The Nature Conservancy. Protecting nature. Preserving life.™

Mark Tercek, the president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy. © Erika Norteman

The President’s 2011 Budget is a major step forward for conservation in these difficult economic times.
 
At a time when our nation faces serious economic challenges, we are encouraged that the Administration recognizes that the health of our economy and the health of our environment are fundamentally linked. The president’s budget makes significant progress in two areas particularly important to The Nature Conservancy: 

• It invests in effective solutions to climate change in the United States and abroad, and
• It increases the ability of the Federal government to work cooperatively with other levels of government and with the private sector to restore and protect our nation’s lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans. 

Climate Change

The proposed budget correctly recognizes climate change as a threat to America’s national security and proposes investments in clean energy and sustainable land use that will encourage economic growth while lowering global emissions.

The budget includes action on climate change across all natural resource and environmental agencies. While we continue to advocate for enactment of comprehensive climate legislation, the President’s budget provides support for core elements of an immediate response to climate change. The budget proposal:

• recognizes deforestation as a major cause of climate change and significant increases in funding over 2010 levels to protect and restore tropical forests — a rapid and cost-effective climate solution that also fights poverty in developing nations;
• increases spending on science to analyze the impacts of climate change and to develop conservation solutions to make people and nature more resilient to the affects of a changing climate in the U.S. and around the world; and

provides more funding for the development of low-carbon energy systems in the United States and in developing countries. This will build new markets for American clean energy technologies.

Restoring and Conserving America’s Lands and Waters

The President’s budget reflects a pioneering effort for the Federal government to work cooperatively with others to conserve our nation’s lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans at scales that will stand the test of time:

• Funding is included in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) budget to support cooperative efforts to create blueprints for ocean use and conservation.  Such coastal and marine spatial planning is an important first step in bringing federal, state, tribal, and regional organizations together to ensure that our oceans are healthy and able to sustain the many uses we value such as fishing, recreation, energy development, and shipping.
• For the first time the NOAA budget also provides funding for Regional Ocean Partnerships to accomplish and support implementation of coastal and marine spatial planning by states and regions. Similar partnerships are already operating in several regions where state and local governments and Federal agencies have joined together to address longstanding problems at scales that are ecologically and economically significant.
• In the Department of Agriculture’s budget, $40 million is proposed for the Forest Landscape Restoration Act and $50 million for a new Priority Watersheds and Job Stabilization Program — new efforts designed to restore damaged forests and watersheds while at the same time providing long term jobs for rural economies.
• The budget proposal renews funding to the Army Corps of Engineers for restoration of critical wetlands and waterways in the Everglades of Florida, along the Missouri River, on the Upper Mississippi and in Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound.
• And the budget includes a significant increase in funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and Forest Legacy Programs to invest in America’s legacy of parks and wildlife refuges and to partner with rural landowners to conserve working ranches and forests in such places as Montana’s Crown of Continent, the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee, and Oregon’s Hells Canyon.

Innovative and Effective Approaches Deserving of Support

While, of course, the Nature Conservancy can find places in this budget where we would like to see more money or more emphasis, overall we believe it reflects a new spirit of innovative conservation with several defining qualities:

• a reliance on the best science,
• a long term view,
• an understanding of the importance of conservation at home and abroad to our economy,
• the willingness to work cooperatively with state and local governments and with other nations,
• a commitment to working at the level of whole watersheds and ecosystems, and
• a drive toward tangible results. 

It is our firm hope that Congress will recognize these attributes and advance these requests as part of what we see as our responsibility to pass along a clean and healthy environment to our children.