Emily Barbo

Symposium 2023 Cross-cutting Theme: Urgency & Scale

May 23, 2024

The Salazar Center’s fifth International Symposium on Conservation Impact focused on how to achieve a nature-positive future together, to catapult our communities towards durable, high-impact outcomes for climate, biodiversity, and human well-being.

We brought together diverse thought leaders to share ideas and best practices for moving beyond individual pilot projects to build lasting systems change for nature and communities across North America. Our two-day dialogue elevated the interconnectedness of biodiversity loss and climate change, both in terms of their impacts and solutions, while highlighting how a nature-based approach can enhance the resilience of both our planet and society. By design, we assembled speakers with varied expertise and backgrounds to showcase the breadth of differing, and sometimes contrarian, opinions and ideas related to our theme. Our intent with this approach was to facilitate our attendees’ ability to deepen their understanding of the issues and perhaps challenge their perspectives.

The 2023 Symposium Synthesis Report summarizes five cross-cutting themes that emerged from the Symposium, as well as key takeaways from each session. The themes reflect ideas, needs, and opportunities raised multiple times by speakers or attendees. Like the interconnectedness of biodiversity and climate, each theme is also connected to the next. Together, they help illuminate potential shared pathways to enrich biodiversity and build long-term, stable societies and healthy economies across North America.

Don’t have time to read the full report? No problem! We’ve broken it down so you can focus on what resonates the most right now.

Cross-cutting Theme: Urgency & Scale

“We can win on this.” – Sacha Spector

Throughout the Symposium, participants expressed a deep urgency to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss, and interconnected and converging threats. At the same time, we must balance this urgency with the need to deliver the right outcomes, which can take significant time. Our speakers also recognized that as a conservation community, we have never had as much federal government support as we do now. So, how do we leverage this moment of federal momentum to create change and spur a ‘restoration economy’ that can outlast changes in political support or administrations? We need to push the kinds of catalytic, transformative systems change that will connect the people on the ground to resources equitably and effectively.

Closely tied to the discussion of urgency was the notion of scale. We have many effective tools and model projects. Are we missing opportunities to meet the urgency of the moment because we are not scaling already-proven NBS work? Conversely, many Symposium speakers cautioned that there are no ‘silver arrow solutions,’ and trying to scale place-based projects to new areas may not work. Scaling needs to be understood within the project’s local context. Our conservation community should also consider focusing on replicating and scaling effective processes across communities facing similar challenges rather than trying to replicate projects. Getting to scale will require tailoring strategies to place and people while applying the process and techniques that we know are effective.

Engaging the next generation of conservation leaders

As we continue to strive for equitable nature-based solutions, speakers repeatedly raised the need for the conservation community to focus on the role that youth can play in shaping solutions. Not only will today’s youth have to shoulder the burdens of decisions made by previous generations, but younger generations also are a source of ideas and innovation. We have a meaningful opportunity to integrate Indigenous youth’s TEK by addressing institutional barriers that have prevented their participation in traditional conservation fields. Building stronger intergenerational equity can help lead to more durable nature-based solutions and better support for future generations.

Lastly, we heard throughout the Symposium that there is a need to resolve potential conflicts between climate and biodiversity solutions. We cannot let our greater sense of urgency around climate change supersede concerns about biodiversity protection or, worse, negatively impact biodiversity protection goals and equitable outcomes for communities. Good, effective policies will fully analyze and prioritize the impacts of climate solutions to ensure there are no unintended consequences for biodiversity, ecosystems, and communities.

Download the full 2023 Symposium Synthesis Report

Emily Barbo

Symposium 2023 Cross-cutting Theme: Empower

May 16, 2024

Don’t have time to read the full report? No problem! We’ve broken it down so you can focus on what resonates the most right now.

Cross-cutting Theme: Empower

“A vision without resources is little more than a hallucination.” – Àngel Peña

Despite unprecedented financial commitments by federal governments, we still face an enormous financing gap in achieving our climate and biodiversity goals. This is true globally and in North America, with an estimated global Biodiversity Financing Gap of $598-824 billion USD annually. While philanthropy has made large investments in NBS, we still do not have sufficient, equitably distributed financial resources to meet this moment. We need a cross-sector, all-of-government approach to find creative ways to support this work.

Building financial sustainability for NBS through private-sector investment

We heard consensus that much of the private sector supports investing in NBS and is pivoting their operations to intentionally support it. Still, significant barriers remain to the private sector’s investment in more impactful and innovative approaches and projects. Those barriers include a lack of consensus and transparency around systems for assessing risk and the impact of the work, especially when it comes to biodiversity. A clearer understanding of cost-benefit in relationship to biodiversity and to its associated metrics is needed to accelerate effective private-sector investment. Private sector companies have already implemented the easier, low-hanging fruit of NBS projects. Now they need help tackling the more challenging and complex ones. Importantly, the corporate sector needs better processes for working with frontline communities meaningfully.

Speakers reflected upon emerging carbon and biodiversity markets and how these markets can potentially supply ‘additive’ funds. However, practitioners remain concerned about these markets’ overall transparency and accountability. International efforts such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures and the Science-based Targets Initiative are working to help alleviate these concerns through transparent and durable reporting mechanisms. There is a tremendous need for cross-sector trust-building so that practitioners can be confident that claims of market benefits for people and nature accrue equitably and are measurable and meaningful. While funding sources, like environmental markets, are important, practitioners and policymakers can do more with existing funding sources. How can we be creative with the existing monetary sources to stack funding to drive greater and longer-lasting impacts?

The finance and corporate sectors need a clearer understanding of the benefits of biodiversity protection and how biodiversity loss puts investment at risk. This knowledge gap creates a barrier to further biodiversity investment from the finance sector. Additional data and messaging regarding biodiversity co-benefits and metrics to support tracking those co-benefits are deeply needed.

One critical opportunity that speakers raised concerning financing NBS projects is that we should not just focus on developing novel tools like environmental markets but also consider how existing financial instruments are barriers to delivering positive outcomes for biodiversity and climate efforts. We need to reform financial subsidies that harm nature and exacerbate climate impacts, such as those for fossil fuels and large-scale agriculture. This will require collaborating with policymakers across North America to examine and dismantle subsidy programs that inadvertently provide obstacles to their national and international climate and biodiversity goals.

Disinvestment in Frontline Communities

Throughout the dialogue, speakers highlighted the importance of recognizing the expertise and human capital that already exist within frontline communities. Frontline communities know what they need and have ideas for solutions to meet their communities’ challenges, but these communities often lack investment. One barrier to investment is the spatial mismatch between community-led projects and environmental markets. Investors typically require larger spatial scales for investment, while most community-led projects operate at much smaller scales. For example, the Blue Carbon projects highlighted at the Symposium struggle to access carbon markets because they are small and not aggregated.

There is a strong need to create and support a pipeline of projects ready for investment. Finally, we must develop better processes for equitable benefit sharing of financing efforts like carbon or biodiversity markets. While this is true for all frontline communities, speakers stressed a particular need for working with Indigenous communities on benefit sharing of these market and other financing tools.

Download the full 2023 Symposium Synthesis Report

Emily Barbo

Symposium 2023 Cross-cutting Theme: Learn, Monitor, Adapt

May 9, 2024

Don’t have time to read the full report? No problem! We’ve broken it down so you can focus on what resonates the most right now.

Cross-cutting Theme: Learn, Monitor, Adapt

“Are we doing the right thing?” – Lauren Oakes

Regenerating healthy biodiversity and building climate resilience is hard. Many of us put enormous amounts of energy, time, and money into creating positive change while experiencing tremendous uncertainty around our impact. We must pause and ask ourselves, ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ The lack of metrics and monitoring to support our decision-making is a barrier to answering this question. We need to identify solutions that are effective and lead to durable outcomes. Unfortunately, we are not tracking a common set of metrics to help us collectively answer the question, “Are we getting it right?” The inherent complexity of biodiversity makes a common set of metrics difficult to achieve, unlike so many of our climate solutions which are largely tied to CO2 equivalents. Not surprisingly, we have yet to fully define approaches to track and measure the suite of co-benefits associated with NBS. In order to get there, “Maybe it is less about right and wrong and more about striving for better as people learn from the challenges and successes of their work as it unfolds over time”, as suggested by Lauren Oakes.

Without consistent tracking of sufficient and comparable metrics over time, it is difficult to implement effective adaptive management programs within a project or at a larger policy scale. This gap limits our ability to appropriately advance effective approaches and techniques. Adaptive management and its associated monitoring need to be planned strategically from the beginning of a project and sustained throughout its life. Conversely, speakers noted that effective long-term monitoring can take time to produce results, which conflicts with the urgency to invest in and implement widespread solutions.

To improve adaptive management, we need a clearer understanding of what success looks like in terms of nature-based solutions and their outcomes. Developing a consensus around a common set of performance metrics related to NBS, biodiversity, and climate is required to ensure nature-positive outcomes. The full suite of NBS co-benefits is still poorly measured and understood. One of the major barriers to effective application is the lack of interest from government or philanthropic funders in supporting sustained multi-year monitoring programs. This limits the capacity of organizations to build long-term assessment and learning into their planning processes from the beginning.

Western monitoring requirements create barriers to Indigenous communities

In seeking to improve and sustain the use of metrics, monitoring, and adaptive management, speakers elevated the tension between conventional Western and TEK approaches. TEK is often built and shared around storytelling and non-quantitative measures, conflicting with conventional Western metrics and performance indicators. The limited funding available for monitoring typically prioritizes quantitative performance indicators. This creates an obstacle for Indigenous peoples’ access to critical funding for projects. Maybe more importantly, it also prevents the development of human capacity and cross-cultural trust-building. As a result, speakers called upon the conservation community to recognize and respect that Indigenous peoples do not need Western science and data to validate TEK. We must work together to fund and co-create models of support that are more respectful and inclusive of Indigenous ways of knowing.

Climate solutions must be nature-positive solutions

Another important concept emerging throughout Symposium discussions was the need for intentional planning to avoid potential conflicts between climate and biodiversity solutions. Climate change is often seen as more urgent than biodiversity loss, partly because climate threats and solutions receive better-developed messaging and measurements than fractured ecosystem services and functions. Promoting and incorporating nature-based solutions can help balance this tension. However, there is still a need for policies that fully analyze and prioritize the impacts of climate solutions to ensure no unintended consequences for biodiversity, ecosystems, and communities. We cannot let the sense of urgency around solving climate change over the long term supersede concerns about how those strategies or projects can negatively impact efforts and goals for protecting biodiversity and ensuring positive, equitable outcomes for communities.

Download the full 2023 Symposium Synthesis Report

Emily Barbo

Symposium 2023 Cross-cutting Theme: Fostering Relationships

May 2, 2024

Don’t have time to read the full report? No problem! We’ve broken it down so you can focus on what resonates the most right now.

Cross-cutting Theme: Fostering Relationships

“Progress moves at the speed of trust.” – James Rattling Leaf

The value of rooting our climate and biodiversity work in relationship-building reverberated powerfully throughout the Symposium. Despite the urgency of the climate and biodiversity crises, speakers encouraged the conservation community to slow down and intentionally build meaningful relationships with partners and leaders from across sectors and organizations, and particularly with the frontline and Indigenous communities who are central to this work. Creating an effective and truly inclusive NBS community necessitates a deeper understanding of and ability to communicate with all those touched by the biodiversity and climate crises to develop shared values and a common language. For North America to reach a nature-positive future, we must lead with community and create solutions built on a foundation of trust.

The knowledge and understanding of frontline communities and Indigenous peoples are foundational to building successful strategies for addressing climate and biodiversity risks and implementing effective nature-based solutions. Community-driven data is as important as the data derived from conventional Western science, and achieving a nature-positive future will be difficult without fully incorporating these diverse sources of expertise.

As we work towards building better relationships within and across the conservation field, several speakers highlighted the value of leaning into discomfort. Accommodating difficult conversations will help us reimagine the systems driving the climate and biodiversity crises. Globally, Indigenous peoples manage 80% of the remaining intact biodiversity. This is both a challenge and an opportunity to build bridges that connect Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and practices with the culture and systems of the dominant society. Perhaps we should reframe thinking about NBS as thinking about Indigenous-based solutions. However, if we are to do that, we must first resolve the roots of conflict between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples through a process of reconciliation.

Ethical Space is a key mechanism to enable successful reconciliation, which provides the means for respectful government-to-government dialogue and to deeply “understand what is important to be understood… and create something new.”

Download the full 2023 Symposium Synthesis Report

Emily Barbo

Symposium 2023 Cross-cutting Theme: Systems Change

April 24, 2024

Don’t have time to read the full report? No problem! We’ve broken it down so you can focus on what resonates the most right now.

Cross-cutting Theme: Systems Change

“Nature-positive, carbon-negative, justice-forward.” – Sacha Spector

As a community of practice, our end goal should be a “nature-positive, carbon-negative, justice-forward” society. To achieve this, we need to break out of our silos and broaden our project-scale thinking to reimagine and redesign the underlying relationships between nature, climate, and community. We must address the root causes of biodiversity loss and climate change rather than merely reacting to them.

Throughout the Symposium, speakers articulated the need for ‘multi-solving.’ In other words, we must recognize the interconnected drivers behind biodiversity loss and climate change and seek to implement policies and projects with the potential to address multiple threats across the climate-nature-equity space when possible. There is sufficient evidence that nature can mitigate and sometimes reverse climate impacts while providing social, economic, and ecological co-benefits. Nature underpins our economy and well-being in North America. For example, data shows that nature-based solutions (NBS) can cost-effectively provide 37% of the CO2 mitigation we need by 2030 to give us a meaningful chance of holding warming to below two degrees Celsius. Similarly, nature-based solutions are critical to reversing biodiversity decline. By focusing on implementing solutions that address multiple challenges, we drive the changes necessary to foster durable, positive systems change.

Wicked problems require interdisciplinary solutions

Tied to the theme of ‘multi-solving,’ Symposium participants unequivocally called for ‘mainstreaming’ biodiversity and NBS in all planning, implementation, and policy processes. While we’ve seen unprecedented progress within our conservation community and natural resource agencies to implement nature-based solutions, mainstreaming the protection and regeneration of biodiversity will require incorporating nature-based solutions into the planning, management, and policies of all sectors and agencies. As noted by many speakers, success will come only when climate change and nature are embraced within a whole-of-government approach to solving this twin crisis.

This idea was similarly elevated for non-government sectors. To create transformative change, we need to enable lasting solutions to our climate and biodiversity crises. All sectors need to treat climate and biodiversity as foundational to their operations and supply chains. We must break down the various silos limiting our ability to evolve and enable lasting solutions. This requires reaching beyond the traditional conservation community and thinking deeply about other segments of society, including the business, banking, and finance sectors, agriculture, energy, and rural and urban communities.

A related theme resonated across our two-day dialogue as vital to systems change: the importance of keeping people and communities at the center of the work. Speakers acknowledged that progress has been made to weave equity into federal policy, conservation practice, and corporate efforts while recognizing that we have not yet fully institutionalized equity and community co-benefits into our government, conservation, and corporate systems. To succeed in the long run, Indigenous and frontline communities must have the agency to co-create solutions and ensure that benefits are equitably shared. They must become integral to the development of practices, policies, and institutions to advance positive climate and biodiversity outcomes. No longer can solutions come at the expense of the livelihoods and well-being of marginalized communities. To achieve this, we need to consider how we break down and re-assemble the systems that kept so many communities out of the conversation in the first place.

Download the full Synthesis Report

Emily Barbo

Symposium Speaker: Sylvain Fabi

October 5, 2023

The Salazar Center is proud to announce that Sylvain Fabi, Consul General of Canada, will be joining us in Denver, Colorado for the fifth-annual International Symposium on Conservation Impact.

Sylvain joined the Consulate General of Canada in Denver in October 2020. As Canada’s Consul General in the U.S. Mountain West Region, Mr. Fabi oversees a team of 17 people who work within Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Utah and Wyoming to strengthen trade and economic ties; enhance political, academic and cultural links; and assist Canadians visiting or living in the five-state territory. He is also Canada’s chief negotiator for the modernization of the Columbia River Treaty with the United States.

Mr. Fabi joined the Trade Commissioner Service of External Affairs and International Trade Canada in 1992. He worked in various geographic and trade policy divisions in Ottawa. He was senior departmental adviser to the Minister of International Trade (2009 to 2010), Director for bilateral relations with South America and the Caribbean (2010 to 2013) and Executive Director of the North America Policy and Relations Division (2013 to 2015).

Mr. Fabi’s assignments abroad include trade commissioner at the embassy in Moscow (1995 to 1998), commercial counsellor at the embassy in Havana (2001 to 2005) and commercial counsellor at the embassy in Santiago (2005 to 2009). Mr. Fabi served as High Commissioner for Canada in Jamaica and the Bahamas (2015 to 2017). Before becoming Consul General in Denver, he was Executive Director, U.S. Transboundary Affairs Division (2017 to 2020).

Resources:

The Importance of Colorado’s Relationship with Canada featuring Sylvain Fabi and Kathryn Burkell

Emily Barbo

Symposium Speaker: Joe Neguse

October 2, 2023

The Salazar Center is proud to announce that Congressman Joe Neguse, Colorado’s 2nd District, U.S. House of Representatives, will be joining us in Denver, Colorado for the fifth-annual International Symposium on Conservation Impact.

Representative Joe Neguse has served as the Congressman for Colorado’s 2nd District in the U.S. House since being first elected in November 2018. He currently serves as Chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC), the No. 5 elected position in House Leadership, and is the first Coloradan to serve in senior leadership in over 85 years.

During his three-terms in the House, the Congressman has earned national praise for his ability to craft and enact legislation, and as the former Chairman of the Public Lands Subcommittee, has been identified as one of the most effective legislators in the Congress. He has had 22 pieces of legislation signed into law, by presidents of both political parties, and has been recognized nationally as one of the most bipartisan lawmakers in the country, including through his role as Co-Chair of the Bipartisan Wildfire Caucus. He currently serves as a member of the Natural Resources, Judiciary, and Rules Committees.

Before being elected to Congress, Rep. Neguse led Colorado’s consumer protection and business regulatory agency as a member of then-Governor John Hickenlooper’s Cabinet and Executive Director of the Department of Regulatory Agencies. An attorney and civic leader, Rep. Neguse also served six years on the University of Colorado Board of Regents, where he earned his undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, and Juris Doctorate.

The 2nd Congressional District, which is geographically larger than eight U.S. states, is home to both of Colorado’s major research universities and includes suburban cities, rural communities, and the most iconic mountain towns in America. The district spans 11 counties in Northern and Western Colorado, stretching up to the Wyoming border and west across the Continental Divide, and includes Fort Collins, Longmont, Boulder, Vail and Steamboat Springs, among many other communities.

Resources:

Rep. Neguse Introduces Bipartisan Legislative Package to Improve Water Resilience in the West

Emily Barbo

Symposium Speaker: Crystal Upperman

October 2, 2023

The Salazar Center is proud to announce that Crystal Upperman, Senior Manager, Deloitte, will be joining us in Denver, Colorado for the fifth-annual International Symposium on Conservation Impact.

Dr. Crystal Romeo Upperman is a Senior Manager at Deloitte in the Government and Public Services practice helping to bring best-in-class sustainability, climate adaptation, and climate equity support to clients. In her role, she advises on the firm’s go-to-market strategy as part of the Sustainability, Climate, and Equity strategic growth offering. Presently she serves as a review editor for the 5th National Climate Assessment (NCA5)—which evaluates the impacts of global change across the United States—and she serves on the executive committee for the U.S. EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors in the Office of Research and Development.

Crystal was formerly Vice President at AECOM leading climate resilience, social performance, and ESG for the Americas where she established a new portfolio of business centered on addressing climate equity and environmental justice across all business lines. She worked in tech at a San Francisco startup leading business strategy for air quality monitoring and equity mapping at Aclima. While at Aclima, she spearheaded the development of a climate and economic justice screening tool, developed meth for the integration of environmental health characterization within the platform and led external business development with private and public sector clients.

Prior, she was a Research Associate at the World Resources Institute on the Global Commission on Adaptation—which demonstrated that adapting to climate change improves human well-being and results in better, more sustainable economic development and security for all. Previous professional experiences span several notable organizations and institutions including serving as a consultant at the World Bank conducting research on sustainable agricultural development in China, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Crystal spent 4 years with the Maryland Department of Health leading the U.S. CDC’s Building Resilience Against Climate Effects grant that identified climate impacts and associated health effects in Maryland communities. She also worked for the District of Columbia’s Department of Health regulating the safe use and transport of radiation emitting devices across the district.

Her other prior experiences include extensive laboratory research in environmental remediation and catalyst products with years of regulatory compliance in air and radiation protection at the state levels. She began her career at BASF researching catalyst coatings for reducing vehicle emissions. Crystal’s research focus is in environmental science, exposure science and spatial epidemiology. Her research background includes a national assessment of the impact of climate change on chronic respiratory disease prevalence, which was funded by the US EPA. She has engaged in research projects that entail health risk assessment of climate and weather hazards, exposure assessment of pollen and extreme heat, environmental science translational research to promote sustainability and positive environmental and public health policies.

Crystal is a Trustee for The Nature Conservancy’s Maryland/DC chapter, a board member for WE ACT, a member of the advisory board for APHA’s Center for Climate, Health, and Equity, and a Steering Committee Member for the Environmental Law Institute’s (ELI) Emerging Leaders Initiative. This past presidential election cycle, she served on the Biden-Harris Campaign’s Climate, Energy, Environment policy committee and contributed to the Resilience and Environmental Justice subcommittees.

She earned a PhD in Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Science from the University of Maryland as a U.S. EPA STAR Fellow and a National Science Foundation LSAMP Fellow. She holds a MPA in Nonprofit Management from Kennesaw State University and a BS in Environmental Science from Spelman College. Crystal hails from Trenton, NJ and spent her early formative years in the Caribbean islands of Trinidad & Tobago.

Resources:

Climate equity – Discovering the next frontier in outcome measurement in government

Emily Barbo

Symposium Speaker: Angela Kemsley

October 2, 2023

The Salazar Center is proud to announce that Angela Kemsley, Conservation Director, WILDCOAST, will be joining us in Denver, Colorado for the fifth-annual International Symposium on Conservation Impact.

Based in San Diego, California, Angie leads WILDCOAST’s conservation projects in the United States including marine protected area (MPA) compliance initiatives, MPA Watch, marine monitor radar, wetland restoration, carbon sampling and research, climate action planning, ocean-related policy, and marine debris interception and removal projects. She joined WILDCOAST’s MPA team in 2017 as the statewide coordinator of the MPA Watch Community Science Program. In 2018, Angela assumed the role of Conservation Development Manager, before expanding her position to include communications. Prior to joining WILDCOAST, Angela worked for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, facilitating community-based conservation projects in northwest Mexico as well as leading tours of the San Diego Zoo. Angela also worked in the outdoor education department of the San Diego County Office of Education in addition to numerous field research positions throughout North and South America, the Caribbean, and Europe. Angela holds a B.S. in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution and a B.A. in Biological Anthropology from UC-San Diego and an M.A. in Biology from Miami University in Ohio.

Newly emerging science points to tidal salt marshes and seagrass beds as carbon sequestration powerhouses, potentially storing up to 50 times the carbon of a rainforest. WILDCOAST recently founded the Blue Carbon Collaborative: a network of organizations and individuals representing science, technology, and policy with a common goal to identify gaps and standardize practices surrounding blue carbon conservation, research, policy and resources. Coastal and marine ecosystems such as mangrove forests, wetlands and seagrass areas have great potential for carbon sequestration. These blue carbon ecosystems are a natural solution to climate change. Stemming from their conservation work on mangroves in Mexico, WILDCOAST began examining wetlands in California as potential opportunities for natural solutions. Through the Collaborative, WILDCOAST has identified a need for collaboration around blue carbon research and policy in California.

Emily Barbo

Symposium Speaker: Tannia Frausto

October 2, 2023

The Salazar Center is proud to announce that Tannia Frausto, Climate Change Director for WILDCOAST, will be joining us in Denver, Colorado for the fifth-annual International Symposium on Conservation Impact.

Based in Mexico City, Mexico, Tannia oversees and coordinates WILDCOAST’s blue carbon programs in Mexico and California. She leads WILDCOAST’s blue carbon policy initiatives in Mexico to promote mangrove conservation and restoration. Tannia joined WILDCOAST in 2013 as the Oaxaca Coast Coordinator where she initiated a program to protect the coral reefs of Huatulco National Park and helped to conserve globally important sea turtle nesting beaches.

In 2015, Tannia coordinated a pioneering RAMSAR Wetlands of International Importance management program with Mexico’s National Commission for Protected Areas (CONANP), as the Conservation Management Coordinator.

In 2017, Tannia was promoted to Wetlands and Climate Change Manager and helped to launch WILDCOAST’s blue carbon mangrove conservation and carbon sequestration work. Prior to joining WILDCOAST, Tannia carried out research and conservation work for the protection of coral reefs and sea turtles. Tannia holds a B.S. in Biology from the Instituto Politécnico Nacional in Mexico City and an M.S. in Marine Ecology from Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior (CICESE) in Ensenada.

Kate Burgess

Nature-Based Solutions: Healing nature with regenerative ocean farming

September 25, 2023

Kate Burgess is a Salazar Center partner and serves as NCEL’s Conservation Program Manager, where she enjoys collaborating with legislators on a variety of land, water, wildlife, and human issues.

My dad and I spend a lot of time surfing. We mostly go in the winter, not because we’re gluttons for punishment, but because that’s when the swell is allegedly the best on this side of the Atlantic. With our 7 mm wetsuits, booties, mittens, and hoods, we’ve adopted the proxy skin of seals, reminded only of the season when the sea is dusted with snow, or when an icy wave humbles the exposed skin on our face, leaving eyes stinging and heart pumping.

But recently, things have changed. The water in the winter isn’t as cold as it used to be. Last December, I didn’t need my mittens or booties. In the summer, I stopped wearing a wetsuit altogether, worried I’d overheat in the near-bath temperature waters of Nahant Beach that used to induce a sharp inhalation at the dip of a toe.

Given these obvious impacts of climate change, my dad and I have been thinking about another way to spend our time in the sea: ocean farming. With the dramatic warming of our ocean, we’re wondering what we can do to intervene, and regenerative ocean farming – particularly kelp cultivation – is one nature-based solution with lots of promise.

Kelp acts as a highly effective carbon sink, a natural defense against storms, habitat for species, and can be harvested for animal feed, medicine and actually, a pretty decent beer. It addresses the twin climate and biodiversity crises concomitantly, since they are inextricably linked and need to be addressed as such.

Nature based solutions (NBS) like planting kelp are a means of leveraging the innate power and potential in earth’s systems, flora and fauna, and using them to promote resilience. Many of these solutions – including, for example, prescribed burns and oyster reef restoration – have been developed and practiced by Indigenous communities since time immemorial. Without proper recognition, consent for use of knowledge, compensation, and centralization of Indigenous leadership, nature based solutions can become anti-Indigenous, and an extension of the violent and racist colonialism that has and continues to persist in the environmental movement and beyond. Thoughtful consideration of the use of NBS is vital.

These solutions are gaining momentum among communities, practitioners, decision makers, academics, and beyond, and I believe wholeheartedly that they’re one of the best means of making any real dent in recovering species and regulating our climate.

One way that I’m seeing NBS rise is at the state level. My job as Conservation Program Manager with the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators (NCEL) is to track land, water, and wildlife policies, share lessons learned with legislators across the U.S., and help them utilize the best available science and knowledge systems to advance equitable environmental policies. In 2023 alone, hundreds of state bills including NBS were introduced as a means of utilizing nature’s strengths as a solution to climate change and biodiversity loss.

State legislatures are essentially policy ‘test kitchens,’ except with less salt and no Guy Fieri. They’re where innovative measures can be piloted and repeated in other states, and ultimately with enough traction, at the federal and even international levels. States can set, maintain, and/or dismantle important legal narratives – especially when it comes to environmental issues.

For example, Montana’s recent Supreme Court win for youth was largely the result of a rights-to-nature state policy called the “Green Amendment” that was enacted in 1970. Green Amendments are environmental justice tools that solidify our rights to clean air, water, and a healthy environment, putting them on par with our other fundamental civil liberties like free speech. A powerful means of securing health for present and future generations, Green Amendments are picking up speed; in 2023, 13 states introduced Green Amendments, and New York became the first state to enact one since 1971.

With the recent Sackett SCOTUS decision gutting the Clean Water Act, experts say it’s up to states to “step in and fill the void.” With federal protection absent, states are tasked with playing defense for wetlands protection, a habitat coined “earth’s kidneys,” due to their tremendous capacity to filter toxins and sustain life for countless species.

The potential of and pressure on States to play environmental offense and defense is high, but rarely is their capacity. Some, like New Mexico, Vermont, and Nevada (among others) are citizen legislatures, which means lawmakers have full-time year-round jobs on top of being a legislator, and many lack staff, compensation, or even a physical office. U.S. territories lack voting representatives in Congress, so what happens at the state/territory level matters immensely when federal representation is lacking.

States are also treaty partners and have a unique government-to-government relationship with and responsibility to honor the sovereignty of Tribal Nations. Efforts like returning land back, supporting the rematriation of climate keystone wildlife like buffalo, and designing policies that require Free, Prior, and Informed Consent are essential in conjunction with designing state NBS. Indigenous communities are the original stewards of what is now known as the United States, and both traditional and contemporary ecological knowledge are some of the strongest tools available when it comes to bringing flora and fauna back, and regulating our climate – as long as that knowledge is respected and compensated.

Ultimately, my colleagues and I at NCEL try to fill in where capacity is lacking in state legislatures, calling ourselves “remote environmental staff.” We have a 30,000’ view of what’s happening on environmental state policy level on issues relating to, and are at the ready to provide research, briefings, connections to other states and best available science and knowledge systems, anything to help make their jobs easier. Federal efforts like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act, and the Nature-Based Solutions Roadmap have helped make clear the trend towards prioritizing NBS and the onus on States and partners for implementation.

As state trends on nature based solutions continue to rise, we’ll continue to equip lawmakers with the best available science and knowledge/thinking as a means of addressing the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. My dad and I are grateful for nature’s potential to heal, and we’ll join you in doing all we can to help sustain its gifts for future generations of surfers and beyond.

The Salazar Center is hosted the fifth annual International Symposium on Conservation Impact on October 11-12 in Denver, Colorado. The agenda focused on nature-positive solutions and how they can catapult our communities towards durable, high-impact outcomes for climate, biodiversity, and human well-being.

Learn more about the 2023 Symposium

Emily Barbo

Get the most out of Symposium: Know before you go

September 25, 2023

Get ready to attend the Salazar Center’s 5th annual International Symposium on Conservation Impact! We’ve compiled some helpful information about hotels, transportation, and other logistics to help you make the most of your time in Denver.

Interactive Breakout Session

There will be thematic breakout sessions on Thursday afternoon. In each session, a subject matter expert and facilitator will guide you through a series of questions. Your responses will be recorded and utilized by the Salazar Center to create post-Symposium resources for our network. So, no matter which thematic breakout session you choose, you will receive a synopsis of all the conversations! Check your email for the link to sign up for a session.

Learn more about the Breakout Session themes.

Denver-Area Hotels

The Symposium will take place at CSU Spur in Denver. The Salazar Center recommends Symposium participants utilize the following hotel:
Homewood Suites by Hilton Denver Downtown-Convention Center, 550 15th Street, Denver, Colorado, 80202

This hotel is approximately 30 minutes from Denver International Airport by car. There is also a light rail that goes from the airport to downtown Denver’s Union Station. The hotel is a one-mile walk from Union Station.

The Homewood Suites is also the location of the free shuttle pick-up and drop-off transportation to CSU Spur on Wednesday and Thursday.

Additional hotels in the area include:

Hilton Garden Inn Denver Downtown, 1400 Welton St, Denver, CO 80202
Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center, 650 15th St, Denver, CO 80202
Sonesta Denver Downtown, 1450 Glenarm Pl, Denver, CO 80202
Embassy Suites by Hilton Denver Downtown Convention Center, 1420 Stout St, Denver, CO 80202
Hyatt Place Denver Downtown, 440 14th St, Denver, CO 80202

Shuttle service will NOT be provided at these locations. If you plan to utilize the shuttle, please be sure to arrive at the Homewood Suites at least 5 minutes before departure.

Transportation & Parking

Complimentary Shuttle Service
The Salazar Center is providing complimentary shuttle services to and from the CSU Spur campus and the Homewood Suites by Hilton Denver Downtown-Convention Center (550 15th Street, Denver, Colorado 80202).

Please plan to arrive at the shuttle at least five minutes before departure. The shuttle schedule is posted on the Travel page of the website.

Parking at CSU Spur
There is free parking available in the N lot behind the Vida Building (see map) for those wishing to drive to the Symposium.

Address for GPS: 4777 National Western Drive, Denver, CO 80216

Carpool
To assist local attendees get to the Symposium, we have set up a simple Carpool website that can help you find or share a ride. Simply go to the page and either volunteer to drive or see if anyone is offering space in their car near you. We hope this allows for easier commuting to Denver to reduce emissions and maybe even help you make a new connection!

NOTE:
There are limited public transit options and rideshare availability at the CSU Spur campus. The Salazar Center recommends utilizing the complimentary shuttle service, driving your own vehicle, or carpooling with other attendees as detailed above.

Start Networking

The Symposium is more than a 2-day event. It is an opportunity to bring together passionate individuals from across the continent and disciplines so that we can learn from each other, share resources and knowledge, and create greater impacts and progress for the environment.

The Salazar Center created an exclusive LinkedIn Group for Symposium participants so that you can deepen connections with the folks you met before, during, and after the event. It’s a space to ask questions, offer answers, and continue the conversations that the event ignites.