequeños de madera y formar bloques de madera fabricados con precisión. El resultado final incluye columnas y vigas de madera laminada encolada (o “glulam”), y paneles de madera contralaminada (o CLT) que pueden tener hasta 3,5 metros de ancho y 18 metros de largo. Los paneles más largos se usan, principalmente, para pisos y techos, pero también para las paredes. El resultado final, como lo expresaron en la publicación en línea de Vox, es “madera, pero como bloques Lego”. Los proyectos de masa de madera más importantes suelen exhibir el material, por lo que se obtienen construcciones cuyos elementos estructurales ofrecen una estética más cálida y orgánica en comparación con aquellas de acero u hormigón.

Desde hace un tiempo, tanto el proceso como el interés en su potencial vienen cobrando fuerza. La masa de madera empezó a utilizarse en Austria y, luego, en toda Europa, en la década de 1990, y, desde entonces, su uso se ha extendido gradualmente al resto del mundo. En una charla TED muy citada del 2013, el arquitecto Michael Green, de Vancouver, dio sus argumentos a favor de este material: “Siento que la madera tiene una función que cumplir en las ciudades”, sostuvo resaltando las propiedades de captura de carbono de la masa de madera (una estructura de hormigón de 20 pisos emitiría más de 1.200 toneladas de carbono, mientras que una construcción de madera capturaría más de 3.000 toneladas). Además, destacó la capacidad que tiene este material de soportar terremotos e incendios.

Cuando Green dio su charla, las estructuras más altas de masa de madera tenían nueve o diez pisos. Sin embargo, Green argumentó que este nuevo proceso de fabricación podría utilizarse con éxito en estructuras con una altura dos o tres veces mayor. “Esta es la primera innovación en la manera de construir rascacielos que observamos en, probablemente, 100 años”, declaró, y explicó que el proceso de ingeniería no sería tan arduo como la tarea de cambiar la percepción general del potencial que tiene la madera. En el último tiempo, esta percepción se ha estado renovando gracias a un aluvión de proyectos atractivos (entre ellos, un complejo de 25 pisos de comercios minoristas y viviendas en Milwaukee, y un hotel y centro cultural de 20 pisos en el noreste de Suecia) y propuestas para edificios de masa de madera aún más altos.

Debido a que la masa de madera se prefabrica en una planta y se envía al lugar de la instalación (a diferencia de las estructuras de hormigón, que se hacen en el lugar), los detalles del diseño deben resolverse de antemano, lo que requiere una planificación y un trabajo de modelado digital exhaustivos. En definitiva, esto puede aumentar la eficiencia de los procesos de construcción, así como requerir menos trabajadores y generar menos desperdicio. Los proyectos de masa de madera siguen incluyendo otros materiales, señala Judith Sheine, una profesora de arquitectura de la Universidad de Oregón (UO) y directora de Diseño del TallWood Design Institute. TallWood es una colaboración entre la Escuela de Diseño de la UO y las Facultades de Silvicultura e Ingeniería de la Oregon State University que se centra en fomentar la innovación de la masa de madera. “Pero la masa de madera puede reemplazar al acero y el hormigón en muchísimos usos, y cada vez es más popular”, afirmó. “Esto se debe a la nueva disponibilidad, pero también a un interés en usar materiales que impliquen menos carbono”.

TallWood llevó a cabo decenas de proyectos e iniciativas de investigación aplicada, en los que se analizaron los más diversos aspectos, desde problemas de codificación hasta desafíos de la cadena de suministro y maneras de mejorar el rendimiento, con el fin de promover el uso de madera con propiedades y diseños superiores. El instituto forma parte de la Oregon Mass Timber Coalition, una asociación entre instituciones de investigación y agencias estatales de Oregón que, en el último tiempo, recibió US$ 41,4 millones en becas del plan Build Back Better Regional Challenge de la Administración de Desarrollo Económico de los Estados Unidos. Este financiamiento tiene como objetivo respaldar iniciativas de investigación vinculadas con el desarrollo del mercado para la masa de madera.

Sin duda, parte de la promesa medioambiental de este novedoso material depende de los detalles menos conocidos, en particular, cómo y dónde se extrae la madera. Los defensores del sector alegan que su expansión no causará una presión indebida en los bosques, en parte porque los productos de masa de madera pueden fabricarse con madera de “poco valor” (como árboles de diámetro pequeño que ya se sacrifican como parte de la mitigación de los incendios forestales, árboles enfermos y, posiblemente, incluso madera de descarte).

Los grupos conservacionistas y otros expertos están actuando con mayor cautela. En 2018, The Nature Conservancy inició una evaluación de varios años del impacto de la masa de madera a nivel global. Se investigaron los beneficios y riesgos potenciales de la mayor demanda de productos de masa de madera para los bosques, y se está desarrollando un conjunto de principios orientativos mundiales para una “economía de los bosques inteligente desde el punto de vista del clima”, buenas prácticas que ayudarán a proteger la biodiversidad y los ecosistemas a medida que el mercado de la masa de madera crece.

A menudo, los constructores y desarrolladores que, concretamente, desean pregonar el uso de materiales de masa de madera insisten en que la forma de obtención se certificó como sostenible, según Stephen Shaler, profesor de materiales y tecnologías sostenibles en la Facultad de Recursos Forestales de la Universidad de Maine. “En este momento, dicha demanda está en el mercado”, afirmó.

Además del interés en la sostenibilidad, existe otra razón a favor de la proliferación de los proyectos de masa de madera: la biofilia o instinto humano de conectar con la naturaleza. Sharler explicó que “el solo hecho de estar en una casa de madera puede generar una sensación agradable”. Este no es un simple juicio subjetivo: pequeños estudios demostraron que los interiores de madera pueden mejorar la calidad del aire, reducir la presión sanguínea y el ritmo cardíaco, y mejorar la concentración y la productividad.

Según se informó, los desarrolladores del edificio de 25 pisos en Milwaukee, Ascent, escogieron la masa de madera, sobre todo, por razones estéticas y por el valor de difusión de su aspecto distintivo. El edificio Ascent, una de las construcciones de masa de madera más altas del mundo, ha sido el centro de atención de los medios, y se le suma otro valor a la exposición pública: si bien es posible que el edificio Ascent, de 86,5 metros de altura, y otros proyectos de muchos pisos no presagien el futuro de todos los rascacielos, demostraron que es posible construir de manera segura y a gran escala con masa de madera. Esto podría persuadir a reguladores y planificadores, sobre todo, a la hora de aprobar construcciones de menor escala que podrían ser más importantes para demostrar el potencial real de la masa de madera. Según las predicciones de Sharler, “es probable que la mayor parte de su uso se centre en proyectos de altura media, de seis a ocho pisos”.

El Código Internacional de la Edificación permite construcciones de madera de hasta 18 pisos. Los desarrolladores de Ascent lograron una variación debido, en parte, a que el diseño final incluía dos núcleos de hormigón. Sheine y Sharler recalcaron que la mayoría de los proyectos de masa de madera siguen incluyendo al menos algo de hormigón, acero y otros materiales. Y está bien, añade Sharler: la masa de madera debería verse como una opción relativamente nueva que puede ayudar a mejorar la huella de carbono, y no como un sustituto absoluto de los materiales tradicionales. Además, las opciones nuevas siempre son útiles, incluso cuando provienen de la vieja escuela como la madera

Rob Walker periodista; escribe sobre diseño, tecnología y otros temas. Es el autor de The Art of Noticing. Publica un boletín en robwalker.substack.com.

Imagen: La construcción con masa de madera. Crédito: Cortesía de ACSA.

Most people in the mountainous northeastern corner of New Mexico were looking forward to the arrival of the annual monsoon season last summer. The Hermits Peak–Calf Canyon wildfire had started in April, burning 340,000 acres and destroying hundreds of properties, and residents were hoping for a reprieve from the smoke and evacuations that had begun to define their lives. But then the monsoon arrived, both unseasonably early and with more intensity than normal.

As the rains pelted soil that had been rendered water-repellent by the fire, mud and water cascaded down the slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains into the waterways, fields, roads, and homes below. Still reeling from the fire, residents were forced to deal with a fresh disaster—in many cases, needing to leave their homes once again.

“Their homes were flooded, their corrals were taken out, their burnt barns were taken out,” said Veronica Serna, county commissioner in Mora County, one of the areas hardest hit by the fire and the floods. “One family had a boulder come down and block their whole driveway. They didn’t have any water and no way to go out and get water—just imagine not being able to shower in your own home or wash your hands or use a toilet. It was devastating.”

Serna recalls another family “whose home kept getting flooded over and over and over. One day we stopped by to check on them, and they were scraping the mud out of their shoes, shoveling mud out of their bedroom. It’s just so hard to see that.”

The flooding also affected San Miguel County just to the south, damaging homes and infrastructure, polluting wells, and threatening water supplies. “Most people are back within the community, but they’re still stressed out about the future, because the flooding is not going to stop,” said Ralph Vigil II, a farmer and water commissioner who grew up in San Miguel County and runs a farmers’ cooperative there. “I’m afraid that we’re going to be dealing with this for years.” According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, flood risk remains elevated for up to five years after a wildfire, until vegetation is restored.

Vigil had the opportunity to take a helicopter flight over the burn scar in the fall, after the fire was fully contained and the worst of the flooding had subsided. “You don’t really understand the vastness of the damage until you’re up there,” he said. He was alarmed, and not just by the decimation of landscapes and communities that he’s long loved: “I also saw the risk for more fires, and really the signs of what’s to come.”

As climate change contributes to longer, more intense wildfire seasons, fires are leaving burn scars across the U.S. West, putting nearby communities at risk of flooding. That flooding, which can be catastrophic, can occur long after the fire is over. In the face of these threats, communities can make land use decisions that help build their resilience.

After the Fire, the Deluge

It’s apt that the name of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which extend from Colorado to their terminus near Santa Fe, translates as “Blood of Christ.” The ridges, valleys, and bowls that would have been dwarfed from Vigil’s viewpoint in the helicopter make up the bulk of two watersheds that are the lifeblood of downstream communities and farmlands. Some 23,000 people in San Miguel and Mora counties rely on these watersheds for drinking water and agriculture.

Under the right conditions, naturally occurring and prescribed fires support ecosystem health. But the Hermits Peak–Calf Canyon fire, the largest in New Mexico’s history, got out of control and caused chaos. Twenty-four percent of the burn area was classified as high-severity fire, causing extensive tree mortality and profound impacts to soil. When trees and vegetation burn in high heat, they release gases that harden the soil into a water-repellent, concrete-like material. That allows rain to run over the forest floor like it would a sloped parking lot, picking up speed and sediment before flooding into the communities below.

“Pre-fire, these forested ecosystems and slopes work like a sponge, but post-fire, nothing is going to stop that rain,” says Micah Kiesow, a soil scientist for the Santa Fe National Forest and team lead for the fire’s Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) team. BAER teams assess wildfire damage on federally owned lands. “We saw a tremendous amount of erosion, sedimentation, and debris flows in the most severely burned areas, which eventually makes its way to the drainages and streams below.”

While post-fire flooding affected many communities around the burn area, some of the worst damage occurred in Mora County. The county, one of the poorest in the nation, has about 2,130 homes scattered across nearly 2,000 square miles. Serna estimates that 200 of those homes were burnt over and countless others impacted when ash, water, and sediment flowed into the communities of Mora, Holman, Chacon, and Guadalupita. “It’s sad, because our communities had a lot of adobe homes,” she said. “Our people have lived here for generations, they have inherited these adobes from their great-, great-, great-grandparents.”

Many of those affected were rural farmers. According to Serna, numerous residents had freezers full of high-quality cattle and game meat that had to be thrown away following power outages in the aftermath of the flooding. Meanwhile, the acequias—small ditches or canals that divert water from creeks and rivers to provide water to farms and form the foundation of water access in this part of New Mexico—were clogged with wood, rocks, and mud. Over 40 acequias were destroyed in the aftermath of the fire, according to the New Mexico Acequia Association and reporting by Source New Mexico. The infrastructure that these remote communities rely on for everything from growing food to accessing critical services suffered profound damage.

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, it was difficult to access federal emergency funding. In later months, however, significant funding opened up for those affected by the fires—some $3.9 billion total, including $2.5 billion from the federal Hermits Peak–Calf Canyon Fire Assistance Act passed in September and $1.4 billion allocated in the 2023 Omnibus Appropriations bill. Total damages for the fire have not been confirmed, but some estimates put it as high as $5 billion.

Despite the influx of funding, “I really don’t think [$3.9 billion] is going to be enough,” Serna said. “How do you replace trees that were over 100 years old? How do you get all that back? I mean, is there a dollar amount that could do that? How do you buy back time?”

While the recovery effort continues, the risk for more flood damage persists, hinging precipitously on the intensity of future rain and snowmelt events. Mora County officials have begun developing a hazard mitigation plan for potential impacts from fires and flooding in the future. This kind of planning is one of many steps communities need to take to become more resilient in the face of increasingly frequent and severe disasters.

From Reactive to Proactive

In many cases, communities address the risk of flooding after a fire, but time isn’t always on their side. “The challenge in New Mexico is we have a fire season from April to June, immediately followed by a monsoon season,” said Brian Williams, director of emergency management in Santa Fe. “That window of time between when the fire season ends and the flooding season begins is weeks, not months. Often it overlaps, and then it’s a mad scramble to mitigate those potential impacts as best you can. And the kinds of things that you can do are to some degree limited.”

When BAER teams assess the extent of damages in federally owned areas, part of their charge is to determine priorities for immediate mitigation measures—ideally before extreme precipitation arrives. These often-forested ecosystems are prime candidates for aerial seeding and mulching, which can help burned areas begin to recover; restoration of stream channels can also help address flood risk. To prepare for the New Mexico monsoons, the BAER team also recommended and oversaw a number of emergency interventions including installing obstructions in stream channels to redirect debris and sediment and making fixes to bridges and culverts to facilitate vehicle access. These measures likely helped minimize some of the most extreme impacts of the rains, but it’s difficult to quantify their effect—and the hard truth is that only so much can be done in the timeline between fire suppression and extreme rain events. Harder still is the fact that that timeline seems to be shrinking in many regions.

A lot of the conversation around post-fire flooding focuses, understandably, on ecosystem recovery measures like those that BAER teams recommend and facilitate. But effectively preparing for the unique challenges of recovery and potential post-fire erosion events also requires significant forethought on the part of communities and homeowners.

Planning and land use decisions can minimize risk before fires occur. On the ground, communities can install infrastructure to help contain or redirect debris flows; retrofit homes with more ignition-resistant materials; and identify and improve evacuation routes. They can also reduce hazardous fuels in forests and create defensible space around structures by thinning trees and other vegetation Some fuel-reduction work, which is an essential forest management tool, comes with risks; the Hermits Peak–Calf Canyon fire was the result of two U.S. Forest Service fires that went awry: a prescribed burn and a pile burning project. The fires combined and spread due to high winds. But under the right conditions, prescribed burns can reduce the risk of wildfire and help maintain ecosystem health.

On a policy level, communities can take steps including prohibiting or limiting development in areas vulnerable to fire and flooding. Where development is allowed, they can mandate the use of certain building materials, such as fire-resistant siding. Local and regional officials can also map wildfire and debris flow risks to help determine when and where to build; develop pre-disaster plans, which allow communities to consider how they will handle recovery challenges such as restoring electricity, providing temporary housing, or managing long-term rebuilding; and proactively budget for projects such as stormwater treatment infrastructure upgrades, which can help communities better cope with flooding. Communities can also engage in scenario planning, a process that can help them identify and plan for various possible futures.

Scenario Planning for Wildfire Resilience

Scenario planning can help communities plan for an uncertain future. The practice guides planners, community members, and other stakeholders through considerations of various futures and how to effectively respond to and plan for them. In the case of wildfires, communities can consider the impacts of a changing climate on factors including public health, housing, equity, the economy, water availability, and quality of life. How could more frequent and intense drought affect wildfire suppression efforts? How can coordinated regional climate policies reduce wildfire risk and improve quality of life? By asking questions like this and exploring multiple possible outcomes, communities can better prepare for the challenges ahead. To learn more about this planning practice or to get assistance running a scenario planning process, visit the Lincoln Institute’s Consortium for Scenario Planning.

According to a report from the National Institute of Building Sciences, every $1 of public funding spent on hazard mitigation since 1995 is expected to save $6 in future disaster costs. After decades of focus on disaster recovery funding, the federal government has begun a shift toward funding pre-disaster planning and mitigation. FEMA has released a pre-disaster planning guide and has made limited funds available for disaster mitigation projects. Unfortunately, this kind of advance planning often hinges on the kind of political will and funding that are still much easier to come by after disaster has struck.

“I think the fundamental challenge with all of this, as with most natural hazards, is it’s very hard for us to plan ahead for things,” said Dr. Kimiko Barrett of Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based nonprofit research group that works to improve community development and land management decisions across the country. “We are by nature reactive and responsive, in contrast to being anticipatory. Even after a wildfire occurs, we have a small window to actually mobilize and enact the transformative change needed before amnesia kicks in, or bias kicks in, where you feel that [because the fire] happened, it will never happen again.”

A Holistic Approach

As more areas are affected by increasingly destructive wildfires, the threat of erosion and flooding in these landscapes will also increase—and should be factored into planning and land use decisions, Barrett says. She explains that the principles of holistic land use policy for wildfire resilience are inherently connected to planning for potential post-fire impacts like flooding. The measures typically used to build community resilience to wildfire—things like reducing hazardous fuels near critical infrastructure, planning evacuation routes, considering home density and development patterns in new developments, and mapping risk—also provide intrinsic benefits in the post-fire period.

“[Taking these actions] means communities have a greater chance of surviving a wildfire—therefore, that rebuilding and recovery piece is inherently better situated, because you’ve put that thought and that deliberate strategic planning in on the front end,” Barrett says. “So [planning for wildfire and its impacts] have to be wedded together. The challenge is that federal funding and policy does not often address it in that nature, or within that holistic framing.”

Quantifying and addressing the highly localized hazard planning needs of individual communities—from mapping risk to implementing mitigation at a meaningful scale—is also challenging when an area hasn’t yet felt the impacts of a wildfire or post-fire disaster. Risk mapping, for example, makes it less challenging to predict where and how a wildfire might impact a landscape; yet it remains challenging to create comprehensive and accurate maps, not only because of the robust data needed to make such predictions, but also because of community resistance.

“There’s a lot of pushback—much like you see on sea-level rise and other things in Florida and elsewhere—where politicians, developers, and community leaders are like, ‘We don’t really want to know—or we might want to know, but we really don’t want it publicized,’” said Molly McCabe, CEO of HaydenTanner, an investor advisory firm that focuses on social impact and sustainability in the built environment. “So you have this tension between, ‘We want to keep our people safe,’ and ‘It’s also an economic risk.’”

In 2022, the state of Oregon created a statewide wildfire risk map, distributing it to 150,000 residents who lived in areas facing high or extreme risk. Controversy arose quickly: homeowners suspected that the map might affect property values and insurance rates, and some worried that it could lead to new building codes or mandates for home hardening—a retrofitting approach that involves steps ranging from replacing windows to trimming nearby trees and shrubs. The Oregon Department of Forestry withdrew the map for further development, but the response was a clear reflection of the challenges related to getting out ahead of risk.

This problem grows even muddier when it comes to planning for erosion and flooding events after wildfires—how can you meaningfully quantify the potential impacts of a disaster that is the result of another disaster, which is also relatively difficult to predict? And how can you garner the essential buy-in of residents who could be financially affected by a better understanding of the risk in certain areas?

Despite these challenges, some communities are making progress, Barrett said: “I can tell you that there are communities that recognize their level of risk, and are addressing it in aggressive ways that go beyond what we’re seeing from federal mandates or state regulations.”

Communities Taking Action

Barrett said some communities in California have implemented mandates beyond existing state requirements for ignition resistance standards. Portola Valley, for example, adopted a home-hardening ordinance to supplement the state building code, which requires ignition-resistant building materials for new developments in high-risk areas. In 2020, residents in Marin County approved a measure that applies a property tax of 10 cents per square foot to support wildfire prevention efforts. The measure, which includes exemptions for low-income senior citizens, is expected to generate nearly $20 million per year over a 10-year period.

Both Barrett and McCabe mentioned that bond proposals have been a successful—though not yet widely utilized—means for motivated communities to set aside funding for wildfire and post-fire resilience. One particularly notable example is the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project (FWPP), initiated after the Schultz Fire burned 15,000 acres in the mountains north of the city in 2010. The fire itself had little impact on homes and private property in Flagstaff, but a month later heavy rains triggered debris flows and floods that swept into the valley, causing the death of a young girl and the loss of 85 homes. Two years later, residents approved a $10 million bond that would help protect the watershed and adjacent homes and properties against similar impacts.

FWPP is a partnership between the state, city, and Coconino National Forest intended to help reduce the risk of both wildfire and post-fire flooding. “This has become one of the best examples I’ve seen out there of a partnership that has really resulted from a pretty devastating event that was post-fire related,” Barrett said. “It’s just a really good example of what can happen when the right players are there, and of communities and local partners recognizing a risk and acting on it.” Last year, voters in Flagstaff showed sustained support for continuing the city’s wildfire suppression and stormwater management efforts, with 76 percent approving a proposal to issue $57 million in bonds to invest in water- and fire-related infrastructure.

McCabe mentioned Montecito, California, as another notable example of community resilience arising from tragedy. The 2017 Thomas Fire destabilized slopes above Montecito. When these slopes were subjected to a deluge of rain just a few weeks later, 23 people lost their lives and 130 homes were destroyed. Since then, Santa Barbara County officials have developed debris flow risk maps for the area, while a community-led nonprofit called the Project for Resilient Communities facilitated the installation of steel mesh netting to catch debris in drainages above the community.

In Montecito and other communities, McCabe says, “people are voluntarily using grants and other monies to build their homes up on 10-foot elevated pads, so that if they’re in a path, the mud flows around them. But I haven’t seen any policies that are requiring that for new construction, much less existing construction.”

Still, local or regional policy can support such individual actions. Grants or insurance incentives can be offered to homeowners who create defensible space around their home, or to those who retrofit their homes with ignition-resistant materials. Programs like FireWise USA, an initiative of the National Fire Protection Association, can help neighborhoods organize collective fire mitigation projects and hold residents accountable for maintaining properties over time.

Getting buy-in at the local level also hinges on communicating strategically. In Central Washington’s Chelan County, public information campaigns around wildfire risk reduction included translators who could engage Spanish-speaking communities. Engaging with non-English speaking and migrant communities, in addition to other communities that are at disproportionate risk of wildfire and post-fire flooding, is an important component of public information campaigns throughout the process—from preparing for wildfire to navigating the recovery stage.

A Watershed Moment

In 2012, a major wildfire burned 87,000 acres near Fort Collins, Colorado. In the months following the fire, ash and mud choked the Poudre River, which provides drinking water for 135,000 downstream residents. Sediment clogged the pipes of the local water treatment plant, requiring extra clean-up and treatment and leading the city to install sensors that monitor sediment in the river. “We had been privileged and in some ways probably took for granted that these watersheds were providing us consistently clean, clear water, all the time,” the city’s water quality manager, Jill Oropeza, told a local radio station. “That was the first time, for many of us working there, that we had to grapple with the fact that our watersheds are under pressure.”

According to the U.S. Forest Service, the forested watersheds of the United States provide drinking water for 180 million people. Ninety-nine percent of people who rely on public water systems in the United States get at least some of that water from forested ecosystems. Research suggests that post-wildfire flooding contaminated the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of people in the West between 2017 and 2020.

In Mora County, “people sent me photos of turning their water on and having sludge come out,” said Serna, the county commissioner. Many wells were destroyed, with some residents only getting their water back online in October and November. The city of Las Vegas, in nearby San Miguel County, almost ran out of water for its 13,000 residents after debris from the fire found its way into the local reservoir. With only 20 days’ worth of clean water remaining, the city used emergency state funding to convert a local lake into a short-term back-up water source. Longer-term relief came in the form of $140 million from the omnibus bill that will allow Las Vegas to invest in water treatment and filtration upgrades.

In response to situations like these, organizations including the Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed in Fort Collins and the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition, which focuses on a high-risk area just south of the Hermits Peak–Calf Canyon fire area, are bringing stakeholders together to better understand the risks wildfire poses to water supply and water quality. Many communities in the West take great pride in the places where their water comes from. Protecting watersheds from high-severity wildfire—and, thus, debris flows—is an easy sell to the communities that rely on the resources these ecosystems provide, and building resilience in watersheds inherently builds resilience for downstream communities.

Whether focused on making a watershed more resilient, guiding development to less vulnerable areas, or envisioning and preparing for multiple possible futures, communities can take many steps to build resilience to wildfire and post-fire flooding. The profound influence of past and present land management decisions on wildfire and flood outcomes makes it increasingly clear that we can better prepare for events that are exacerbated by human actions—and, in some cases, inaction. Adequately planning for wildfires and subsequent debris flows or flooding in the West requires significantly more funding, resources, and creative policy solutions than are currently available, but taking action and making investments on the front end can lead to stronger communities that are better prepared to face future disasters.

Amanda Monthei is a freelance writer, podcast producer, and former wildland firefighter whose work on wildfire adaptation and resilience has been featured in The Atlantic and The Washington Post, as well as on her podcast Life with Fire. She lives in Bellingham, Washington.

Lead image: Smoke from the Hermits Peak–Calf Canyon wildfire over Las Vegas, New Mexico, in May 2022. Credit: Robert Browman/Albuquerque Journal via AP Images.

In Cincinnati lately, good fortune extends well beyond the Bengals, the city’s football team, which has consistently been making the playoffs. The population is growing after years of decline, companies are increasingly interested thanks to its strategic location, and there’s even talk of southwestern Ohio becoming a climate haven.

But any resurgence in a postindustrial legacy city comes with downsides, as newly elected Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval has been discovering: the potential displacement of established residents, and affordability that can vanish all too quickly.

One of Pureval’s first moves was to collaborate with the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority to buy nearly 200 rental properties in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, outbidding more than a dozen institutional investors that have been snapping up homes to rent them out for high profits. That sent an important signal, Pureval said in an interview for the Land Matters podcast: transitioning neighborhoods will be protected from the worst outcomes of market forces in play in Cincinnati.

“These out-of-town institutional investors … have no interest, frankly, in the wellbeing of Cincinnati or their tenants, buying up cheap single-family homes, not doing anything to invest in them, but overnight doubling or tripling the rents,” he said, noting a parallel effort to enforce code violations at many properties. “If you’re going to exercise predatory behavior in our community, well, we’re not going to stand for it, and we’re coming after you.”

Pureval, the half-Indian, half-Tibetan son of first-generation Americans, said affordability and displacement were his biggest concerns as Cincinnati—along with Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and other cities hard hit by steep declines in manufacturing and population—gets a fresh look as a desirable location. Cincinnati scored in the top 10 of cities least impacted by heat, drought, and sea-level rise in a recent Moody’s report.

“Right now, we are living through, in real-time, a paradigm shift,” spurred on by the pandemic and concerns about climate change, he said. “The way we live, work, and play is just completely changing. Remote work is … altering our economy and lifestyle throughout the entire country but particularly here in the Midwest. What I am convinced of due to this paradigm shift is because of climate change, because of the rising cost of living on the coast, there will be an inward migration.”

But, he said, “We have to preserve the families and the legacy communities that have been here, in the first place. No city in the country has figured out a way to grow without displacing. The market factors, the economic factors are so profound and so hard to influence, and the city’s resources are so limited. It’s really, really difficult.”

Joining a chorus of others all around the U.S., Pureval also said he supports reforming zoning and addressing other regulatory barriers that hinder multi-family housing and mixed-use and transit-oriented development.

An edited version of this interview will appear in print and online as part of the Mayor’s Desk series, our interviews with innovative chief executives of cities from around the world.

You can listen to the show and subscribe to Land Matters on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The show in its entirety can also be viewed as a video at the Lincoln Institute’s YouTube channel.

Further Reading

A Bid for Affordability: Notes from an Ambitious Housing Experiment in Cincinnati (Land Lines)

Activist House Flippers Take On Wall Street to Keep Homes From Investors (Wall Street Journal)

Meet Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval (SpectrumNews1)

They Told Him to Change His Name. Now Crowds Are Shouting It. (Politico)

Which U.S. cities will fare best in a warming world—and which will be hit hardest? (Washington Post)
 

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Lead image: Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval. Credit: © Amanda Rossmann – USA TODAY NETWORK.

“Climate change is water change.” It’s an adage that has caught on in certain circles, as our shifting global systems affect every part of the water cycle. In the United States, that has looked like record drought and aridification in the West, massive flooding in the Midwest, and superstorms in the East. Those climatic changes have also created secondary impacts, like land subsidence, longer wildfire seasons, and contaminated water supplies. And all these effects are complicated by factors ranging from population growth to aging infrastructure.

As these impacts hit every corner of the country, planners and water managers are finding new ways to address them, working together to build resilience in the face of an increasingly volatile climate. Planning for a future that could include an unpredictable combination of drought, flooding, pollution, and other water-related issues takes a significant shift, says Bill Cesanek of the American Planning Association’s Water and Planning Network. “Historically, U.S. communities have dealt with land use planning and water management in separate silos,” Cesanek says. “But now we know we have to manage them using an integrated approach.”

Traditionally, he explains, water departments and planners have often worked within different geopolitical boundaries, management structures, and timelines, even as their work has overlapped on the ground. But with communities growing rapidly, especially in the South, and climate change exacerbating water-related risks, planning is becoming more complex, and the need for collaboration more urgent.

“We need an integrated and multidisciplinary approach,” agrees Brenda Bateman, director of the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development. Bateman is chair of the American Water Resources Association’s Land and Water Specialty Conference, an event focused on connecting land and water for healthy communities. “These problems are so thorny that if we try to solve them one by one, or in a vacuum, we end up with solutions or results that don’t stick. They’re tied together regardless of how our budgets and bureaucracies work.”

The goal of improving planning and resource management processes so they are more integrated, resilient, flexible, and creative is complicated by regional differences—“what works in California won’t necessarily work in New Jersey,” Cesanek says. And since the nature of climate volatility means what works in California today won’t necessarily work in the future, planners and water managers have to prepare for many possible scenarios.

“In the planning world, it used to be ‘let’s envision the highly desirable future we want, and build to that,’” says Jim Holway, director of the Lincoln Institute’s Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy. “Now we have to put in place policies that will be robust across different futures—not just desirable ones—and bring in programs that are more adaptive. This is a shift in approach.”

Anticipating potential futures and changing practices to account for uncertainty is tricky, but not impossible. And despite the local nature of planning and resource management, shared practices and strategies can work across the country. Here’s how three communities facing different challenges are adapting their approaches and practices to prepare for a changing future.

New Orleans: Living with Water

Few cities have spent as much time and energy fighting water as New Orleans. The city was built on a natural levee along the Mississippi River, a prized location that offered obvious economic and environmental benefits. But centuries of efforts to engineer the river and drain the surrounding swamps led to land subsidence so severe that some neighborhoods are up to 11 feet below sea level, making them prone to frequent flooding. New Orleans is also one of the rainiest places in the country, with five feet of annual precipitation, and is vulnerable to the increasingly strong hurricanes that frequent the Gulf Coast.

When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, inundating 80 percent of the city, it explicitly revealed a truth that had been gradually coming to light: New Orleans couldn’t use its historical approaches to fight the stronger storms and rising waters of climate change. It had to think differently.

“Katrina was a tipping point,” says Ed Blakely, a global urban policy expert who led the city’s recovery effort. Blakely says the city’s previous approach to water—attempting to overpower it rather than planning around natural streamflow and flood patterns—reflected a common urban pattern in the United States: “We have not used history to plan settlement.”

As the urgent work of recovery got underway, a new approach to long-term planning began to emerge as well. With support from a state community resilience fund powered by federal disaster recovery dollars, the region’s economic development organization, Greater New Orleans, Inc. (GNO) commissioned a project that would help the city reimagine its relationship to water.

Inspired by the Dutch approach to water management, which hinges on collaborating across disciplines and viewing water as an asset, the Greater New Orleans Water Plan drew on local, national, and international expertise, envisioning nature-inspired systems and strategies that could help manage stormwater more effectively and contribute to the health of residents, ecosystems, and the economy. The green infrastructure proposals in the plan ranged from small-scale retrofits like bioswales and permeable pavement to the more comprehensive strategic use of parks, canals, and waterways to slow and store water.

The ambitious plan intentionally focused on physical space, not policy or politics, explains Andy Sternad, an architect and resilience expert who was a lead author of the plan for New Orleans–based firm Waggonner & Ball. It won acclaim from organizations including C40 Cities and APA, which gave it a National Planning Excellence Award in 2015, in part due to its collaborative nature. “Planners have been instrumental in communicating with designers and engineers about the spatial, socioeconomic, political, and cultural impacts of the plan,” APA noted in its award description. “They have also been successful in integrating the Urban Water Plan with the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan and other local planning processes.”

“The water plan facilitated a new way for us to approach water, locally and regionally,” says Robin Barnes, a New Orleans-based economic recovery and resilience consultant who is the former executive vice president and COO of GNO, Inc. “It provides us with information and schematics and instructions about everything from materials to specific demonstration projects, and it illustrates how living with water can work.”

Barnes has been a director on the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans (SWBNO) since 2014, and says she has seen the plan’s guiding philosophy seep into operations citywide and regionally. The idea of living with water can be seen in everything from stormwater storage requirements for new construction and pilot projects funded by the SWBNO to broader initiatives such as the Gentilly Resilience District, a multi-pronged effort to reduce flood risk and support revitalization across an entire neighborhood. The city has received significant federal funding for green infrastructure, including a major award from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s National Disaster Resilience Competition.

The city’s master plan envisions that by 2030, New Orleans will become “a city that celebrates its relationship to water.” The plan prioritizes water conservation, sustainable stormwater management, and the protection of wetlands and other areas needed for water storage. It endorses land use approaches that were key elements of the post-Katrina rebuilding effort, says Blakely, such as density, infill development, and building on high ground.

Recommendations like those are constructive outcomes of the devastation caused by Katrina. So are community-level conversations about water management and resilience that continue to evolve, led in part by the Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans, which formed after the release of the water plan.

Like many cities, New Orleans has faced challenges as it works to implement these ideas, from the pandemic to political transitions. There is still much work to be done, but other flood-prone places across the country have begun to embrace the New Orleans mindset; Sternad and his Waggonner & Ball colleagues have brought the Living with Water approach to cities including Houston, Miami, Charleston, Hampton, Virginia, and Bridgeport, Connecticut.

“We are poised to lead future climate solutions, in part because the things we experience here provide valuable lessons for other cities,” Sternad says. “It’s OK to live in a place that floods sometimes, as long as the culture, and eventually the infrastructure, can adapt.”

Evans, Colorado: Preparing for Scarcity

The northern Colorado city of Evans has a population of 21,000, a projected growth rate of 3 percent per year, and a reliable supply of water from the region’s river basins. But demand for water is projected to come close to the limits of that supply by the end of the decade, especially as the state faces drying and warming due to climate change. As the city grows, its municipal departments are trying to work together to make sure that demand doesn’t exceed supply.

“We’re going into a period where we have increasing demand for water, but the pie is shrinking,” says Anne Best Johnson, former community development director in Evans. “It’s one thing to divide up a growing pie, but it’s harder and harder to divide a shrinking pie.”

In 2019, the city completed a Municipal Water Efficiency Plan, a guide for its water conservation measures. That plan identified 34 water conservation activities that the city will prioritize for implementation, ranging from outdoor watering and landscape design ordinances to requirements for things like wind and rain sensors for new developments, and water-efficient fixture retrofits for existing buildings. If all of these steps are implemented, projections suggest the city could see total water savings of up to 17 percent by 2028 compared to projected demand.

Around the time the water plan came out, city officials started their decadal update of the city’s comprehensive plan. “The timing was important because these documents guide the city for anywhere from 10 to 30 years,” says Justine Schoenbacher, the city’s water conservation coordinator. Both planning processes incorporated cross-departmental input and extensive public outreach, Schoenbacher adds: “The fact that both plans were updated in a time of heightened awareness around water resource issues was beneficial.” She says the timing and collaborative approaches allowed the city to seamlessly integrate the plans and address water resources comprehensively.

Johnson—who left her role in Evans in early 2023 for a similar role in nearby Berthoud—says city officials were able to build principles from the Municipal Water Efficiency Plan into the comprehensive plan, which includes a chapter on water conservation and stewardship, as well as instructions for incorporating water conservation principles into planning.

This puts Evans on a solid path toward a sustainable water supply. But the city didn’t do it alone. Johnson says support from other organizations helped the small city maximize its efforts. In 2018, as officials were working on the municipal water plan, they participated in a Growing Water Smart workshop hosted by the Sonoran Institute and the Babbitt Center, which allowed them to learn from other communities and create their own action plan. “Land and water are interlinked, and the local planning and decision-making frameworks for how we use them should be too,” says Kristen Keener Busby, associate director for practice and partnerships at the Babbitt Center. “Growing Water Smart workshops help communities identify thoughtful ways to make these connections and implement actions to strengthen their sustainability and resilience.”

The city also participated as a pilot community for a Water and Land Use Metrics program coordinated by the Sonoran Institute, which helped them measure their local water conservation data. To help implement their Growing Water Smart action plan, they received technical support from WaterNow Alliance and Western Resource Advocates to administer a water efficiency audit program and a community-wide fixture replacement and installation program. Schoenbacher says that has been key in helping them make tangible progress, and in educating the community about the application and benefits of the water efficiency plan.

As they put the plans into practice, Johnson says city leaders are trying to be proactive and clear about their goals, by talking to the community and gathering data to show what’s working well. “A lot of time, money, effort, and citizen input went into our guide for moving forward,” she says. “We don’t want to have a comp plan that just sits on the shelf.” Johnson says the city started with the easiest projects, like fixture retrofits, to show the community that reducing water use didn’t have to be painful. Then they started to bring in some of the bigger pieces. Using those tools, they’re confident that they can balance population growth and new development while decreasing citywide water use.

“Change can be very threatening to people. If you offer them opportunities to have success, then you’re going to be seen as a community that encourages business while being respectful of your environment and limited resources,” Johnson says. Evans, she adds, “wants to have an opportunity to grow and change when it’s not a reactionary situation.”

Schoenbacher says that’s true across the region, where communities need to be planning for scarcity. Communication and early thoughtful action are both key for being prepared, she notes: “We adhere to the motto that’s happening across the West: we need to be doing more with less. We’re thinking about that potential gap between supply and demand in the long term. What changes can communities make now to preserve our rights and ability to grow in the future?”

Golden Valley, Minnesota: Thinking Beyond Boundaries

A decade ago, planners and water engineers in the Minneapolis suburb of Golden Valley worked in different departments on different floors of city hall. “There was general agreement on the direction that the city was moving, but there was minimal coordination,” says Planning Director Jason Zimmerman. To facilitate communication and collaboration in this city of 22,000, which relies primarily on redevelopment to accommodate growth, the city combined planning, engineering, and inspections into one department, creating an open-concept office on a single floor of the building.

Today, Zimmerman says, “there is close communication between planning and engineering staff, in relation to redevelopment projects in particular. . . . Planning decisions always acknowledge the requirements and challenges associated with water.”

Those challenges have increased as climate change makes storms in the region stronger. “New flood elevations due to more intense rain events have created new challenges for properties in low-lying areas,” Zimmerman says, noting that planners carefully evaluate grading when reviewing site plans, in light of the increased runoff caused by extreme weather.

As Golden Valley continues to adjust its practices to meet evolving needs, a state-enabled regional planning agency, the Metropolitan Council, is helping the city address pollution, plan for flooding, and protect the quality of its creeks and lakes by thinking beyond boundaries. Golden Valley buys its water from the city of Minneapolis, as part of a joint agreement with two other nearby suburbs, Crystal and New Hope. The Metropolitan Council oversees wastewater collection and treatment infrastructure and water supply planning across the area, a relatively unique arrangement that helps communities learn from each other. “We’re working with our partners in the region to make sure we have sustainable supplies for the growth that is planned,” says Judy Sventek, Met Council’s manager of water resources. “People think of Minnesota as a water-rich state with 10,000 lakes, but we do have water supply limitations” including differences in the types and quantities of water communities can access.

In 2005, the council created a Water Supply Planning Unit to bring communities together from across the region. A decade later, this work shaped updates to regional water policy reflected in the 2040 Water Resources Policy Plan, which directly influenced Golden Valley’s 2040 Comprehensive Plan and its goals of responding to new and changing development, future water demands, and changing weather patterns.

“In the ’80s, when most people lived in the urban core around Minneapolis and St. Paul, most residents and businesses relied on surface water,” Sventek says. “Now 75 percent of residents in the metro area are using groundwater from wells in the suburbs. We’re thinking about the implications of this change as cities continue to grow outward, and we’re looking at how climate change affects water supply.”

Lanya Ross, a Met Council environmental analyst, says the council’s regional vision can help communities like Golden Valley make long-term water-supply plans in the face of changing climate and population dynamics. It also serves as a hub of data on issues like regional groundwater modeling and flooding impacts, which individual communities might not have access to or might not normally consider. In Golden Valley, where Bassett Creek is a critical waterway, leaders can use this shared information to see where stormwater management projects can be most helpful, and how redevelopment projects can help with flood control. “We can look at the entire region: how we plan for sustainable water resources together and how do those interactions happen,” Ross says.

In the face of climate change, communication among neighboring communities can be particularly important on the supply side. It can lead to sharing tools and resources to protect source water, monitor aquifer levels, and address contamination from pollutants like phosphorus and nitrate that come from agricultural runoff.

Sventek says other states and organizations have looked at the Met Council’s approach, especially on the supply side, because planning for watershed health is becoming more relevant and necessary. Having an entity that plans for a region and addresses issues across local boundaries is also helpful for transferring knowledge and thinking about the big picture, she says—and that shows up in the way places like Golden Valley are planning for the future.

Hard Decisions Ahead

The need for big-picture, long-term thinking by policy makers across the country is clear. “There isn’t a place that is not subject to some form of disaster in the United States, be it drought, cyclones, or tornados. We’ve seen flooding year after year,” says Blakely, who led the Hurricane Katrina recovery in New Orleans. “We need to be catching up to the game, not adding to the destruction.”

The threats are different from place to place and ecosystem to ecosystem, but there are broadscale ways to address climate-related disasters. Communities can store and reuse water, instead of relying on manmade infrastructure to fend it off. They can plan for uncertainty, anticipate a range of futures, and implement adaptable long-term plans. They can also collaborate and work across boundaries to manage resources regionally, build resilience, and increase flexibility.

To stay ahead of the game, planners and water managers need to implement changes now, working across departments to integrate land and water planning. “We made a lot of choices that have kicked the can down the road by saying, ‘We’ll do more monitoring or regulation at a later date.’ That time has arrived,” says Bateman, chair of this year’s AWRA conference. “We’re going to have to make some hard decisions. We’re going to need leaders who are willing to make those decisions based on science.”

Holway says organizations like APA, AWRA, the American Water Works Association, and the Babbitt Center can help communities build the capacity they need to implement solutions by providing tools and support, and by helping them connect across geographic and bureaucratic boundaries. “We’re not trying to predict the future, we’re trying to prepare for a range of potential future conditions. Building that awareness and working in new ways can start to change the narrative and lay the groundwork for implementing necessary programs,” he says. “As you look forward, disasters are going to be a constant. They’re going to come one after another, and if that’s the future, we need to prepare for that.”

Resources and Further Reading

The Growing Water Smart program introduces communities to strategies and tools that can help them integrate water and land use planning to better adapt to change and uncertainty. A joint program of the Sonoran Institute and the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, Growing Water Smart has reached more than 80 communities in Colorado, Arizona, and Utah, and is expanding to California and along the Mexican border this year. To learn more, watch our “Growing Water Smart” video.

To learn more about how communities are incorporating water into their planning processes, check out Integrating Land Use and Water Management: Planning and Practice, a Lincoln Institute Policy Focus Report by Erin Rugland.

Connecting land and water for healthy communities is the theme of this year’s American Water Resources Association (AWRA) summer conference, to be held July 17–19 in Denver. The planning committee for this event includes representatives from the Lincoln Institute’s Babbitt Center and many other organizations, agencies, and institutions working to advance the integration of land and water planning. 

Heather Hansman is a freelance journalist, Outside magazine’s environmental columnist, and the author of the book Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West.

Image: An illustration from the Greater New Orleans Water Plan shows how redesigning streets with rain gardens, pervious pavement, and other elements can help slow and store stormwater, reducing flooding. Credit: Waggonner & Ball.

Los últimos kilómetros del viaje de una hora en dirección oeste desde Boston a la Granja Knowlton en Grafton, Massachussetts, recorren una gran variedad de paisajes: bosques, loteos residenciales con casas de estilo ranchero de la década de 1950, subdivisiones sin árboles en las que predominan grandes casas nuevas y pretenciosas, y las onduladas praderas del área de conservación Hennessy Conservation Area que abarca 65 hectáreas. Por último, se vislumbra el viejo establo rojo de la granja, con un pequeño letrero que dice “Hay 4 Sale” (Se vende heno) sobre un camino rural arbolado.

En sus mejores épocas, este negocio familiar de 135 hectáreas fue una granja lechera. Sin embargo, cuando las ganancias de la industria lechera comenzaron a escasear a fines de la década de 1990, la familia Knowlton vendió el rebaño y se centró en la producción de heno. Este día de fines de agosto, Paul Knowlton, miembro de la cuarta generación de propietarios de la granja, enfarda heno en un campo más allá del granero rodeado por bosques. Un águila de anchas alas planea sobre la zona. El sol está fuerte, pero la luz suave y el canto de los grillos advierten que se acerca el atardecer. Knowlton conduce un pequeño tractor verde, que remolca una cosechadora mecánica que produce fardos rectangulares, como una caja de sorpresas, a medida que recorre el campo de heno.

En un año o dos, todo se verá diferente. La Granja Knowlton produce heno, frutos rojos, calabazas, hojas verdes y carne de res alimentada con pasturas, todo con menos de 3,1 megavatios (MW) de paneles solares “agrovoltaicos” diseñados para la producción de energía renovable y cultivos en el mismo suelo. Los ingresos generados con este proyecto de paneles solares instalados recientemente le permitirán a Knowlton quedarse con la granja, que pertenece a su familia desde el 1800. También podrá plantar nuevos cultivos, comprar un poco de ganado y probar prácticas de cultivo regenerativas que pueden contribuir a mejorar la salud del suelo, restaurar los ecosistemas y capturar carbono. Los paneles son parte de un proyecto comunitario de energía solar de la zona que producirá suficiente energía para abastecer a alrededor de 520 casas. Una menor cantidad de paneles producen la energía necesaria para llevar a cabo las actividades de la granja.

Uno de ellos se encuentra en un campo de 0,8 hectáreas detrás de la casa. A diferencia de los paneles solares convencionales instalados en el suelo muy cerca de la superficie, estos paneles fotovoltaicos se elevan casi tres metros por encima de esta. Knowlton plantó raigrás de invierno como cultivo de cobertura a fin de preparar el campo para los cultivos de primavera. Monarcas y otras mariposas revolotean entre el centeno y las flores silvestres que crecen dispersas bajo las hileras de relucientes paneles. Los paneles están separados entre sí por varias decenas de metros para permitir la circulación del equipamiento de cosecha entre ellos.

Los sistemas agrovoltaicos, también conocidos como paneles solares fotovoltaicos, se implementaron con éxito en Japón y algunos países de Europa en la última década. En los Estados Unidos, están emergiendo como una forma de que las tierras agrícolas contribuyan con la mitigación del cambio climático y la generación de resiliencia ante este, a la vez que los agricultores permanecen en sus propiedades en un momento muy disruptivo para la agricultura. Mientras tanto, en la costa oeste, que se ve azotada por sequías, las estrategias agrícolas de transición inteligentes desde el punto de vista climático fomentan la instalación de sistemas de energía solar más convencionales en tierras agrícolas que ya no pueden usarse para la agricultura.

Ubicar instalaciones de producción de energía renovable en tierras agrícolas no es un concepto nuevo en este país. En estados con llanuras ventosas, el desarrollo eólico ayudó a impulsar las economías agrícolas que llevaban una década en decadencia. Además, un estudio realizado en 2021 por la Universidad Cornell reveló que el 44 por ciento de la energía solar a gran escala existente en el estado de Nueva York se desarrolló en tierras agrícolas (Katkar et al., 2021). Los espacios abiertos de las tierras agrícolas son especialmente buenos para el desarrollo de instalaciones de energía renovable, además de que suele ser más fácil conectar a la red los proyectos de paneles solares en áreas rurales porque hay una mayor capacidad de transmisión en comparación con áreas urbanas densamente pobladas. Los agricultores se benefician de las contraprestaciones por arrendar parte de su terreno, lo que puede hacer una gran diferencia al momento de recuperar las granjas de la bancarrota.

A medida que la energía renovable se populariza y los dirigentes de todo el mundo se comprometen con las metas de transición energética, surgen nuevas oportunidades. La energía solar está en auge en los Estados Unidos debido a la baja en los precios de los paneles fotovoltaicos. En la última década, la industria creció un 42 por ciento por año. En el 2020, se la valuó en 25.300 dólares, con más de 100 gigavatios en paneles solares instalados en el país. El presidente Biden redobló la apuesta hace poco y anunció una meta para todo el sector económico de cero emisiones netas de gases de efecto invernadero para el 2050. Investigadores de la Universidad de Princeton estiman que, para cumplir esta meta, se deberán implementar soluciones solares y eólicas en alrededor de 60.000 millones de hectáreas, o suelo equivalente a la superficie de Wyoming y Colorado (Larson et al., 2020). Eso representa una porción considerable de las tierras agrícolas de los EE.UU., que en el 2020 se acercaban a los 364.000 millones de hectáreas. Al mismo tiempo, la Ley de Gestión Sostenible del Agua Subterránea de California impulsa el retiro de entre 202.000 y 404.000 hectáreas de las 2.023.000 de hectáreas que conforman las tierras agrícolas irrigadas del valle Central para el 2040, como parte de una iniciativa para reequilibrar el suministro de agua subterránea del estado.

Invertir en energía renovable en las tierras agrícolas podría ser muy beneficioso para la mitigación del clima, la conservación y la agricultura, tanto para los agricultores como para las economías locales, pero solo si se hace de la manera correcta, dicen los observadores. Los paneles fotovoltaicos representan “una gran oportunidad para la agricultura y la zona rural de los Estados Unidos”, dice David Haight, vicepresidente de programas en American Farmland Trust, que es certificador de terceros del proyecto de la Granja Knowlton. “Pero para implementarlos, debemos tener en cuenta la agricultura, de modo que no se desplacen granjas en grandes partes del paisaje”. Haight dice que el 90 por ciento de la capacidad solar nueva instalada para el 2050 se desarrollará en zonas rurales.

Mientras tanto, las instalaciones en tierras agrícolas no productivas pueden impulsar las metas de conservación, ya que permiten que los agricultores permanezcan en sus terrenos. Las tierras agrícolas bien administradas pueden brindar una variedad de servicios de ecosistemas, desde capturar carbono y proporcionar un hábitat para diversas especies de plantas y animales nativos, hasta protegernos de inundaciones, sequías y olas de calor.

Ya sea que la energía solar complemente a la agricultura o la reemplace en una parte de una granja, la renta asociada “puede ayudar a los agricultores con dificultades económicas a mantenerse durante épocas de mal clima o problemas económicos”, dice Jim Holway, director del Centro Babbitt para Políticas de Suelo y Agua del Instituto Lincoln. La renta de las fuentes renovables, agrega, puede aportar fondos para mejoras beneficiosas de la eficiencia del agua u otras inversiones para la conservación de la tierra y el suelo.

Paneles fotovoltaicos en el noreste 

Entre 2001 y 2016, según el American Farmland Trust, aproximadamente 42.700 hectáreas del 1.606.602 de hectáreas de tierras agrícolas de Nueva Inglaterra se perdieron o vieron amenazadas debido a la urbanización. Alrededor del 35 por ciento se perdió definitivamente en manos de la urbanización, mientras que el resto sufrió los efectos de desarrollos residenciales de baja densidad, que de todas formas alteran la naturaleza de las comunidades rurales.

El cambio climático agrega más presión, ya que las lluvias intensas, las inundaciones y las sequías intermitentes, entre otros factores, presentan más desafíos para la agricultura (ver nota de recuadro). “Las incertezas del futuro sobre cómo mantener la viabilidad de las granjas son cada vez más, y eso genera mucha incertidumbre sobre la permanencia de las tierras agrícolas como parcelas para la agricultura”, dice Emily Cole, directora adjunta de Nueva Inglaterra en American Farmland Trust.

La agricultura es responsable de alrededor de un quinto del total de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero del mundo, pero las iniciativas de transición hacia prácticas agrícolas que capturan carbono en la tierra podrían convertirla en parte de la solución. La Academia Nacional de Ciencias estima que las tierras agrícolas de los EE.UU. tienen una capacidad de captura de carbono equivalente a 276.000 millones de toneladas de dióxido de carbono, un cuatro por ciento de las emisiones del país. Sin embargo, eso no es posible una vez que las tierras agrícolas dejan de ser propiedad de un agricultor y se destinan a la urbanización permanente, dice Cole. “A partir de ese momento, ya no hay posibilidad de mejorar las prácticas de salud del suelo ni de generar energía limpia”.

Paul Knowlton conoce muy bien estas presiones. Grafton es el centro de lo que la Sociedad Audubon de Massachusetts llama “la frontera de expansión urbana descontrolada”, un cinturón de comunidades que se desarrollan con rapidez en el centro de Massachussetts en las afueras de Worcester, la segunda ciudad más grande de Nueva Inglaterra. Los precios de las parcelas son altos y los agricultores mayores se enfrentan a una presión cada vez más fuerte para vender sus tierras. Varios emprendedores inmobiliarios se han acercado a Knowlton, que incluso trabaja como carpintero en construcciones residenciales para complementar los ingresos de la agricultura. “Cada vez que voy a trabajar, veo una granja destruida. Soy parte de la máquina y no me gusta”, se lamenta.

Por un tiempo después de vender su rebaño, la familia Knowlton se las arregló para llegar a fin de mes con la venta de heno e ingresos por otros trabajos. Sin embargo, cuando llegó el momento de hacer una renovación completa de la casa de campo, la familia separó una parcela y la vendió a un emprendedor inmobiliario. En ese momento, Knowlton supo que había otra manera.

En 2015, instaló paneles solares convencionales de 2,5 megavatios que estabilizaron las contraprestaciones por arrendamiento de la granja. El éxito llevó a Knowlton a pensar si podía instalar más paneles solares de una forma que le permitiera cultivar alrededor. BlueWave, la empresa de paneles solares que había instalado los primeros, justamente estaba pensando lo mismo.

John DeVillars, fundador de BlueWave, exsecretario de Medioambiente de Massachussetts y administrador regional de la EPA, tiene lazos fuertes con la comunidad ecologista. Fue uno de los primeros desarrolladores de paneles solares del estado en aprovechar los incentivos que el programa Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART) de 2018 de Massachussetts brindaba por proyectos con paneles solares fotovoltaicos.

“Lo que nos motiva es proteger el suelo, apoyar a las comunidades y la agricultura, y también la energía renovable”, dice DeVillars. “Los paneles agrovoltaicos son una gran oportunidad para fortalecer las comunidades rurales . . . y permitir que todos compartan los beneficios de un entorno más limpio y de alimentos más sanos de producción local”.

El acuerdo de la Granja Knowlton involucra a muchas partes: AES, una empresa de energía internacional que es dueña del proyecto; el Departamento de Energía y el Departamento de Agricultura de Massachussetts; la Universidad de Massachussetts, que estudiará el impacto de los sistemas en la producción agrícola y las condiciones del suelo; American Farmland Trust; y un consultor agrícola, Iain Ward, a quien BlueWave reclutó para ayudar en el desarrollo de los planes de plantación y como asesor de Knowlton. AES le proporciona a Knowlton contraprestaciones por arrendamiento y un estipendio para cubrir los gastos agrícolas, que, en algún momento, le permitirán dejar la carpintería y cumplir su sueño de ser agricultor a tiempo completo.

No todos los desarrolladores de paneles solares fotovoltaicos pagan estipendios y contratan consultores agrícolas. Algunos simplemente le pagan al agricultor para alquilar la tierra. “El modelo de BlueWave es progresivo”, dice Ward. “Da prioridad a los agricultores y los tiene en cuenta . . . el espíritu con el que imagino que se crearon los paneles solares fotovoltaicos”.

Ward cultiva arándanos rojos y defiende la agricultura regenerativa. Ve en los paneles solares fotovoltaicos una oportunidad de pagarles a los agricultores para que prueben cultivar de una manera nueva. Hace unos años, inauguró su propia empresa consultora, Solar Agricultural Services.

Ward, vestido con jeans, una camiseta, botas y un sombrero marrón, le muestra a un visitante la segunda instalación (mucho más grande) de paneles solares fotovoltaicos de Knowlton, ubicada en un sector de pastoreo más allá del campo de heno. Los paneles de ambas instalaciones son bifaciales, dice. Esto significa que permiten que la luz solar penetre la superficie y llegue al suelo, lo que aporta más luz a los cultivos. En un año o dos, el campo debajo de esta instalación de 4,6 hectáreas será pastizal para ganado para carne. Knowlton plantará principalmente alfalfa, así como algunos rábanos y calabazas para enriquecer el suelo. Ahora está cubierto de raigrás, que funciona como cultivo de cobertura.

Knowlton está especialmente entusiasmado con las vacas. “Hace mucho que no tenemos animales”, dice con emoción, recordando que solía ordeñar las vacas con su padre y abuelo todos los fines de semana y cada día después del trabajo. “No veo la hora de volver a eso”.

Ward espera que los resultados de la Granja Knowlton ayuden a generar un debate nacional que impulse una mayor adopción de los paneles solares fotovoltaicos. Las investigaciones realizadas a la fecha se han llevado a cabo, en su mayoría, en entornos experimentales. En un estudio de la Universidad de Arizona sobre tomates cherry y dos tipos de pimientos, se descubrió que los cultivos se beneficiaban de no recibir luz solar directa. Los jalapeños perdían menos agua por transpiración, lo que sugiere que cultivar debajo de paneles solares fotovoltaicos puede ahorrar agua en climas cálidos y secos (Barron-Gafford et al., 2019). Una investigación no publicada de la Universidad de Massachussetts reveló que los paneles solares ayudaban a reducir el estrés del calor y a lograr una mayor producción de cultivos como brócoli, acelga, kale y pimientos, aunque la sombra disminuía el rendimiento en algunos casos (Sandler, Mupambi y Jeranyami 2019). Unos investigadores en Japón realizaron un análisis y observaron que ciertos tipos de sistemas agrovoltaicos funcionan incluso con cultivos intolerantes a la sombra, como el maíz (Sekiyama y Nagashima 2019).

Los paneles solares fotovoltaicos son mejores en proyectos pequeños, en zonas en las que hay una fuerte competencia por el suelo, porque el aspecto económico es complejo si no hay incentivos, y se requiere mucha supervisión y asistencia técnica para garantizar que los planes de administración de las tierras agrícolas sean sólidos. Los costos de construcción de los paneles solares fotovoltaicos son un 40 por ciento más altos que los de los paneles convencionales, dice Drew Pierson, jefe de sostenibilidad en BlueWave. Los mantos elevados aumentan el costo de los materiales y de mano de obra. Los costos del seguro también son más altos por la actividad continua que se desarrolla debajo de los paneles.

Massachussetts es líder en el uso de paneles solares fotovoltaicos por su programa SMART, que se diseñó para agregar 3.200 megavatios de energía solar a la red. Con SMART, los proyectos fotovoltaicos pueden recibir una compensación base de entre 0,14 y 0,26 dólares por kilovatio-hora de electricidad producida, según el tamaño del proyecto y los servicios locales, y reciben 0,06 dólares adicionales por kilovatio-hora como parte de un incentivo federal. A la fecha, 11 proyectos, que suman 23 megavatios, cumplen con los rigurosos requisitos de elegibilidad del estado. Incluso con los incentivos, dice DeVillars, “el aspecto económico es, cuando menos, muy desafiante”.

El año pasado, Nueva Jersey aprobó un incentivo similar al de Massachussetts. En Nueva York, los proyectos solares reciben mejores calificaciones si tienen características agrovoltaicas, pero no está claro si eso ayudará a incentivar proyectos o si complicará la obtención de permisos, dice Pierson. También se están desarrollando agrovoltaicos para campos de polinizadores y pastizales en el centro oeste y el oeste. Mientras tanto, investigadores de California estudian si las instalaciones solares podrían evitar que las tierras agrícolas de barbecho desaparezcan por completo.

La agricultura y el cambio climático 

La Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura (FAO) estima que la agricultura y los cambios asociados al uso del suelo, como la deforestación, generaron el 17 por ciento de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero del mundo en el 2018. Si se tienen en cuenta actividades como el empaquetado y el procesamiento, el sistema de alimentación representa el 34 por ciento de todas las emisiones, una cifra que se estima que se incrementará a medida que la población mundial aumenta a pasos agigantados, dice la FAO. Si bien la agricultura contribuye con el cambio climático, también sufre el impacto del clima: las temperaturas más altas, las sequías, las pestes y las inundaciones afectan a los cultivos, las condiciones para la ganadería y otros elementos esenciales de un suministro de alimentos en funcionamiento. Las prácticas regenerativas que restauran la salud del ecosistema y capturan carbono, como la siembra directa y el uso de cultivos de cobertura, se promocionan cada vez más como una forma de que los agricultores generen resiliencia y sean parte de la solución climática. 

Paneles solares en tierras agrícolas del oeste 

En el oeste, el agua (o la falta de esta) está siendo el impulsor clave para la instalación de energía renovable en las tierras agrícolas. Las sequías extremas relacionadas con el cambio climático disminuyen el suministro de agua a la misma velocidad que el aumento de la población incrementa la demanda. Tras la declaración federal de sequía en la cuenca del río Colorado en el 2021, los agricultores del centro de Arizona se enfrentan a grandes recortes en el suministro de agua de río. California y Colorado también tienen dificultades para equilibrar el uso de agua en la agricultura, la creciente demanda de agua en las ciudades y la disminución de los recursos hídricos.

“Siempre existió esta idea de que la calidad del suelo es la que determina el mejor lugar para cultivar. Ahora nos enfrentamos a un nuevo paradigma en el que el mejor suelo, sin agua, es solo tierra”, dice Lorelei Oviatt, directora de planificación para el condado de Kern, California.

En un esfuerzo por tomar el control de los recursos que escasean, en 2014, California aprobó la Ley de Gestión Sostenible del Agua Subterránea (SGMA). Una de las estrategias clave que propone es la presencia de tierras agrícolas de barbecho. Ahora que tanto en California como en otros lugares con sequía en el oeste se observan transiciones en las tierras agrícolas, el Centro Babbitt para Políticas de Suelo y Agua investiga futuros sostenibles para la agricultura, así como maneras de llegar a ellos y sostenerlos, dice Holway, el director del centro.

El equipo de Holway explora cómo facilitar transiciones voluntarias de tierras agrícolas de forma que se usen los mercados de suelo, se mantengan las economías agrícolas y se conserve el suelo más productivo para el cultivo. El centro también investiga cómo maximizar los beneficios del ecosistema y si existe la posibilidad de capturar carbono en las tierras agrícolas fuera de producción. Como parte de su trabajo, el Centro Babbitt financia al Instituto de Políticas Públicas de California (PPIC, por su sigla en inglés) para que investigue el potencial del desarrollo solar en el valle de San Joaquín.

Según Ellen Hanak, vicepresidenta y directora del Centro de Políticas de Agua del PPIC, esa región, que ocupa la parte sur del valle Central del estado, famoso por su productividad, tiene el déficit de agua subterránea más grande de California y sufre algunos de los peores efectos de la sobreexplotación, como la subsidencia del agua y la sequía de pozos. El PPIC estima que entre el 10 y el 20 por ciento de las tierras agrícolas del valle (de 202.000 a 400.000 hectáreas) deberán retirarse por completo de conformidad con la SGMA.

“Si no planificamos cómo se dará la transición, tendrá un impacto económico de mil millones de dólares”, dice Holway. La ejecución hipotecaria de hogares, la bancarrota y los problemas de la cadena de suministro son parte de los efectos que podríamos observar por elegir tierras al azar para el barbecho.

El PPIC está estudiando cómo el desarrollo solar puede facilitar el retiro agrícola necesario de forma que el ingreso de los agricultores no se vea afectado. La investigación forma parte de un estudio más amplio sobre transiciones agrícolas inteligentes desde el punto de vista climático que analiza los beneficios y los costos de diferentes opciones para administrar el suelo. El PPIC también explora problemas como los riesgos de calidad del aire por el polvo, las pestes y las malezas que surgen en las tierras de barbecho, y el potencial de la agricultura de secano en invierno.

“Estamos trabajando con colegas para encontrar alternativas que podrían generar una renta y evitar factores externos negativos, pero que también podrían brindar beneficios, como el [almacenamiento] de carbono en el suelo, la retención de humedad en la tierra y la [protección] del hábitat. La energía solar es una de las opciones más prometedoras”, dice Hanak.

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) se está enfocando en el valle de San Joaquín para el desarrollo de energías renovables. En el informe “Power of Place”, de 2019, se identificó al valle de San Joaquín como un lugar prometedor para que el estado cumpla sus metas de energía renovable, porque está más degradado en términos ecológicos que los desiertos del interior de California, donde todavía habitan borregos cimarrones, tortugas del desierto y águilas reales (Wu et al., 2019). California estableció una meta de reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero un 80 por ciento por debajo de los niveles de 1990 para el 2050. Además, en 2018, aprobó una ley que exige que las fuentes de energía renovable proporcionen el 100 por ciento de la electricidad para el 2045.

“Obviamente, TNC está a favor del desarrollo de energías renovables, pero nos interesa hacerlo de formas que no dañen los hábitats existentes”, enfatiza Abigail Hart, directora de proyecto en el Programa de Agua de California de TNC.

“Si vas a construir instalaciones de energía renovable en tierras protegidas o destinadas a la agricultura, debes asegurarte de hacerlo en lugares que no sean esenciales por otras razones, como el hábitat”, confirma Jim Levitt, director de la Red Internacional de Conservación del Suelo del Instituto Lincoln. “Es importante ser estratégico”.

En el valle de San Joaquín, el desarrollo de energía solar a gran escala ya está en curso. Westlands Solar Park, uno de los desarrollos solares más grandes del mundo, se está construyendo en 8.093 hectáreas de antiguas tierras agrícolas que se contaminaron con selenio en los condados de Fresno y King. El desarrollador, CIM Group, planea instalar al menos 2.700 megavatios para el final de la década, lo que brindaría energía limpia a más de 750.000 hogares.

E.ON Solar instaló un proyecto más pequeño, de 20 megavatios, en Maricopa Orchards, un productor de almendras, naranjas y otros cultivos del condado de Kern. Ese proyecto es parte de un plan de conservación de un hábitat de 2.428 hectáreas diseñado por Maricopa Orchards y funcionarios locales. El plan permite el desarrollo solar en 1.618 hectáreas de tierras agrícolas, pero conserva 809 como hábitat de los zorros del desierto de San Joaquín, los lagartos leopardo de nariz roma, los tecolotes llaneros y otras especies en riesgo.

“En algunos casos, el suelo que no se cultiva desde hace un par de años puede funcionar como hábitat para especies en riesgo”, dice Hart. Las hectáreas conservadas funcionarán como corredores para la vida silvestre en la propiedad. La instalación de 20 megavatios, que ocupa 64 hectáreas y ahora es propiedad de Dominion Energy de Virginia, es el primero de muchos proyectos que se esperan en el resto de la parcela de Maricopa. Hart dice que TNC ve el acuerdo como “un ejemplo cautivante de cómo el desarrollo solar puede llevarse a cabo en suelo con funciones limitadas de una forma que genera energía renovable y crea un hábitat valioso”.

Si bien las energías eólica y solar son excelentes opciones para los propietarios, las comunidades suelen cuestionar si proveen “las mismas ventajas a la economía local” que el desarrollo de viviendas y espacios comerciales, dice Hanak. Algunas comunidades, como el condado de San Bernardino, prohibieron todo tipo de energía solar.

La exclusión de los impuestos por instalaciones solares en California, un incentivo aprobado en todo el estado a principios del 2000 que evita que la instalación de sistemas de energía solar que cumplan los requisitos afecte la valuación de una propiedad, es uno de los motivos por los que las comunidades temen en cuanto a la economía. Tenía sentido para las instalaciones en los techos y en proyectos a pequeña escala, pero no funciona para los proyectos solares a gran escala de hoy en día, observa Oviatt. Hanak está de acuerdo y agrega que el PPIC está investigando “las diferentes maneras de pagar la energía solar, para que este costo no recaiga sobre las arcas de un condado rural pobre”.

Hay otras cuestiones que deben tenerse en cuenta. En el condado de Kern, uno de los más grandes del valle, la capacidad de transmisión es un factor limitante, dice Oviatt. El condado de Kern ya instaló paneles en 20.234 hectáreas, principalmente en suelos marginales. “Recién ahora alcanzamos la cantidad de energía solar que tenemos”, dice. Sin líneas de transmisión adicionales, los agricultores no podrán vender su suelo a desarrolladores de energía renovable. Por lo tanto, el condado de Kern busca otros usos posibles para las tierras agrícolas retiradas, incluida la tecnología para la captura de carbono.

El camino hacia el futuro 

La instalación de paneles solares, tanto convencionales como fotovoltaicos, en tierras agrícolas podría ayudar a los estados individuales y a los Estados Unidos a alcanzar las metas radicales de energía renovable. Los paneles solares en las tierras agrícolas reducen las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero del sector energético y, si se instalan correctamente, pueden ayudar a conservar el suelo y a proteger la biodiversidad y los recursos hídricos.

Jeremy McDiarmid, vicepresidente del Consejo de Energía Limpia de Nueva Inglaterra, señala que la energía solar puede ser una estrategia de desarrollo pasajera, a diferencia del desarrollo de viviendas o espacios comerciales. Según él, las comunidades deben “encontrar el equilibrio entre conservar el espacio abierto y desarrollar fuentes de energía limpia que . . . generen fuentes de trabajo locales y ayuden a alcanzar las metas climáticas”.

American Farmland Trust está creando una serie de principios para orientar la instalación de fuentes de energía renovable en tierras agrícolas de manera que se proteja a los agricultores y se mejoren la viabilidad y la productividad en las tierras que siguen activas. Esos principios también recomiendan aprovechar al máximo minas y terrenos abandonados, y los techos de construcciones urbanas. “Hay muchas opciones con impacto limitado para el suelo”, dice Haight. “Sin embargo, también sabemos que no podremos instalar todo en terrenos abandonados y dentro del entorno construido”.

Cole ve una oportunidad para iniciar conversaciones estado por estado para identificar las mejores tierras agrícolas, las necesidades de las comunidades agrícolas, y las metas solares y de protección del suelo de cada estado para desarrollar guías y programas específicos para cada uno de ellos.

Esas conversaciones recién se están iniciando en California, Massachussetts y Nueva York. En California, el Consejo de Crecimiento Estratégico, un organismo gubernamental, financia la investigación solar y la transición agrícola inteligente desde el punto de vista climático del PPIC para ayudar a planificar el futuro del valle de San Joaquín.

En Massachussetts, el Departamento de Recursos Energéticos estudia el potencial solar para la Mancomunidad de Naciones y, probablemente, sumará la posibilidad técnica y los usos del suelo competidores para la protección de la biodiversidad y el espacio abierto, según McDiarmid. En el estado de Nueva York, el profesor Max Zhang de Cornell dijo que su estudio reciente sobre el análisis del uso estratégico del suelo para el desarrollo de energía solar precipitó una reunión con senadores estatales (Katkar et al., 2021).

Mientras tanto, Levitt piensa que en las próximas décadas el sector agrícola podría sufrir otros problemas. La gran escasez de agua en paisajes áridos y semiáridos es uno de los posibles impulsores del cambio. Las industrias tradicionales de lácteos y carnes podrían verse desplazadas por productos alternativos como leches de frutos secos y carnes sintéticas. Este problema podría liberar una cantidad sustancial de suelo para la agricultura regenerativa, el desarrollo de energías renovables, la captura de carbono, la recarga de acuíferos y la protección de la vida silvestre, en particular en el sector del centro del país que ahora se destina al pastoreo del ganado y la siembra de los cultivos con los que se lo alimenta.

“Tal como está cambiando el patrón del uso del suelo en California, estas tendencias podrían alterar antiguos patrones del uso del suelo en toda América del Norte”, dice Levitt. Si bien las poderosas asociaciones de la industria agrícola harán lo que sea necesario para minimizar estos problemas, así como lo harán los estados en los que la agricultura es una parte fundamental de la identidad, la cultura y la economía, Levitt dice que existe el potencial para un cambio drástico y que es posible que los factores que lo impulsan cobren fuerza con el tiempo.

Mientras los sistemas fotovoltaicos se instalan y empiezan a funcionar en la Granja Knowlton y otros sitios, aún quedan dudas sobre las dimensiones de las instalaciones solares fotovoltaicas en diferentes geografías y sistemas agrícolas. La expansión de los sistemas convencionales de paneles solares en tierras agrícolas retiradas es más sencilla, pero se verá limitada por factores como la capacidad de transmisión local o los incentivos económicos. Independientemente de esto, el desarrollo de energía solar en tierras agrícolas productivas o retiradas es una herramienta importante para enfrentar la crisis climática. Cuanto más rápido pueda la industria solar perfeccionar los sistemas que mantienen a los agricultores en sus tierras y a la producción intacta (u optimizada para la sostenibilidad del agua), más chances tendrá la humanidad de preservar un planeta habitable.

Meg Wilcox es periodista ambiental; escribe sobre cambio climático, salud medioambiental y sistemas de alimentación sostenible. Su trabajo se ha publicado en The Boston Globe, Scientific American, Next City, Smithsonian, Salon, Eater, Civil Eats y otros medios. 

Imagen principal: El consultor solar Iain Ward se encuentra entre los paneles agrivoltaicos en Knowlton Farm en Grafton, Massachusetts. Crédito: Meg Wilcox. 

Referencias

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