What is climate-smart conservation?

There’s no denying that we are facing a climate crisis. It is universally agreed among scientists that human activity is the primary cause of climate change, leading to rising global temperatures and the unbalancing of ecosystems, with increasingly severe impacts for people, plants, and animals alike. There is a dire need to combat the climate crisis before the damage becomes irreparable—but what is the best course of action, especially in the landscapes that precious wild animal populations call home?

While rapid reductions in fossil fuel production is the highest priority, climate-smart conservation is a powerful solution that can help wild animals, biodiverse ecosystems, and local communities to thrive, despite the challenges they face from climate change. Climate-smart conservation can also serve as a nature-based climate change solution.  

In this blog, we look at what climate-smart conservation is, why it’s important, and what we can do to help support climate-smart initiatives and combat climate change.

Addressing climate change in conservation

Conservation areas are hotspots for the impacts of climate change, as rising temperatures, unpredictable weather, and more frequent disasters impact these vulnerable ecosystems, threatening the survival of endangered species.

Historically, conservation managers have not considered climate change in their work. Focused on non-climate-related threats to animals and their habitats, conservation has assumed a stable climate and taken a hands off approach, letting nature take its course while working hard to protect conservation areas from human threats such as poaching and deforestation. Once protected, animals and ecosystems have been left to adapt and evolve to changing environmental conditions as they have done for millennia.

In some cases, conservation managers have been reactive to climate impacts, intervening to rescue or protect animals from immediate harm or to restore ecosystems and animal populations where they have been impacted negatively. These approaches have tended to treat the symptoms of climate change rather than actively trying to reduce risks and to help ecosystems and animals adapt and become resilient to the challenges they face.  

But the rate at which the climate is now changing means that conservation approaches that worked in a predictable climate are no longer fit for purpose. Many wild animals, as well as plants and other organisms, now live in a climate that is very different to the one in which they evolved to survive—one that is changing more rapidly than they can adapt. Many are becoming stressed in their habitats due to climate change. Some are already beginning to migrate in search of more hospitable conditions, while those that cannot are now struggling to survive. And as climate change gets worse, hundreds of thousands of species face the threat of extinction, unless humans help them to adapt to changing environmental conditions.

On the flip side, conservation areas are also an important line of defence against climate change. Protected areas on land and in the oceans are significant stores of carbon and actively remove millions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere every year. If expanded and effectively managed, protected areas can not only safeguard biodiversity but can also help to tackle climate change by mitigating global warming and reducing the risks associated with extreme weather events. Furthermore, conservation areas provide multiple ecosystem services which are vital to the well-being and survival of local communities and economies, from water supplies and natural resources to temperature regulation, flood protection, and crop pollination.

The effects that climate change is having upon wild animals, plants, and ecosystems—and will continue to have for many years to come—means that conservation managers must now consider climate change in their work. No longer can we focus only on protecting animals from non-climatic threats; we need to plan actively to support animals and ecosystems to cope with and adapt to changing climatic conditions. Equally, conservation managers must take stock of the immense benefits that wildlife conservation and ecosystem protection can provide to climate change mitigation and adaptation. We must actively integrate conservation management techniques that not only maximise carbon capture and storage in the landscape, but also actively support local communities to develop the skills and adopt the livelihoods that can help them thrive in a changing climate without degrading natural resources.

New climatic conditions demand a new approach to conservation management—one that can support animals, ecosystems, and local communities to cope, adapt, and thrive in the context of a changing climate. This is the goal of climate-smart conservation.

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.

How IFAW supports climate-smart conservation

Here at IFAW, we are putting climate change at the heart of our conservation work, working with other organisations, local communities, and governments to create climate-resilient landscapes and seascapes in which wild animals, vulnerable ecosystems, and local communities can adapt and thrive together, despite the challenges posed by climate change.

We do this by considering how climate change affects the landscapes, species, and people where we work and how those impacts will change in the future. We then work with partners located in those landscapes—conservation agencies, local communities, local governments, businesses, and nongovernmental organisations—to design projects that can ensure those landscapes are resilient to climate change and support wild animals and people to adapt over the long term, while also protecting precious carbon stocks and increasing the carbon storage capacity of plants, soils, and animals.

Some specific ways in which we are integrating climate smart conservation into our work include:

• Considering the impacts of climate change and future climate risks in our conservation planning and implementation processes and ensuring that our conservation management activities contribute actively to climate mitigation and adaptation for animals, ecosystems and people
• Protecting and expanding conservation areas in ways that protect precious biodiversity and carbon sinks
• Linking elephant habitats across Africa so they and other animals have the space they need to be resilient to climatic changes
• Providing water for elephants and other animals in places like Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, so they can cope with periods of drought and recover quickly after climate shocks
• Rescuing animals that have been affected by climate disasters and supporting their habitats to recover, such as our work with koalas affected by bushfires in Australia
• Working with local government authorities to consider how climate change will impact wildlife, ecosystems, people, and the local economy and coming up with climate adaptation action plans that link wildlife conservation with community-based climate adaptation
• Supporting local communities to create and restore conservation areas in ways that increase the climate resilience of both the landscape and wild animals, while also supporting them to benefit economically from community-owned conservation in ways that enable them to build resilience and adapt to climate change
• Providing local people with employment in conservation projects and supporting them to adopt new kinds of economic activity, such as craft production and tourism, that are more resilient to climate change than traditional livelihoods
• Supporting local community members in Kenya and Zambia to become more food secure and economically secure by helping them adopt agricultural techniques that are more resilient to climate change, which reduce negative impacts on the local ecosystem and also support biodiversity recovery
• Enabling community members in China and India to adopt fuel efficient cooking and lighting technologies, including renewable energy, thereby increasing their climate resilience and reducing their impacts on elephant habitats and protecting carbon stocks by reducing deforestation, while also helping them access income through carbon finance markets.