By Bob Bendick

In the first sentences of his inaugural address on January 20, President Barack Obama spoke of the threat to our planet from the way we use energy. The environment is once again on the front page.

But, then, the history of conservation in this country has never been linear. Progress has come in fits and starts in response to disasters, to scientific discoveries, to inspired leadership.

It has been a long time since we’ve seen one of those jumps forward — but now, today, the ingredients for unprecedented environmental change for the better are here:

• A reawakening of public concern brought on by climate change and the need to move to lower-carbon sources of energy;
   
• A new administration not just committed to environmental progress, but disposed toward building the consensus that will make action possible;
   
• A renewed reliance of the value of science in shaping effective environmental policy; and
   
• A recognition of how completely unsustainable the excesses of the last decade have been.

Our Conservation Priorities

While the prospects for positive change are good, from the The Nature Conservancy’s perspective, that change must be different from that which has come before. Separate conservation victories are not enough to meet today’s problems.

In every one of our primary areas of concern, the challenge and opportunity are to bring the pieces together, to address our environment in the way that it exists — whole, connected, functional and beautiful.

In this context here are the Conservancy’s highest public policy priorities for the next two years:

1. Passing carbon cap and trade legislation that will drive overall reductions in carbon emissions by as much as 20 percent by 2020 and at least 80 percent by 2050.
   
   While this is an immense challenge in today’s economic climate, such legislation can help revive our economy and improve our quality of life through investment in energy conservation and new energy technologies and by providing a source of funding for the planned adaptation of natural landscapes to a warming Earth.
    
2. Creating a new generation of Federal funding and landowner incentive programs to complete networks of conserved land and well managed working landscapes sufficient to withstand the pressures of climate change and continuing urbanization.
   
   The design of these systems should be guided by the State Wildlife and Forest Plans already authorized in law and should include re-investment in and protective management of the nation’s remarkable legacy of Federal lands.
    
3. Encouraging Congress to provide the direction and resources to the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture to restore water resources in whole watersheds.
   
   Such a move means re-evaluating the operating criteria of the nation’s dams, supporting more large scale restoration projects like that in Florida’s Everglades, passing National Fish Habitat Legislation, and better coordinating the use of the 2008 Farm Bill programs to assist farmers, ranchers and forest land owners to reduce polluted runoff.
    
4. Bringing together state and Federal agencies to better plan out the future of our coastal regions — either through new legislation or through re-authorization of the Coastal Zone Management Act.
   
   Through such action, we should decide as a nation in a cooperative way what should be protected, what can be restored, where to put various human uses like wind power and other energy development, and how to respond to sea level rise and increased storm intensity.
    
5. And helping to restore America’s conservation standing in the world by our actions here at home, by our ratification of international environmental treaties and by increasing U.S. funding and technical assistance for conservation in the developing world.

Accomplishing all this means a greater role for the President’s Council on Environmental Quality to reduce wasteful competition and overlapping of agency authorities and to convince the public and private sectors -- as well as urban and rural interests -- that they all share and must take responsibility for our one connected environment.

It suggests ultimately, as the Conservancy said in its transition recommendations to the Obama Administration, that “the United States should build on its rich conservation tradition to create a framework of healthy air, land and water that will protect natural systems and around which the next generations of Americans can build secure and rewarding lives.”

All of this is easily said, but very, very difficult to accomplish. The new President expressed an understanding of this, of the new level of commitment required to overcome the problems of our nation and our planet. That is a good start and familiar territory for conservationists. So it is my hope and expectation that with our expertise in moving from ideas to accomplishing tangible conservation progress on the ground, the Nature Conservancy will be there to help.

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Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Karolina Paszkiewicz (Poznan spires); Photo © Roberto Troya (Roberto Troya).