Biodiversity and Ecosystems Law and Policy
This tab includes strategies for how to avoid or reduce climate change impacts to ecosystems. It also includes any laws, legislation, regulations, agency guidance, and executive orders relevant to biodiversity and ecosystems.
Resources are automatically presented by rating, but can be sorted by date or title. Apply additional filters to narrow by resource type, state, region, impact, or jurisdictional focus.
50 results are shown below.
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Resource
October 7, 2020
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an Executive Order on October 7, 2020 creating a California Biodiversity Collaborative and setting a goal of conserving at least 30% of the state’s land and coastal waters by 2030 to combat the biodiversity and climate crises. The EO also calls for engaging with stakeholders across California to, among other things: prioritize investments to protect biodiversity, habitat restoration, wildfire resistant and sustainable landscapes; protect pollinators, native plants and animals, and soils; naturally sequester carbon; and develop a “Natural and Working Lands Climate Smart Strategy.
Related Organizations: State of California
Resource Category: Law and Governance
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May 2019
This handbook was designed to support climate-smart meadow restoration projects in the mountain meadows of northern California. The report offers guidance on incorporating climate change impacts into a meadow vulnerability assessment, and adaptive measures into restoration planning and design. The report describes how to conduct a vulnerability assessment, and how to apply Point Blue’s climate-smart restoration principles to address those vulnerabilities with adaptation measures. The guide describes desired meadow restoration outcomes, climate projections for the Sierra Nevada region, and includes a summary of a climate vulnerability assessment for four riparian meadow restoration projects in the northern Sierra and southern Cascades.
Related Organizations: Point Blue Conservation Science (PRBO)
Author or Affiliated User: Marian Vernon
Resource Category: Planning
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April 25, 2019
The Wildlife Conservation Society partnered with the Climate Resilience Fund to offer this guidance for investors funding conservation projects - such as private foundations, public agencies and local governments - on how to consider climate change risks inherent in their investments. Climate change is causing dramatic and unpredictable effects on ecosystems and natural resources - creating uncertainties for conservation funding decision making and the future outcome of investments. This guidance for conservation investors supports intentionality in anticipating and assessing climate change risks, which in turn safeguards these investments to advance conservation goals.
Resource Category: Funding
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October 2018
Prepared by representatives of the Climate Land Ambition and Rights Alliance, Missing Pathways addresses food security, protecting human rights through land rights, and preserving and restoring natural ecosystems from climate change impacts. Carbon sequestration solutions are identified that increase the biodiversity and resilience of terrestrial carbon stocks, by ending deforestation, and enhancing restoration, regeneration and transformative agricultural practices. It prioritizes securing the rights of Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities to land, and empowerment of these communities through resilient food systems, and healthy biodiverse ecosystems solutions.
Related Organizations: Climate Land Ambition and Rights Alliance
Resource Category: Solutions
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October 2018
This U. S. Forest Service report develop provides an assessment of the vulnerability of forest ecosystems in the Mid-Atlantic region and was designed to help resource managers incorporate climate change considerations into management practices. The report synthesizes the best available scientific information on climate change and forest ecosystems, focusing on a study area including 60 million acres of land across eastern Maryland, southern New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Of this area, about 32 million acres are forested.
Related Organizations: U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) , USFS Northern Research Station
Resource Category: Assessments
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September 7, 2018
California Governor Brown’s Executive Order (EO) directs the state Department of Food and Agriculture and Department of Fish and Wildlife to work together to protect ecosystems, plants and wildlife while restoring and building climate resilience in habitats across the state. The order also supports the state's new California Biodiversity Initiative, an action plan to protecting the state's ecosystems and diversity of wildlife and plants. The Executive Order and Initiative will improve understanding of the state’s biological diversity, and identify and implement strategies to protect the state’s biodiversity from climate change.
Related Organizations: State of California, California Department of Fish and Wildlife , California Department of Food and Agriculture
Resource Category: Law and Governance
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September 1, 2018
The California Biodiversity Initiative was enacted by Governor Brown’s Executive Order B-54-18 in order to “improve understanding of the State’s biological richness and identify actions to preserve, manage, and restore ecosystems to protect the State’s biodiversity from climate change.”
Related Organizations: California Department of Fish and Wildlife , California Department of Food and Agriculture, California Natural Resources Agency
Resource Category: Solutions
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2018
The Nature Conservancy has mapped locations across California with strategic recommendations for land managers to support wildlife and plant resilience to climate change. The interactive online tool is a map of California’s Landscape Vulnerability which presents conservation actions for terrestrial species across the state.
Related Organizations: The Nature Conservancy (TNC)
Resource Category: Data and tools
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March 2018
The "hopeful side of climate change," as presented by the Wildlife Conservation Society, can be found in this portfolio of conservation practices that support wildlife and ecosystem adaptation to climate impacts. Twelve case studies feature organizations and their climate-informed strategies and innovative long-term goals that are ready to evolve with the impacts of climate change. The case studies included reflect projects that were were supported by the Wildlife Conservation Society Climate Adaptation Fund.
Related Organizations: Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)
Resource Category: Solutions
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2017
Monitoring and evaluation of implemented projects plays a pivotal role in conservation, and is important while having additional challenges for climate adaptation projects. This report from the Wildlife Conservation Society offers context and considerations around the process of monitoring and evaluation of climate adaptation projects.
Related Organizations: Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)
Resource Category: Monitoring and Reporting
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