Climate-smart conservation explained
The National Wildlife Federation defines climate-smart conservation as ‘the intentional and deliberate consideration of climate change in natural resource management, realised through adopting forward-looking goals and explicitly linking strategies to key climate impacts and vulnerabilities.’
Climate-smart conservation puts climate change at the heart of conservation management. The goal is to find ways to address the climate risks that animals, ecosystems, and local communities face holistically. By actively considering climate change risks in the planning and implementation of conservation activities, climate-smart conservation aims to help animal and plant species, their ecosystems, and the communities that live with them to adapt more effectively to the changing climate and continue thriving in spite of the climate risks they face.
Climate-smart conservation advocates that conservation efforts must actively consider the impacts that climate change is likely to have in the future—both in the short term and over the long term. Initiatives need to be forward-facing with an eye on the future and how the climate situation might progress under different scenarios.
This requires conservation managers to actively assess the risks that ecosystems, animals, and plants are likely to face in the future as the climate changes and to design strategies that can increase the resilience of the landscapes they manage. It also requires them to consider how climate change affects local communities and how they might be impacted in the future, supporting community members to avoid the worst effects of climate change and building livelihoods that can help them thrive sustainably alongside wildlife.
The key principles of climate-smart conservation
Now that we have a better understanding of what we mean by climate-smart conservation, let’s look at some of the key principles that underpin this approach.
1. Link actions to impacts
Conservation initiatives and projects must now be designed and implemented with the explicit goal of tackling climate change in addition to other conservation objectives. Each conservation action should have a clear scientific rationale aimed at reducing, preventing, or undoing the effects of climate change upon animal and plant species, protected ecosystems, and local communities.
2. Create future-facing goals
The goals of conservation must be made with one eye set clearly on the future. Conservation managers must now consider the various ways in which climate change might affect animals, plants, ecosystems, and communities in the landscapes where they work and plan their work accordingly. This means conservation workers need to analyse climate risk data over different time frames (short-, medium- and long-range) and consider the effects that different climate change scenarios might have on the landscape. Based on that information, they must make informed decisions about what kinds of action they need to take now to minimise future risks and help animals, plants, and people adapt and thrive.
3. Take a holistic approach
Conservation areas are not discrete, unconnected areas—every ecosystem on our planet is connected. This includes animal, plant, and human populations, as well as broader environments and functions, like water, soils, and rainfall, as well as infrastructure, settlements and farms, and the climate. What happens outside a protected area has implications for the wildlife, other organisms, and environmental processes that live within the conservation area.
As the climate changes and local communities are affected, they may find it harder and harder to grow food and make a living using their traditional practices. This might push them to adopt economic activities that degrade the local ecosystem, like tree cutting, sand mining, turning natural land over to agriculture, building roads, extracting water from rivers, or poaching.
As a result, conservation managers cannot operate in a vacuum. We must consider the landscape as a whole when planning conservation efforts and focus not only on conservation areas and wildlife conservation outcomes, but also take an integrated landscape approach that aims to create climate-resilient landscapes in which wildlife and people can thrive together.
4. Design flexible and adaptable approaches
Climate change is a dynamic and ever-evolving situation. As such, we must approach our conservation efforts with flexibility and adaptability. There is no use starting projects that cannot adapt if conditions change. We need to consider the different risks that we might encounter due to climate change and develop the skills to be flexible in the face of changing temperature patterns and unpredictable weather events.
5. Do no harm
We must be mindful that conservation efforts do not negatively impact human and wildlife populations as we strive to tackle climate change. While initiatives bring about positive changes, like protecting and restoring forest areas, they may also impact communities in unforeseen ways if they are not implemented effectively. Climate-smart conservation must consider the needs and rights of the different communities inhabiting a landscape and work towards solutions that benefit all. It is crucial to take into account the full spectrum of our actions and not be blinkered in our approach.
Why is climate-smart conservation important?
There are a number of reasons why climate-smart conservation is not only important but a necessary evolution of our current approaches to tackling the climate crisis.
1. Things are getting worse
Despite the growing publicity around climate change and the very real impacts of global warming we are already seeing, the efforts of countries and governments to tackle the climate crisis are still moving in the wrong direction. The most recent IPCC Synthesis Report found that greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric levels are both at an all-time high and national commitments to mitigate climate change are not sufficient to limit the worst impacts for people and nature.
As such, serious, concerted efforts are needed to keep global temperatures at liveable levels. While the first priority must be a rapid phase-out of fossil fuel production and use globally, nature-based solutions like climate-smart conservation provide a powerful tool for tackling climate change by making use of the power of nature itself.
2. It provides extra benefits
Climate-smart conservation provides a robust approach to minimising the risks of climate change for wild animals and the precious habitats they call home. But it also delivers many other benefits that go beyond wildlife conservation. Through climate-smart conservation, we can mitigate climate change by increasing the capacity of natural landscapes to capture and store greenhouse gases, locking them away in plants, soils, and animals, thereby reducing the rate of global warming. We can also ensure the sustainable provision of other ecosystem services to local communities and national economies and provide jobs and other livelihood opportunities to local people, thereby supporting them to adapt to climate change and contributing to economic development over the long term. We can also provide these communities with the skills and resources needed to respond to and manage climate disasters in biodiverse landscapes, ensuring that animals, ecosystems, and people can recover when climate shocks like floods, storms, and droughts strike.
3. It helps people too
Focusing on the root causes rather than the symptoms of climate change allows us to make changes in local communities that benefit not only the environment but also the people living there. Climate-smart initiatives create jobs, balance local ecosystems, and bring people back into harmony with nature.