The Lincoln Institute’s 2022 Journalists Forum brought together 30 reporters and editors on the climate beat for two days of conversation about the role of land in the climate crisis, highlighting the need for new ideas, innovations, and policies to help head off the worst impacts of global warming. 

Land and land policy thread through just about every aspect of the crisis, whether deforestation, land conservation for carbon sequestration, the interplay of land, water, and agriculture, or the fact that usable land is disappearing, raising the important question of where millions of displaced people will go, now and in the future. 

Meanwhile, powerful private market actors are at work, in many cases swooping in and buying land that will be prime and prized as flooding, wildfire, mudslides, and sea-level rise make other locations unlivable—a classic case of real estate speculation. 

“We need to elevate . . .  the understanding of the important role that land plays and will play in our ability to address this existential crisis. And if we get it wrong, we’’re going to leave a planet that’s very, very different for whomever is left to exist on it,” said George W. McCarthy, president of the Lincoln Institute, in this collection of highlights from the forum for the Land Matters podcast. 
 
“And the big question is, are we prepared to? And can we navigate between the really, really powerful claims, private claims over dominion over land in exchange for the collective needs to use land differently to get to better global outcomes?” McCarthy asked. “Everything hangs in the balance.” 
 
The journalists considered the intense competition for land, with the siting of solar and wind facilities, transmission pipelines, and other needs in the transition to net-zero emissions; emerging strategies in agriculture and the management of dwindling water resources; and current practices in land conservation, which make it possible for natural areas to continue to soak up carbon. 
 
They also heard about how land can be used to pay for climate action, through land value capture—the harnessing of a portion of increases in private land values triggered by government investments in infrastructure—and the need for more coherent climate migration policies that take into account the vulnerable populations being forced to move from their homes. 
 
The Journalists Forum also featured some practical tools to help cover the story of the century, led by Jeff Allenby of the Center for Geospatial Solutions and Peter Colohan from the Internet of Water initiative, both new Lincoln Institute programs. Advances in technology have enabled a real-time monitoring of land use changes and water flows, which serves as a critical foundation for planners and policymakers — and journalists for telling the story of this turbulent time. 
 
The convening also included a discussion of the business of climate journalism itself, led by Nancy Gibbs, director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School; Andrew McCormick from the collaborative Covering Climate Now, Amrita Gupta from the Earth Journalism Network, and Trish Wilson, who established the first climate team dedicated to coverage of global warming at the Washington Post. 

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

How to Fend Off Land Speculation (Land Lines)

Demands on the Land: To Secure a Livable Future, We Must Steward Land Wisely  (Land Lines) 

Return on Investment: Research Links Climate Action with Land and Property Value Increases (Land Lines) 

Uprooted: As the Climate Crisis Forces U.S. Residents to Relocate, a New Conversation Emerges (Land Lines) 

The Colorado River is in crisis, and it’s getting worse every day (The Washington Post) 

How Can We Change Land Use at a Time of Climate Crisis and Competition?  (RedAcción)   

Deforestation Remains High, Despite International Pledges (New York Times)

Locals Worry Wind and Solar Will Gobble Up Forests and Farms (Stateline) 

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. 

As the climate crisis grows ever more urgent, land conservationists are taking meaningful action to reduce carbon in the atmosphere and protect natural systems from the unavoidable impacts of a warming planet, according to a new report from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 

From the Great Plains of the United States to the high-altitude wetlands of Ecuador, land trusts and conservancies are developing and implementing creative, nature-based strategies to address climate change. In the report From the Ground Up: How Land Trusts and Conservancies are Providing Solutions to Climate Change, Lincoln Institute experts James N. Levitt and Chandni Navalkha document these initiatives through a dozen case examples that demonstrate how conservation organizations can help mitigate and adapt to climate change. 

“Such organizations are working in more than 100 nations on six continents,” write Levitt, director of the Lincoln Institute’s International Land Conservation Network, and Navalkha, the Lincoln Institute’s associate director of sustainably managed land and water resources. “They represent millions of engaged citizens working from Finland to Chile to pass our natural heritage on to future generations.” 

The report explores how land trusts and conservancies have addressed climate change in five distinct areas, with examples of successful initiatives in each:  

• Land Protection, Restoration, and Management
• Water Supply, Stormwater Management, and Buffering Against Sea-Level Rise  
• Biodiversity Conservation 
• Carbon Sequestration 
• Energy Production 

Among the cases, the report documents how The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is using sophisticated geospatial technology to identify sites  in the United States where wind turbines will not pose a threat to birds or other wildlife. The initiative, Site Wind Right, draws on more than 100 sources to map wind resources, wildlife habitat, infrastructure, and other relevant data. It identifies more than 90 million acres as suitable for wind turbines—enough land to generate wind power equal to the country’s entire electricity supply from all sources in 2018. 

Meanwhile, the South American capital city of Quito, Ecuador, has confronted threats to its water supply—made worse by climate change—through an ambitious land conservation program. The municipality worked with the local water provider and others to enhance water quality and supply downstream by conserving and better managing land upstream, in the high-altitude wetlands known as the Andean páramo, which surround the city. Through partnerships with international organizations, including TNC, the program has been replicated in at least seven other Latin American cities, generating more than USD $200 million for conservation efforts from 500 public and private partners. 

Drawing on these cases and 10 others, Levitt and Navalkha synthesize lessons learned and make five recommendations for those who seek to confront climate change through land conservation: Empower civic sector initiatives that are creative and ambitious in scope and scale; invest in initiatives with clear strategies and measurable impact; aim for broad collaborations; share advanced science, technologies, and financing techniques; and think long term. 

“In the evolving struggle to rein in and cope with climate change globally, all sectors must join forces to find solutions that are sustainable, replicable, and reliable,” the authors conclude. 

Will Jason is director of communications at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Image: Flint Hills Credit: Brad Mangas

In China’s Sichuan Province, a craggy, mist-shrouded corner of the Min Mountains occupies a fabled place in the country’s land conservation history. Spanning more than 37,000 acres and known as Laohegou, this protected area is home to more than a dozen giant pandas, as well as Sichuan golden monkeys, musk deer, and takin. It also serves as a link between two neighboring, nationally designated nature reserves, filling a gap in continuity across an ecologically important swath of giant panda habitat. 

Yet unlike the reserves it connects, Laohegou isn’t protected by the government. It’s a nature reserve run by a civic conservation organization, the first of its kind to be established in China. Ecologically important in its own right, it gives a glimpse of the role that civic land conservation efforts can play in supplementing the longstanding—and rapidly expanding—system of governmental land protection. 

Since Laohegou’s creation in 2013, China’s civic land conservation movement has burgeoned. Today, more than two dozen organizations, backed with funding from foundations affiliated with some of the biggest companies in China, work at a national scale. Their efforts have added nearly 4,000 square miles of protected land at more than 50 sites throughout the country, complementing a government system of protected lands that has recently expanded to include the first official national parks. 

These flourishing civic efforts are being aided by the Lincoln Institute’s International Land Conservation Network (ILCN) and the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy (PLC), which are working to connect conservation practitioners within China and across the world, and to help shape national land protection policy. 

At the UN biodiversity conference in Kunming in 2021, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced the establishment of five national parks—the country’s first, although it manages a system of nature reserves that dates to the 1950s (see sidebar). The newly established parks, in locations ranging from the high Tibetan plateau to the verdant, panda-rich mountains of Sichuan Province, and from southern island rainforests to a haven for tigers and leopards in China’s far northeast, will give a taste of the kaleidoscopic profusion of habitats across the country while providing a bulwark against rapid development. 

Xi’s announcement was the latest sign of the government’s broad commitment to protecting ecologically important land. Government-protected land now totals about 18 percent of China’s land area, and includes 2,750 nature reserves and thousands of other protected areas of various forms, according to the State Forest and Grassland Administration. In 2015, the government began moving toward a more comprehensive system that will improve land management, increase protected land, and integrate “crown jewels” like national parks with nature reserves and other protected land into a cohesive, ecologically robust whole. 

China’s New National Parks 

The five national parks formally announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping include the massive Three-River Source (Sanjiangyuan) National Park in the remote, northwestern Qinghai Province; Wuyi Mountain National Park in coastal Fujian; Giant Panda National Park spanning Sichuan, Shanxi, and Gansu provinces in the west; Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces; and the Hainan Tropical Forests National Park in the southern island province of Hainan. 

The road to Xi’s announcement began in 2015, when the Chinese government launched the development of a national park system and established 10 pilot national parks; three years later, the government established the National Park Administration. In addition to the five national parks designated in October, five more are still undergoing evaluation: Qianjiangyuan-Baishanzu in Zhejiang Province; Pudacuo in Yunnan Province; Shennongjia in Hubei Province; Nanshan in Hunan Province; and Qilianshan National Park in Gansu and Qinghai provinces. 

The government’s steps are a significant shift for ecological protection in China. But there’s another promising dimension to this quiet revolution. Originally seeded in part with ideas adopted from outside China, particularly the United States, the efforts of domestic land conservation organizations are growing into a distinctively Chinese movement. 

The reality of the land management system in China dictates a different approach to conservation. Most land in China is either state- or collectively owned; individuals and private or civic organizations can’t own land themselves. Nor can they employ the signature tool of U.S. private land conservation: conservation easements. These negotiated agreements grant a government agency or an entity like a land trust the right to restrict development, natural resource extraction, or other activities on a particular piece of land in order to maintain its ecological integrity. But conservation organizations in China have been patiently testing approaches to working within the particular constraints of the land management system here. And in 2008, they got an opening. 

As part of a broader effort to defibrillate the centrally planned economy with a jolt of market forces and competition, the central government allowed for “use rights” to collectively owned forestland—which accounts for nearly 60 percent of the forestland in China—to be leased to non-government entities. It was a significant policy shift, one that would make it possible for non-governmental organizations to essentially act as land trusts, which conserve land by acquiring property, acquiring conservation easements, or stewarding property owned by others. In this case, The Nature Conservancy’s China program (TNC China) realized that the regulatory change might give conservation groups an opening to lease use rights to forestland—and then not use the land. 

“Initially, we didn’t see any potential to copy the land trust model into China,” says Jin Tong, director of science for TNC China. “But [the 2008 changes] really opened the door.” 

In 2009, TNC China and the State Forestry Administration signed a memorandum of collaboration to explore land trusts as a new conservation model in China. After an exhaustive search for an ideal pilot location, TNC China zeroed in on Laohegou and helped create a separate entity called the Sichuan Nature Conservation Foundation—the first private land trust in China. The foundation then negotiated a 50-year “conservation lease” for Laohegou with the local county government. 

That, it turned out, was just the start. The effort to establish Laohegou soon led to the creation of China’s first truly domestic private land conservation organization. TNC China’s board had long been a who’s who of influence in China. In 2015, the TNC China board reconceived the Sichuan Nature Conservation Foundation as a vehicle for taking the land trust concept far beyond Laohegou, and renamed it the Paradise Foundation. They seeded the organization with several staffers from TNC China. 

In the years since, the Paradise Foundation has gone on to become the most influential private land conservation organization in China. Today, in addition to Laohegou, it runs five other projects spread across the country, including 63,000 acres of nature reserves in Sichuan that protect giant panda habitat, a 26,000-acre migratory bird site in northeast China’s Jilin Province, and nature reserves in Anhui, Zhejiang, and Hubei provinces. 

The foundation’s work is part of an effort to more effectively round out the government’s own conservation efforts. “We hope the Paradise Foundation’s protected areas can demonstrate effective management and help strike a balance between conservation goals and community development needs,” says Ma Jian, a former TNC China deputy director who is now a Paradise Foundation vice president. 

Several of those protected areas were existing government-run nature reserves that the Paradise Foundation assumed management of after reaching agreements with local governments. China has not infrequently been bedeviled by the so-called “paper park” problem, particularly at county and provincial levels, in which areas are protected but local governments struggle to adequately fund their ongoing operation and management, including the policing of poaching and illegal logging. 

“For many of China’s protected areas, staffing, expertise, and funding often aren’t adequate,” Ma Jian says. “But civil organizations hope to help in the establishment and management of protected areas, not only in terms of providing financial assistance, but also contributing personnel and expertise, and they’re ready to commit for the long term.” 

“Land trusts,” he adds, “are a way to make this happen.” 

As the Paradise Foundation has expanded, the number of other civic land conservation organizations working in China has grown dramatically. “Local NGOs are getting stronger and stronger, both in terms of funding and effectiveness,” says TNC China’s Jin Tong. “People generally have been putting a higher priority on ecological protection, and domestic philanthropic funding has been trending higher and higher.” The civic conservation movement has been powered largely by funding from Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent, as well as large real estate firms. 

Civic organizations also looked to the Land Trust Alliance (LTA) in the United States for inspiration about how to leverage their effectiveness. In 2017, the Paradise Foundation, TNC China, and 21 other NGOs and foundations launched the China Civic Land Conservation Alliance (CCLCA). “We hope it will be a catalyst, like the Land Trust Alliance,” says Jin Tong. “It’s a platform to share experiences and best practices, and a way to amplify our voices by speaking together.” 

China Civic Land Conservation Alliance Membership 

The number of civic land conservation organizations of all sizes working in China continues to grow, with the Beijing-based Heyi Institute estimating the current total at more than 3,000. Twenty-six of those groups form the China Civic Land Conservation Alliance: The Nature Conservancy China, Paradise Foundation, Heyi Institute, Shanshui Conservation Center, SEE Foundation, Alibaba Foundation, Shenzhen Mangrove Conservation Foundation, Conservation International, World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, Lao Niu Foundation, Guangxi Biodiversity Research and Conservation Association, Global Protected Area Friendly System, Global Environmental Institute, Shenzhen One Planet Foundation, International Union for Conservation of Nature, International Crane Foundation, Tencent Foundation, Yintai Foundation, China Green Foundation, China Green Carbon Foundation, China Environmental Protection Foundation, Friends of Nature, Beijing Cihai Biodiversity Conservation Foundation, Qiaonyu Foundation, and Yunnan Green Environment Development Foundation. 

The International Land Conservation Network has helped in this effort. “ILCN connects people all over the world who care about civic or private land conservation and gives them a way to share experiences,” says Shenmin Liu, who is currently based at the PLC in Beijing as ILCN’s Asia representative and its representative to CCLCA. 

In the early days of CCLCA, Liu explains, ILCN brought several conservationists from China to the United States to attend the annual LTA conference in Pittsburgh, and to tour New England to learn about sustainable forestry and conservation easements. That exchange helped spur new thinking about what CCLCA could accomplish, she says: “During that trip, the participants made a list of the things they wanted to achieve when they were back in China.” 

Among those achievements was the creation of a uniform set of standards for civic protected areas in 2019. The standards were informed by LTA and adapted from International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) guidelines. As of September 2020, 51 civic protected areas meet CCLCA’s criteria, covering nearly 4,000 square miles across 22 of China’s 34 provincial divisions. The Alliance, which now numbers 26 members, has set a goal of protecting 1 percent of China’s total land area—some 37,050 square miles—by 2030. 

For the past several years, a team of CCLCA conservationists from TNC China has participated in an effort to acquire conservation agreements (a Chinese designation similar to a conservation easement in North America) adjacent to a national park being created at Baishanzu, southwest of Shanghai. In doing so, they will add to the scale of the protected area with the national park at its core, creating a mosaic of interrelated conservation land. This Chinese civic sector team is participating in ILCN’s second Large Landscape Peer Learning Initiative, working with peer organizations in the United States, Canada, and Romania to continuously improve the quality of their strategy-making and implementation efforts. 

Civic organizations in China have always negotiated a delicate relationship with the government, and in recent years the government has scrutinized NGOs of all stripes. In 2017, new regulations on foreign-affiliated NGOs came into force, requiring them to disclose their membership rosters and sources of funding, and to affiliate themselves with a government partner which then functions as an operations oversight unit. These NGOs must submit annual work plans for approval by both their government partner and the local Public Security Bureau. 

Even in the context of these requirements, conservation NGOs are largely able to continue operating as before. In contrast with more sensitive issues like human rights and labor, “in the environmental protection world, the political overtones aren’t that strong, so there have been fewer restrictions,” says Lin Jiabin, a consultant to the PLC and former senior fellow of the Development Research Council, which makes policy recommendations to the State Council and the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee. 

In fact, the goals of civic conservation organizations are largely aligned with the national government’s agenda. The government has made ecological sustainability a core plank in its policy and ideological platforms. In 2007, Xi Jinping’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, endorsed the pursuit of “ecological civilization.” The concept has come to encompass a nationwide focus on ecological sustainability, but also serves as a rubric under which China is more broadly attempting to elaborate a uniquely Chinese alternative development model for other countries. It was subsequently incorporated into the Chinese constitution as one of the five core missions of the Chinese Communist Party, and Xi Jinping, who is trying to cast China as a global environmental leader, has been a fervent advocate. 

The government’s emphasis on ecological civilization, Jin Tong says, “helps focus more attention on biodiversity protection and provides space for NGOs to develop their activities.” The national government has also signaled that it expects wealthy individuals and companies to play a bigger philanthropic role in Chinese society. As part of his “Common Prosperity” initiative, Xi Jinping has increasingly called on wealthy enterprises and individuals to increase philanthropic giving in an effort to help reduce social disparities. Corporate donations totaled more than $4 billion in 2020 and were on track to exceed that amount in 2021. 

“The current emphasis on the construction of ecological civilization is really helpful to civic organizations,” says Ma Jian. “Not only that, but the Chinese government is emphasizing the ‘three distributions,’ and the concrete implementation of that is through philanthropic institutions. So I think all kinds of policies are providing good conditions for the development of philanthropic institutions.” 

While their relationship with the government is sometimes ambiguous, civic land protection organizations have been able to forge numerous informal alliances with government ministries and government-affiliated think tanks, an avenue that allows them to assist the government in identifying conservation priorities and experimenting with policy reform. 

Early on, TNC China lent both its own expertise and TNC’s broader global know-how to identify areas of high conservation value. That assessment was incorporated into China’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which was released in 2010. More recently, the Ministry of Natural Resources has commissioned the PLC to conduct broad policy research on its behalf on natural resource management policy that would support the formulation and implementation of national and provincial spatial planning. The PLC is also working to explore the application of remote sensing-based precision conservation techniques from the Lincoln Institute’s Center for Geospatial Solutions for water quality management in large lakes that involve multiple jurisdictions in China. 

And for its part, the Paradise Foundation has worked to encourage the government to try out conservation easements. In 2019, Guojun Shen, a member of both the Paradise Foundation’s board and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress—a powerful advisory body to the central government—submitted a proposal advocating the development and use of conservation easements in China. Easements are one way to address the complications that arise when protected parcels include farms or other collectively owned enterprises, like small-scale logging operations, within their boundaries. “Tenure is a big challenge with protected areas, and we’ve learned that clarifying tenure and clarifying management responsibilities is a prerequisite for effective management of protected areas,” says the Paradise Foundation’s Ma Jian. “We think conservation easements are a key to solving this problem, so we hope to try them out.” 

“Easements are a way to lighten the burden: the landowner doesn’t lose ownership rights, but you’re merely separating the ecological protection rights, which can lower the cost of protection,” he adds. “At the same time, if the easement goes onto the land ownership registers, that provides long-term ecological protection for the land.” Conservation easements are now being evaluated as a way to help protect ecological resources on collectively owned “inholdings” within Qianjiangyuan-Baishanzu pilot national park in Zhejiang province and Wuyishan national park in Fujian province. 

In China, the phrase shehui liliang has come to refer to “the non-governmental sector.” Literally translated, though, it means “the power of society.” And it’s clear that even as civic conservation organizations continue to navigate their relationship with the government, they have become an established force for land protection in China. 

Now, civic organizations are trying to figure out how they can amplify their effectiveness—and in particular, how the lands they’ve worked so hard to save can be better integrated with the larger mosaic of government-protected lands. “We’re working this from different angles,” says TNC China’s Jin Tong. “We’re trying to explore how more inclusive governance could be institutionalized into ongoing protected area system reform. How can non-state actors, including NGOs, play a role in the protected area system? Multi-stakeholder engagement could link all this together to fill conservation gaps and strengthen management capacities in existing protected areas and national parks.” 

TNC China and the Paradise Foundation are working with the Institutes of Science and Development, a high-level national think tank affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to explore how non-governmental stakeholders, including local communities, NGOs, the business sector, and the public, might better participate in protected area planning and management. 

Even more broadly, Jin Tong says, “from the international perspective, there’s more and more recognition of the role that non-state actors are going to play in advancing the biodiversity agenda.” This was clearly illustrated in the lead-up to the Convention on Biological Diversity COP15 conference in Kunming in October 2021—the same event at which Xi Jinping announced the creation of China’s first five national parks—when the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment hosted a two-day global NGO Forum on biodiversity organized by a network of civil society organizations including PLC. 

Over 400 participants from more than 30 countries took part in the event on-site and online, representing governments, businesses, NGOs, local and indigenous communities, and the public. The forum, whose livestream garnered more than 500,000 views, resulted in a joint call to action to invest in and protect biodiversity. And significantly, China’s Minister of Ecology and Environment, Huang Runqiu, extended an open hand to the non-governmental sector: “I call on non-state actors to contribute to the success of COP15 and open a new chapter on biodiversity governance.” This new chapter speaks to the ever-growing importance of private and civic organizations in land protection in China, and the staying power of the movement. 

Matt Jenkins, who has previously worked as an editor for Nature Conservancy magazine, is a freelance writer who has contributed to The New York Times, Smithsonian, Men’s Journal, and numerous other publications. 

Lead image: Qianjiangyuan-Baishanzu pilot national park, Zhejiang Province. Credit: TNC China.

After a year of intensifying drought, fires, and floods, leaders of the conservation movement are tapping into widespread concern about climate change by emphasizing that forests, grasslands, parks, and peat bogs play a critical role in both soaking up carbon and building resilience. 

Last fall, scientists at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) released a list of forests from Washington to Georgia that, if properly protected, could help remove millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Around the same time, a coalition of conservation groups and sustainable business organizations called US Nature4Climate launched a campaign under the banner, “Conservation IS Climate Action.” A few days after that, Cities4Forests, a group of 73 cities committed to forest conservation and restoration, issued a call to action urging urban leaders to embrace nature-based climate solutions. 

With the existential threat of climate change vaulting to the top of the hierarchy of global problems, conservationists are increasingly emphasizing the critical role of land, from rural forests to working landscapes to urban street trees, in confronting that challenge. Significant ongoing work to protect land and preserve biodiversity falls under the rubric of natural climate solutions, defined by TNC as “conservation, restoration, and improved land management actions that increase carbon storage or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in landscapes and wetlands across the globe.” 

“There’s nothing better for keeping carbon in the ground and extracting more carbon out of the air than simply protecting forests,” said Mark Anderson, director of TNC’s Center for Resilient Conservation Science, which recently added carbon storage to the searchable criteria in its popular online Resilient Land Mapping Tool. “Our most important partner is the living land.” 

Land conservation can have multiple benefits of critical value in this era, said Jim Levitt, director of the International Land Conservation Network (ILCN). In addition to carbon sequestration, “conserved coastlines can buffer us from sea-level rise. Vibrant tree growth in cities can mitigate heat-island effects. Farms with vegetative buffers can substantially reduce water pollution. Protected highlands can provide clean water to dense urban centers,” said Levitt, who coauthored a forthcoming Policy Focus Report about civic conservation groups providing climate solutions. “The list goes on.” 

Conservation got special attention at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November, when leaders of more than 140 nations pledged to end deforestation and land degradation by 2030, expanding a commitment made by 39 nations in 2014. The Glasgow pledge followed a commitment by 50 countries to protect 30 percent of the world’s lands and oceans by 2030. The Biden administration’s commitment to the 30×30 campaign, America the Beautiful, will strive to protect over 720 million acres during the coming decade, in part to address “the need to fight climate change with the natural solutions that our forests, agricultural lands, and the ocean provide.” 

Land is not a panacea for climate change, which is a crisis that will need to be actively addressed by many sectors. But the climate advantages of preserving land are “irrefutable,” says Anderson, who is the Lincoln Institute’s current Kingsbury Browne fellow. It’s a connection that also has emotional resonance: a recent newsletter from the Land Trust Alliance (LTA), which represents more than 1,000 land trusts and affiliates across the country, suggested land was “the answer to climate despair.” 

For Fernando Lloveras San Miguel, executive director of the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico and a former Kingsbury Browne fellow, this moment for land conservation represents a kind of coming full circle. “Climate change is the result of a lack of land conservation,” he said, pinning the global crisis on rapacious consumption and unsustainable land development practices that have ignored the functionality of ecosystems. His message: “Don’t destroy the basic systems that support life.” 

Those systems are particularly well-suited to help in the fight against climate change. Recent studies suggest that forest, grassland, and peatland ecosystems may be even more exceptional at soaking up and storing carbon than previously understood—both aboveground and underground. They can create microclimates that fend off warming temperature trends and even adapt to serve the needs of animals, modifying habitats as wildlife species, by necessity, revise their own specifications for survival to make it through all the climate upheaval. In a warming world where terrifying feedback loops are becoming commonplace, the healthy ecosystem—carefully protected and sustainably managed—promotes a virtuous cycle of biodiversity, a kind of continually improving and more efficient functionality. 

The obvious benefits of protecting land stand in sharp contrast to what has been happening, literally, on the ground. Deforestation continues apace as land is cleared for development or agriculture, or ravaged by wildfire, drought, and mudslide-inducing floods. That destruction leads to negative outcomes, simultaneously eliminating vast carbon sinks and spewing new emissions into the atmosphere. Fires release embodied carbon in vegetation and soil, and then emissions intensive development and agriculture—including methane from cows on any land cleared for grazing—is ushered in. So it was that in 2021, the Amazon rainforest started emitting more CO₂ than it absorbs. 

Similar patterns are emerging around the globe, including in the northeastern United States. Clark University researchers found that the six New England states and New York are collectively releasing an estimated 4.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere each year through forest loss. The loss of carbon storage power means the region is missing out on 1.2 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent (CO2e) in carbon sequestration each year. 

“Deforestation is a direct source of carbon emissions, releasing the carbon stored in trees and roots into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. It also negates one of the best tools we have for drawing carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere,” wrote the Clark research team. “Thus, slowing the pace of forest loss is an important instrument in the fight against climate change.” 

The climate mitigating power of land is so great, economists and others argue that the value of natural ecosystems should be integrated into the global economy—to put a price tag on the climate benefits of land. This perspective was spelled out most recently in the Independent Review on the Economics of Biodiversity led by Sir Partha Dasgupta, professor of economics at Cambridge and fellow of St John’s College. 

In the report, which some characterized as the land-oriented equivalent of Sir Nicholas Stern’s watershed 2006 report about the high costs of inaction on climate, Dasgupta identifies nature as “our most precious asset,” one that humanity has badly mismanaged. “My overarching aim is the reconstruction of economics to include nature as an ingredient,” he said. 

Land’s role in the climate crisis does have its limits, some say. “There aren’t enough trees in the world to offset society’s carbon emissions, and there never will be,” writes Bonnie Waring, an ecologist at Imperial College London. “If we absolutely maximized the amount of vegetation all land on Earth could hold, we’d sequester enough carbon to offset about ten years of greenhouse gas emissions at current rates. After that, there could be no further increase in carbon capture.” 

Planting and protecting trees is valuable, climate activists say, but shouldn’t distract from other major steps necessary to meaningful climate progress: reducing emissions in the transportation, building, and energy sectors; and decarbonizing the economy by ending government fossil-fuel subsidies and support from private financial institutions. 

As the climate crisis gains speed, conservationists must also contend with emerging issues. Investors and real estate speculators are making huge acquisitions of land on higher ground that will be more productive given warmer temperatures and new rainfall patterns. And a debate has erupted over land-based carbon offsets, which allow polluters to counter their emissions by paying for greenhouse gases to be removed from the atmosphere somewhere else. Critics say the credits let polluters off the hook, allowing them to continue to emit greenhouse gases while they support sequestration functions that would be happening in protected areas either way. It should not surprise that land’s role in climate change would be as complex as the problem itself. 

Land Conservation and the Lincoln Institute 

Conservation became part of the Lincoln Institute’s portfolio through research on the taxation and assessment of land. In 1976, federal law began allowing tax deductions for gifts of conservation easements—donations of development rights on property that remained in private ownership. But the legislation that recognized this new instrument did not address the property tax consequences of easements, and assessors were unsure about how to value property that had a new legal status but unchanged physical characteristics. The Lincoln Institute, responding to requests for help from environmental groups and assessors, developed courses on this interplay of easements and the property tax. 

During the 1980s, the organization’s interest in land stewardship grew, with staff and study groups dedicated to the topic. In 1981, a Boston attorney on sabbatical to study voluntary conservation, Kingsbury Browne, organized a national convening at the Lincoln Institute’s headquarters. The participants, affiliated with some 40 land trusts and related groups from Maine to California, resolved to form a national Land Trust Exchange, which became the Land Trust Alliance (LTA). Now a significant catalyst for conservation, LTA has 1,000-plus member organizations and affiliates that have protected 61 million acres nationwide. Browne’s legacy lives on eponymously in an annual award from LTA and a Lincoln Institute fellowship.  

Today, the Lincoln Institute has identified “sustainably managed land and water resources” as one of its six primary goals. The International Land Conservation Network, launched in 2014, builds capacity for conservation around the world; the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, launched in 2017, promotes the integration of land and water planning, primarily in the U.S. West. 

“You can’t mitigate climate change without the land sector,” says Andrew Bowman, president of the LTA. Bowman said most of the group’s members are considering climate change prominently in their stewardship practices, land management, and restoration activities. But it’s not the only thing shaping today’s conservation actions: “We have interconnected crises of climate, biodiversity, and equity.” 

Add public health to that mix. The pandemic underscored the need to better understand biodiversity, habitat loss, and the interaction of humans and wildlife. “Restoring and protecting nature,” observed a National Science Foundation research announcement, “is essential to preventing future pandemics.” 

It could also be essential to surviving them. “Land conservation and restoration is critical to addressing the climate crisis, but is also central to the health of our communities—along that whole spectrum from urban parks to remote wildlands,” said Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society and the 2009 Kingsbury Browne fellow. “The pandemic has shown just how central time in nature is to our resiliency, emotional, physical, and mental health. Studies bear that out, so a big focus of ours has been on creating greater park equity in urban areas and securing equitable access to the outdoors.” 

Equity is a critical part of the current conservation-climate conversation. By drawing attention to their role in the coalescing worldwide campaign to address climate change, conservation leaders can create a bigger tent, diversifying their ranks and reaching people who might not otherwise make the link between climate and land. An increasingly intentional focus on climate equity, borne out in campaigns for equitable access to urban parks, partnerships with sovereign tribal nations, and the like, has the potential to further expand the movement’s reach and impact. 

Climate and Conservation Facts 

Total tons of carbon dioxide emitted by humans each year: 11 billion 

Amount from burning fossil fuels: 9.5 billion 

Amount from deforestation: 1.5 billion 

Percent of human-produced carbon dioxide absorbed by land and water: 50 

Percent by which human-produced carbon dioxide has increased since 1750: 50 

Metric tons of carbon dioxide a typical 1,000-acre forest in the eastern United States can soak up each year: 180 

Acres of land protected by civic conservation in the United States: 61 million 

Percent of oceans legally protected, globally: 7 

Percent of land legally protected, globally: 15 

Percent of land and oceans the world is working to protect by 2030: 30 

Sources: Climate.gov, The Nature Conservancy, Land Trust Alliance, International Union for Conservation of Nature. 

Indigenous communities, in particular, are at the ready with creative, nature-based solutions. Some 50 tribes in the United States have developed far-reaching, nature-based climate action plans on indigenous lands across the country, including activities from coastal restoration to prescribed burns. Tribes are “using traditional knowledge, but taking advantage of the science and the data,” said Nikki Cooley, co-manager of the Tribes and Climate Change Program for the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals in Flagstaff, Arizona. The approach reflects the cultural perspective of indigenous nations, she said, “that they have a responsibility to the Earth, a relationship with the Earth . . . connecting people to the land.” 

In Gowanus, Brooklyn, urban landscape architects find themselves in common cause with traditional conservation organizations as they work together to protect biodiversity and build climate resilience in densely developed urban corridors. “Networks of green infrastructure in cities create a refuge for wildlife,” said Susannah Drake, adjunct professor at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. “Dark skies, greenbelts, and adapted right of way corridors link [rural areas] with urban centers.” 

The linkages, she said, “revive the large landscape productivity of regions . . . . If we can’t take all the land back [for conservation], we know enough about landscape ecology to make the urban-suburban-rural transect embody greater biodiversity.” 

On an even broader scale, the Biden administration’s America the Beautiful program “presents an enormous opportunity to bring the climate and conservation agendas into better alignment, if not explicitly link them,” said Sacha Spector, program director for the Environment at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, who noted the existence of a longstanding division between conservation and climate funders, even within the same foundations. “That means engaging all sorts of potential stakeholders and funders in this more holistic understanding of land conservation and stewardship, from urban reforestation and greenspace advocates to the big climate funders, to health and resilience interests. For both biodiversity and climate, this is an all-hands-on-deck moment.” 

In 2019, as part of an effort to bolster support for the 30×30 campaign, the Center for American Progress issued a report on the state of America’s natural areas. The report suggested that the question of how much nature to keep—in an effort to “curb wildlife extinctions, fight climate change, reduce toxic pollution, and safeguard healthy natural systems upon which future generations will depend”—should be the subject of an urgent national conversation. 

“There can be no single or simple answer to a question that is simultaneously moral, economic, religious, historical, cultural, scientific, and, for many people, deeply personal,” says the report. “A discussion of how much nature to protect—and how, where, and for whom—must honor and account for the perspectives of all people, including communities that are disproportionately affected by the degradation of natural systems; communities that do not have equal access to the outdoors; tribal nations whose sovereign rights over lands, waters, and wildlife should be finally and fully upheld; communities of color; and others.” It’s been only two years since the report was issued, but that discussion has taken on even greater urgency in the face of the global pandemic, widespread calls for addressing racial injustice, and the increasingly visible effects of climate change.  

Ultimately, climate and biodiversity are “braided together,” says Levitt. Addressing climate change in a meaningful way requires understanding those connections—and understanding our own role in the nature of things. 

“Forests are . . . the unknowably complex green webs that bind together the fates of millions of known species, with millions more still waiting to be discovered,” writes Waring, the ecology professor at Imperial College. “To survive and thrive in a future of dramatic global change, we will have to respect that tangled web and our place in it.” 

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

Image: Indonesia peatland. Credit: Rifky/CIFOR via Flickr.