This article is part of a larger feature on how land use battles are hindering the clean energy transition.

 

A critical land use dimension of the clean energy transition is the mining of metals used for batteries for electric vehicles and general power storage, including lithium, cobalt, copper, nickel, niobium, and graphite. The World Bank estimates that over 3 billion tons of minerals and metals will be needed by 2050 to meet the clean energy storage and deployment goals in the 2015 Paris Agreement—a production increase of 500 percent.

With these minerals in such high demand, regions like Latin America, which controls two-thirds of the global supply of lithium, are under tremendous pressure to allow mining as a new source of economic development. But the mining process is dangerous, hugely disruptive to the environment, and often occurs within Indigenous territories.

The resource-rich countries where the minerals are, primarily in the Global South, are home to extensive biodiversity and uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, said Claudia Dobles Camargo, former First Lady of Costa Rica, where open-air mining is banned. “We cannot just transition from one type of energy to clean energy without taking into consideration that this could become a new extractivism,” she said. Honduras and El Salvador have also banned the practice.

Beyond the developing world, any move to extract these clean-power minerals seems to become instantaneously contentious. When a Maine couple discovered large lithium deposits on their property, they were surprised that neighbors didn’t celebrate the potential contribution to the clean energy transition—but rather demanded state regulators prevent any kind of mining operation at all.

Technology may come to the rescue, in the form of more sustainable lithium mining techniques involving microbes, seawater, and brine. Lithium can also be recycled from old batteries, a process dubbed “urban mining.” And researchers at MIT and elsewhere are working on new kinds of batteries, such as metal-air devices using aluminum, zinc, or iron, all of which are abundantly available, that would obviate the need for lithium altogether.

Another approach to minimize damage and land use conflicts: reduce demand for batteries for electric vehicles by driving less—a higher bar, to be sure, for societies just getting used to the concept of alternatives to fossil fuel.

A report by a team led by Providence College Professor Thea Riofrancos found that the United States “can achieve zero emissions transportation while limiting the amount of lithium mining necessary by reducing the car dependence of the transportation system, decreasing the size of electric vehicle batteries, and maximizing lithium recycling.”

“Reordering the US transportation system through policy and spending shifts to prioritize public and active transit while reducing car dependency,” the report says, “can also ensure transit equity, protect ecosystems, respect Indigenous rights, and meet the demands of global justice.”

 

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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: Silver Peak lithium mine, Nevada. Credit: simonkr via E+/Getty Images.

 

One emerging consensus to combat climate change is increasingly clear: electrify everything, and make that power come from renewable sources, like wind, solar, and hydro power. Removing fossil fuels from electricity generation can be surprisingly smooth, as clean power facilities have rapidly become more cost-efficient. Renewables are currently 20 percent of US power generation and steadily growing.

But there’s a sprawling and daunting land use task that is necessary to make that clean energy transition happen: not only the siting of solar arrays and wind farms, but the construction and improvement of transmission lines and substations and pipelines, across thousands of acres of land.

Researchers at Princeton University have estimated that if manufacturing capacity for turbines and photovoltaics continues to ratchet up as it has been for the last several years, up to 400,000 square miles will be needed in the US to harvest wind energy alone. That means much more visible renewable energy infrastructure on hilltops, in suburban neighborhoods, and in what may feel like people’s backyards.

Battles over the siting of wind and solar installations, and opposition to the key upgrades and expansion of the grid that will allow clean power to plug in, are occurring on a state-by-state basis, in the absence of federal authority or oversight. In many cases, renewable energy facilities have been cleared through the permitting process to start operating, but remain in limbo because they can’t plug in to the existing, antiquated grid.

 

A crazy quilt of local land use regulations—including bylaws restricting solar fields and wind farms—has amplified the voices of opposition from neighbors and organized groups, including, in what many climate advocates consider a profound irony of the times, some environmental organizations. In addition, land use conflicts are hindering another critical component of the clean energy transition: the mining of metals such as lithium to make high-capacity rechargeable batteries, for electric vehicles and storing power from renewable sources when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow (see sidebar).

Those targeting net-zero emissions by mid-century hoped for a high-level wave of renewable energy that would transform the way everyone gets their power. Instead, there are standoffs and bottlenecks, at the state and local level, as the execution of this extraordinary transition gets bogged down, literally, on the ground.

“I would agree things aren’t going well right now—though I would suggest that we also have way more shots on goal than in previous years, so there are more stories of projects getting blocked because there are just more project proposals,” said Sarah Banas Mills, senior project manager at the Graham Sustainability Institute and lecturer at the School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan.

As frustration mounts at what many see as a fumbling of the ball at a key moment in the fight against climate change, Mills, who has been tracking battles over renewable energy all over the US and coauthored a paper on the topic, says a more nuanced analysis is required about each and every site, now that installations are ramping up. Wind projects in places with more people or higher scenic amenities are more likely to be opposed; neighbors may also be more likely to balk at large solar arrays on farmland, which many clean-energy advocates thought would be an easier sell.

“Renewables present one of the biggest economic opportunities rural communities have seen in decades,” she said. “But with all opportunities, there are trade-offs. That we have so many communities saying no suggests to me that in many places communities are finding that the positives—economic benefits—don’t outweigh the negatives. Changes may need to be made to project characteristics, like size, location within the community, and distribution of economic benefits . . . to get more communities to ‘yes.’”

 

It wasn’t always this way. In the past, there was little to no veto power exercised at the local level, as industrialization advanced and critical infrastructure was deemed necessary, whether canals, railroads, and telegraph lines in the 19th century, or the interstate highway system in the 1950s.

A common thread for infrastructure is the intensive use of land, which is necessary to complete networks and distribute benefits across large expanses. This was especially true in the development of the grid. Power plants were built at whatever location was required, whether near a coal mine or on a river. Then, a decentralized but highly connected system of substations, transformers, and transmission and distribution lines got the power to the end user—homes and businesses. The flow of power is from point to point and as it happens, since large amounts of electricity are not stored; the power is used as it is produced, and vice versa.

Although the construction, organization, and regulation of the grid started out in a patchwork state-by-state and regional framework, the federal government established oversight with the Federal Power Act of 1920, which Congress passed to coordinate the development of hydroelectric projects such as the Hoover Dam. Major new agencies like the Tennessee Valley Authority, established in 1933, helped create a sense of intention and purpose; bringing electricity to rural areas was part of a national mobilization in economic development during the Great Depression (and, also intentionally, a fountainhead of jobs). Among other federal agencies, what is now known as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) took the lead in managing power generation and the grid, although generally oversight of utilities, and the prices they charge in particular, remains a state responsibility.

In terms of the extraordinary accomplishment of the grid, the ultimate result of planning and coordination is the familiar landscape of today: 160,000 miles of high-voltage power lines draped on shiny metal stanchions up to 200 feet tall, with forest and brush cleared away underneath, crisscrossing the countryside, whisking electricity generated by 7,300 power plants to nearly 150 million customers across the US, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The North American grid—three grids, technically, called the Eastern, Western, and Texas Interconnect—is completed by millions of miles of low-voltage power lines and distribution transformers.

To date, most electricity is produced using conventional sources such as natural gas, oil, coal, and nuclear. But at least 20 percent of the nation’s power is now generated by renewable energy facilities—wind, solar, hydroelectric, biomass, geothermal—and that proportion is growing, as coal-fired power plants, for example, are steadily phased out. Over the past decade, 290 coal-fired plants were decommissioned in the US, leaving 224 in operation.

The Biden administration has pledged to eliminate fossil fuels as a form of energy generation in the US by 2035, setting the goal of 80 percent carbon-free electricity by 2030. Wind, solar, and hydroelectric power have been the fastest-growing segment of the energy sector, and will be further fueled by some $370 billion in funding under the Inflation Reduction Act. Wind and solar projects, steadily improving in their technology and efficiency, are ready to roll.

But therein lies the current land use challenge—not only in the siting of renewable energy installations, but also in the all-important upgrade to the grid to carry and distribute all that clean power. On both fronts, the development of renewable energy has been stymied in recent years.

 

 

Opposition to offshore wind farms, notably the Cape Wind project off Cape Cod, was perhaps the first and most infamous example of affluent homeowners objecting to clean-energy infrastructure because they claimed it spoiled the view. But wind farms on land, whether atop ridges or on farmland, have also ignited fierce opposition, even in remote areas.

In Northern California, Shasta County supervisors rejected a proposal by Connect Wind/Fountain Wind for 48 turbines on rural land after hearing concerns about impacts on wildlife habitat, Indigenous lands, and even whether the turbines would interfere with fighting wildfires from the air. A local ordinance passed shortly afterward banning large wind projects outright. The California Energy Commission is allowing the developers a second chance under a provision of Assembly Bill 205, which can override local veto power over clean energy projects.

In Iowa, a judge ordered developers to dismantle three 450-foot turbines on farmland after neighboring landowners complained about the noise they made. The victorious opponents, who successfully argued that the zoning board shouldn’t have issued the permits, hope their battle “will empower other rural landowners and small towns to take on wind,” according to the Des Moines Register.

A typical concern as well is the danger posed by wind turbines to birds—although pesticides, buildings, and housecats kill many times more birds than the slowly rotating blades, and clean-tech researchers, using artificial intelligence, have come up with ways to keep birds away anyway.

Solar installations have not fared much better. While more than 2,500 solar farms are up and running in the United States, solar projects are increasingly running into blockades, in Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, and elsewhere. Neighbors often get in an uproar when they see how large, visible, and land-intensive some of the solar arrays are, describing them in alarming fashion, as in one battle over a Midwest proposal, as filling up thousands of football fields with shiny, deep blue panels.

 

 

Researchers in a 2021 Michigan study found that despite readily acknowledged benefits such as economic development, tax payments, and compensation for the landowner and community, “projects have increasingly faced local resistance . . . [due to] aesthetics, noise, and negative impacts to rural and Tribal culture, values, and community energy sovereignty, along with . . . risk to wildlife, productive farmland, biodiversity, and human health.” Additional perceived risks included lowered home and property values, increased electricity rates, impacts to tourism, and the toxicity of materials used in construction and operation, the study says.

A team at MIT studied 53 American renewable energy projects that were paused, delayed, or canceled between 2008 and 2021 in 28 states because of local opposition. The researchers identified seven common drivers of conflict: environmental impact; financial viability; quality of public engagement; Tribal rights; health and safety concerns; and concerns related to land and property values.

“We found overwhelming evidence to suggest that federal, state, and local regulators need to rethink the design and operation of their facility siting processes,” the researchers conclude. “A fast and fair transition to renewable energy will not be achieved in the US if policymakers and energy developers do not anticipate and respond proactively to the full array of sources of local opposition.”

High-profile standoffs have the effect of scaring off partners worried about bad publicity. In Queensland, Australia, the tech company Apple withdrew from an agreement to buy power from a proposed 80-turbine windfarm on nearly 2,000 acres, a project the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) had criticized for threatening koalas, wallabies, and red goshawks. A WWF spokesman applauded the move, saying it demonstrated “leadership and a commitment to renewables that are good for climate and nature.”

Opposition to transmission lines and the upgrades and expansion of the grid that are necessary to handle new clean power has been perhaps the most strenuous of all—leaving renewable energy installations that have already been built or permitted to remain in limbo, an untenable scenario for green-tech companies and investors.

A four-year legal battle over a 145-mile transmission line that would carry hydroelectric power from Quebec to Massachusetts has been representative of the bare-knuckle brawling over land use. Conservation groups said the pipeline threatened wilderness areas in Maine, where most of the line would be constructed, prompting a statewide vote against the project, though it had already been permitted. A judge recently ruled that construction could resume.

Proponents complained that the opposition had been financed and motivated by a rival natural gas utility seeking to block competition. Joseph Curtatone, president of the Northeast Clean Energy Council, said he hoped the court decision “marks an end to the self-interested, corporate-funded attempts to sabotage this project.” Building the project as planned, he said, would remove more than 3 million metric tons of carbon annually and provide $200 million in desperately needed upgrades to the electric grid.

“This is essential work in our effort to electrify everything in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Without grid upgrades we can’t deliver power to heat pumps and electric vehicles. These are the kinds of big leaps we need to take after decades of minimal progress on climate action,” he said. “If we’re fighting tooth-and-nail over removing 3 million tons of CO2 with lower-cost energy, we’re never going to reach net zero.”

In the book Superpower, the author Russell Gold chronicled the ultimately futile attempt by Houston businessman Michael Skelly to get approval for a transmission line to connect windfarms in Oklahoma to the grid in Tennessee, which became emblematic of community opposition paired with politics. But the same problem keeps recurring. It took 18 years before a 732-mile transmission line was approved by federal authorities to carry clean power from the proposed 700-turbine TransWest wind farm on ranchland in Wyoming to homes and businesses in California. The interstate project required multiple approvals under the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), with detailed examination of impacts on flora and fauna, including the sagebrush grouse.

 

 

The objections to green infrastructure have evoked past battles over endangered species, sacred sites, and otherwise culturally valuable land. The Greenlink West project, a 470-mile transmission line through Nevada, is under fire because it might disturb woolly mammoth tusk fossils.

The irony is not lost on many that environmental laws passed in the 1970s to combat rampant pollution are now being used to fight renewable energy projects that will curb climate change. Environmental litigation is threatening a wide range of environmentally advantageous initiatives across the country, from dense housing to bike lanes to congestion pricing.

“I’m an environmentalist, which means I’ve got some practice in saying no. It’s what we do,” wrote Bill McKibben in an essay for Mother Jones titled, “Yes in Our Backyards.” McKibben’s decades of activism include successfully fighting the Keystone XL fossil-fuel pipeline. “But we’re at a hinge moment now, when solving our biggest problems—environmental but also social—means we need to say yes to some things. . . . One way may be to back up a little and think of the slightly longer term.”

Without any sense of a grand plan or rationale, and environmentalists divided—one camp saying impacts on the environment must always be considered, the other that there will be no functioning wildlife habitats or thriving species if climate change isn’t curtailed—renewable energy projects are increasingly being viewed as what Harvard professor Alan Altshuler called LULUs: “locally unwanted land uses,” like prisons or landfills.

 

An array of solutions for overcoming this impasse has emerged recently, including legislation introduced just this year. At least three steps are needed to adequately and effectively deploy clean energy infrastructure, says Patrick Welch, an analyst in the Climate Strategies group at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy: federal-level permitting reform, local regulatory changes, and more strategic and creative planning.

“In many instances, there are genuine issues regarding the proposed siting of new solar, wind, and hydro projects—whether that is related to stormwater runoff issues, other impacts on important ecosystems, or new land grabs on Indigenous lands,” Welch said. “We need to be more strategic and creative. Things like co-locating solar on parking lots and rooftops or interstate rights of way, rather than clearcutting forests, are good solutions.”

The Nature Conservancy’s Site Renewables Right initiative, which identifies suitable sites for wind and solar energy by mapping factors including environmental impact and agricultural production, is a good example of trying to find workable solutions, he said; another is Baltimore County’s study on solar siting, which identified nearly 34,000 acres of potential optimal solar sites on rooftops, parking lots, and degraded lands.

 

 

But even with more appropriate siting, Welch said, permitting and local land use regulations can get in the way. “Both sides of the aisle have known for decades that NEPA and the associated permitting spiderwebs are responsible for long, unnecessary delays. Now, the climate crisis has brought new urgency to that conversation. Local regulations must allow for the appropriate siting of renewable energy infrastructure, too.”

Federal coordination—harkening back to the more intentional establishment of infrastructure in the first half of the 20th century—has seemed to many the obvious first step. This spring, US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and US Representative Mike Quigley (D-IL) introduced the Streamlining Interstate Transmission of Electricity (SITE) Act, which would establish a new federal siting authority at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to ease the process of constructing long-range, high-voltage transmission lines.

“If we don’t build more long-range transmission lines, much of the low-cost clean energy that is coming online will simply not be able to get to the homes and businesses that need it,” Whitehouse said when unveiling the bill. The goal is better reliability, an upgrade of the nation’s creaky grid infrastructure, and lower emissions while “responsibly balancing local needs and preferences,” he said.

There is action at the state and regional scale as well. After criticism that state regulatory authorities have been dragging their feet on the clean energy transition, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey appointed climate-savvy commissioners to the state Department of Public Utilities, and established two new commissions, one to review clean energy siting and permitting, and another to coordinate offshore wind development.

In Washington State, Governor Jay Inslee recently signed a bill requiring longer-term planning by utilities and allowing bigger transmission projects to go through the state’s streamlined siting process. The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which manages hydropower from 31 federal dams in the Northwest, has proposed some upgrades to its system, which, if completed, will help increase transmission capacity.

The electricity market is structured differently in the Pacific Northwest than in California and other states, making coordination and planning that much more difficult, said Emily Moore, director of the Climate and Energy program at the Sightline Institute. Washington and Oregon have assertive climate action plans to shift to clean energy, but even if all utilities agreed to switch tomorrow, the grid couldn’t support the load, she said, so hundreds of wind and solar projects are languishing.

“In an ideal world, we would have clarity on how much more transmission is needed . . . and where it would go, so we could then start building it before it is too late,” she said. “But planning, at least in our region, is largely reactive, not proactive. Changing that here will require new levels of coordination between BPA, individual utilities, regulators, and policymakers.”

When renewable energy projects or transmission lines are first rolled out to the public, developers would do well to practice better stakeholder engagement, said Josh Hohn, a principle at the urban design firm Stantec. He urges project leaders to help people visualize what’s actually being proposed “before imaginations run wild.”

 

Building consensus about clean energy infrastructure is especially challenging in part because the land use issues are so local, but tie back to the global problem of climate change, requiring conceptualizing priorities in sometimes counterintuitive ways. For example, it seems outrageous to clear trees to make way for solar panels. But according to one forest ecologist, doing so actually reduces carbon emissions more after a period of time than leaving the trees in place.

Technology is also advancing so rapidly, the land use dimension of clean energy could become less onerous. Geothermal drills require less land, though are akin to the oil rigs that have dotted the landscape since the turn of the last century.

Batteries are getting better, allowing clean power to be stored. And there is the notion of the mega-solar project, consolidating arrays all in one or two large, out-of-the-way locations, like a corner of the Sahara desert. By one calculation, solar panels on a single parcel of 43,000 square miles—1.2 percent of the Sahara—could power the entire world.

At a more conceptual level, McKibben—who founded the organization Third Act to recruit aging boomers concerned about climate change—called for a change in mindset when looking at clean energy infrastructure. Instead of viewing it as unsightly, he suggests, we could appreciate how it’s helping the planet wean off fossil fuels, and has great economic returns as well. “It’s a different kind of beauty,” he said in an interview, though he acknowledged people are used to judging landscapes by more conventional measures.

Whether such reconceptualization can happen remains to be seen. But the public’s relationship with land has clearly become a key element of the clean energy transition. Above all, this is a moment for thoughtful land policy, with the future of the planet hanging in the balance, said the Lincoln Institute’s Patrick Welch.

“Given the scale and urgency needed for this massive rollout of new infrastructure, there is a significant risk that we do it in a way that leads to serious unintended consequences,” Welch said. “So we need to be mindful and strategic—but not to the point of inaction.”

 

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

Lead image: Protesters in Maine express their opposition to a planned hydroelectric corridor that will cut through the state as it carries energy from Quebec to Massachusetts. Credit: AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty

 

 

Forests are hardworking heroes in the fight to manage climate change, but they can’t remove enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to single-handedly help the world reach its Paris Agreement targets. However, what if we focus on protecting not just the trees, but also the larger animals that have historically lived among them, like gray wolves and elephants?

Well, that could get us a lot closer.

In a new study published in Nature Climate Change, an international team of researchers led by Yale ecology professor Oswald J. Schmitz found that protecting and restoring populations of animal species—including marine fish, gray wolves, wildebeests, sea otters, African forest elephants, and bison—can supercharge the carbon capture capabilities of their respective ecosystems, enhancing the total amount of CO2 naturally absorbed and stored by as much as 6.41 gigatons per year.

That’s more than 14 trillion pounds of CO2, and about 95 percent of the annual “negative emissions” needed to limit global warming to 1.5ºC in line with the Paris Climate Agreement.

The findings could have a big impact on land and marine conservation efforts, says Jim Levitt, director of the International Land Conservation Network (ILCN) at the Lincoln Institute. “This is not your everyday piece of natural climate solution research,” says Levitt, who was not involved in the study. “I think this is a major insight.”

Animating the Carbon Cycle

Climate change and a staggering worldwide loss of biodiversity are not just concurrent crises of the natural world; they’re two sides of the same coin, each impacting the other. This research suggests that the positive climate impacts of land and ocean conservation can be amplified even further when coupled with what’s called “trophic rewilding”—that is, protecting and restoring the functional roles of animals within their ecosystems.

That’s because many animals all over the world augment the carbon capture potential of their native habitats in different but impactful ways.

In the African Serengeti, for example, migrating wildebeests graze on grasses and, with the help of dung-burying insects, return that carbon to the soil. When disease decimated wildebeest populations in the early 20th century, the resulting overabundance of dry, uneaten grasses led to more frequent, intense wildfires that turned the savannah into a net emitter of CO2. Now the wildebeest population has recovered, and the Serengeti is once again a carbon sink.

Endangered forest elephants in central Africa, meanwhile, spread the seeds of trees and woody plants, and trample and devour vegetative undergrowth, helping carbon-dense overstory trees grow faster and bigger. Based on one of the authors’ earlier studies, the researchers estimate that restoring wild elephant populations just within the region’s 79 national parks and protected areas—about 537,000 square kilometers of tropical rainforest—could help capture roughly 13 megatons of additional CO2 per year, or 13 million metric tons.

When large mammals like muskoxen trample arctic snowpack, that cold crust of compressed snow helps keep the soil below from thawing and releasing methane. Migrating marine fish eat algae near the surface and send it to the ocean floor as fecal pellets. Predators like sea otters help carbon-absorbent kelp forests thrive by keeping seaweed-munching sea urchins in check; gray wolves and sharks are responsible for similar “trophic cascades” in boreal forests and coral reefs, where they keep the populations of their smaller herbaceous prey in balance.

And in North America, where white settlers all but wiped out the more than 30 million bison that once roamed the prairies, just 2 percent of that animal’s one-time numbers remain, confined to about 1 percent of its historical range. Because grazing bison help grasslands retain carbon in the soil, restoring herds across even a small fraction of the landscape—less than 16 percent of a handful of prairies where human conflict would be minimal—could help those ecosystems store an additional 595 megatons of CO2 annually, the study found. That’s more than 10 percent of all the CO2 emitted by the United States in 2021.

“Using wild animal conservation explicitly to enhance carbon capture and storage is known as ‘animating the carbon cycle,’” the study’s authors write—and it demands a new way of thinking about conserved spaces as “dynamic landscapes.” It’s well understood that protecting nature as a climate solution can have the ancillary benefit of enhancing biodiversity, for example, but it turns out the relationship works both ways: Improving animal biodiversity can also enhance natural climate solutions. “It requires protecting and restoring the ability of animal species to reach ecologically meaningful densities so that as they move and interact with each other they can fulfill their functional roles across landscapes and seascapes.”

Failing to protect wildlife, meanwhile, can limit or even reverse an ecosystem’s carbon-storing potential. Overfishing of predatory fish in the coastal waters of the Northeastern United States, for example, led to an explosion of saltmarsh crabs, whose voracious appetite for seagrasses ravaged intertidal salt marshes, triggering their demise. Salt marshes are carbon supersinks that absorb and store up to 10 times as much carbon as a mature tropical rainforest. But when they die off, the resulting tidal erosion releases hundreds of years’ worth of stored sediment carbon, and a powerful carbon sponge disappears, along with all its future potential for CO2 capture.

Keeping Systems in Tune

For animal populations to recover their historical numbers and species diversity, they need large swaths of functionally intact ecosystems—which currently comprise just 2.8 percent of global land area. But “with the right enabling conditions, animal populations can rebound rapidly,” the authors write, with a measure of hope.

“If you give nature a chance to reestablish itself, it’s really, really efficient at doing so,” Levitt agrees, noting that many of the U.S. National Forests were once abandoned landscapes denuded of their timber. Now those swaths of forest are essential tools for absorbing atmospheric carbon. “Not only do the trees sequester carbon, but the soil, the animals, the insect life, and the mycorrhizal networks under the ground, they’re all sequestering carbon, and they all depend on a healthy chain of trophic networks,” Levitt says. “So there is utility, even related to the survival of our species, in having wild animals on open space. It’s not just beautiful, it keeps the carbon cycle in tune.”

As a resource hub connecting private and civic conservation groups across cultural and political boundaries, Levitt says ILCN has an important role to play in supporting the establishment of the types of linked, protected environments that promote greater biodiversity. “You really need large, interconnected, protected spaces to get to truly rich ecosystems,” he says. “And what networks can do is make land conservation contagious sociologically—meaning, if your next-door neighbor has conserved his property, you’re more likely to do the same thing.” ILCN also supports the global 30×30 effort, an agreement among more than 190 countries to work toward protecting 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030.

Expanding the range of intact ecosystems to restore and protect animal populations will require people and wildlife to share space in more dynamic “coexistence landscapes,” the authors add. “This involves seeking ways for wild animals and humans to coexist across landscapes and seascapes, rather than separating people from nature, as has been a common practice in proposals to apportion spaces for biodiversity and carbon storage.”

While the study’s authors acknowledge the challenge of such a cultural shift, they also note, with some urgency, that the opportunity is too great to squander. “We are losing populations of many animal species just as we are discovering how much they functionally impact carbon capture and storage.”

 

 

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Jon Gorey is a staff writer for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Bison grazing in Yellowstone National Park. Credit: panugans via iStock/Getty Images Plus.

 

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.
 

 

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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)

 

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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.

 

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.

 

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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.

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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.

 

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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.