When Climate Change Seems Overwhelming, Focus On Local Nature-Based Solutions
With a distinguished career advising large business and working internationally, Lara Birkes returned home to Montana. In this op-ed, she identifies reasons to have hope
From how we run our businesses to owning land and trying to be better citizens, every one of us can do positive things to make the places we love more resilient to the effects of climate change, Lara Birkes says. This is just one of many Greater Yellowstone valleys that should inspire communities to rally together. Photo courtesy Lara Birkes
By Lara Birkes
This winter's release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ICC) Sixth Assessment Report is, unsurprisingly, a grim read.
With the outcome of an eight-year long undertaking by the world’s most authoritative scientific body on climate change, it is hard not to look away from the detailed and sobering consequences of human-caused climatic extremes. Period.
But if there is hope in solutions, and I believe there is, then we have those in abundance.
Strangely this makes the heady 8,000-page synopsis on the state-of-the-world quite relatable. In fact, I suspect most people now see impacts highlighted by the IPCC in their daily lives.
As to feeling less daunting, I find it helpful to translate these big climate challenges into local undertakings that are actionable by individuals and communities. Concentrate on the solutions, not the problems.
As to feeling less daunting, I find it helpful to translate these big climate challenges into local undertakings that are actionable by individuals and communities. Concentrate on the solutions, not the problems. At home in Montana, the solutions I gravitate toward are nature-based.
A good starting point is through local civic engagement—county planning boards, city councils, mayoral initiatives, state legislatures, governors’ offices, and up to federal agencies and representatives. It’s remarkable how many local policies, for better or worse, ultimately serve as a broader foundation for environmental stewardship—or destruction.
In most basic terms, this means supporting policies and elected representatives that advocate in favor of climate action, clean energy, species protection, and broadscale conservation.
At home in Montana, the solutions I gravitate toward are nature-based. The restoration and preservation of forests, grasslands, and wetlands in the rural mountain west specifically. I’m increasingly attuned to the role large landscapes, connected ecosystem corridors, biodiversity and wildlife too play in the carbon cycle.
The Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment offers an excellent scientific overview of climate change in the GYE - past present and future. Watershed Down and Yellowstone Science explain the impacts of these extreme changes on everything from migration corridors to snowpack, species distribution, bird nesting cycles and vegetation. For a Teton County, Wyoming perspective, see The Coming Climate which speaks to the economic and ecological implications in the Jackson Hole area.
Sunset in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley. Among the biggest nature-based things each of us can do to confront climate change is supporting the preservation and maintenance of healthy landscapes on both public and private lands. These acts include protecting the function of soils, water, forests and rangelands—all of which sequester carbon. Photo courtesy Jacob W. Frank/NPS
Given the local political realities in Montana now, and the American West more broadly, small actions by individuals means constant vigilance and monitoring of legislative bills, actions by state agencies and special interest groups focused on exploiting natural resources.
This is the bite size approach to daunting problems—legislative testimony, NGO engagement, letter writing, phone calls to lawmakers and community gatherings. It’s exhausting. And sometimes inspiring. But there is no other way. It’s the cumulation of detrimental environmental laws that pass in urban and rural communities worldwide which swell into ominous global IPCC reports.
If natural climate solutions resonate with you, consider how you can influence initiatives such as: avoided deforestation, climate smart forestry, regenerative agriculture, carbon soil sequestration, watershed protection, apex predator co-existence and wildlife conservation. Research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencestell us nature-based solutions can provide up to 37 percent of the emission reductions needed by 2030.
Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tell us nature-based solutions can provide up to 37 percent of the emission reductions needed by 2030
If your passion for community action falls to other spheres, consider the steps you can take to key climate change mitigation solutions detailed by WRI—retire coal plants; invest in clean energy; decarbonize buildings, aviation, shipping, cement, steel, and plastics; shift to electric vehicles; increase public transportation; reduce food waste, improve agricultural practices; and reduce meat consumption from large agriculture conglomerates.
Small actions by individuals do add up, and we need more Montanans to relate to the IPCC findings with this sentiment in mind. As has been said, allegedly by Margret Mead, “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
About Lara Birkes
Lara Birkes is a sustainability and policy professional with over 15 years' experience managing partnerships, initiatives and policy engagement with companies, international organizations, governments and NGOs.
She holds a B.S. degree in International Business & Management from the University of Montana, a M.A. degree in International Trade Policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California and served as a Fulbright Scholar in Morocco. She started her career working on Capitol Hill with the US Senate Finance Committee for Montana Senator Max Baucus.
Lara is an outdoor enthusiast, avid skier and mountaineer and lives in the Paradise Valley—a few miles from where her great grandparents homesteaded on the Yellowstone River.
