Screen capture from the Climate-Smart Conservation guide

Climate-Smart Conservation: Putting Adaptation Principles into Practice

Natural resource managers and conservation professionals can use this guide to help them incorporate climate considerations into their work.

Climate-Smart Conservation provides guidance to natural resource managers and conservation professionals for carrying out climate adaptation and incorporating climate considerations into their work. Developed collaboratively by a federal, state, and non-governmental organization (NGO) expert workgroup, the peer-reviewed 262-page publication is available in both hardcopy and electronic form. A companion training course based on the guide is offered through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center (see link at right).

The Climate-Smart Conservation Cycle

The Climate-Smart Conservation Cycle, a general framework for adaptation planning and implementation.

The guide provides an overview of how climate change may affect species and ecosystems, offers general principles for successful climate adaptation, and outlines a set of “key characteristics” of climate-smart conservation. The guide is organized around a generalized framework for adaptation planning referred to as the “climate-smart cycle.” This approach acknowledges that user needs, capacities, and resources are variable, and that there is no one-size-fits-all for adaptation planning. Instead, climate-smart conservation emphasizes the need for using an intentional and transparent process to assess climate-related vulnerabilities, to identify possible adaptation strategies and actions, and to select and implement those capable of reducing key vulnerabilities and meeting forward-looking conservation and management goals.

Climate-Smart Conservation was published by the National Wildlife Federation in collaboration with the U.S. National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

Last modified
30 August 2021 - 1:48pm