Around the world, people depend on natural systems for their economic survival. For instance, an estimated 500 million people rely on coral reefs for their food and livelihood. Similarly, over 1 billion people around the world, many living in extreme poverty, depend on forests for freshwater, food and fuel.

However, these natural systems — and the lives they support — are threatened by the inevitable impacts of climate change.

Building nature’s resilience to climate change is vital to reducing impacts on people and nature, through strategies including:

• Establishing protected areas that strengthen resiliency to climate change, helping ensure the food security of millions of people.
• Promoting healthy reefs, mangroves and coastal wetlands that can minimize damage to coastal communities by buffering them against increasingly frequent and intense storms.
• Protecting and restoring forests that can reduce soil erosion and mudslides brought on by changing weather patterns.

Helping People and Nature Adapt

Around the world, Conservancy scientists are analyzing the likely impacts of climate change on plants, animals and natural communities.  With this information, we are:

• Designing and implementing conservation strategies to lessen these harmful impacts,
• Helping prioritize the places we should conserve, and
• Identifying the most effective approaches that can be applied in similar sites.

From North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound to Florida’s coral reefs to China’s Yunnan Province, the Conservancy is developing strategies that will help natural areas adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change.

Nature-based Adaptation as Part of Climate Change Legislation

Recognizing the magnitude of the challenge climate change poses for the natural world and for all of us, the Conservancy is calling for climate change legislation to include dedicated funding for nature-based adaptation efforts. In the United States, the Conservancy supports setting aside a significant portion of the revenue generated from the sale of emissions allowances to help natural areas adapt to climate change. This revenue could fund efforts to:

• Create programs that research and monitor climate change impacts
• Acquire, protect, manage, and enhance federal land that will be significantly altered by climate change
• Support programs to help natural areas most vulnerable to climate change — such as coastal areas and coral reefs — adapt to climate change; and 
• Implement strong adaptation plans with science and nature as an integral part of the planning process.

Our Adaptation Work: Stories from the Field

Read more examples of how the Conservancy is helping people and nature adapt to climate change:

• Coral reefs are vulnerable to climate change because high ocean temperatures cause some corals to "bleach," or lose their colorful symbiotic algae. The Conservancy is leading a global effort to identify corals that are resilient to bleaching events and to ensure these "survivors" are protected through effectively managed, large-scale marine protected area networks worldwide.
• In the Albemarle Sound of North Carolina, scientists project that sea-level rise will eventually inundate the coastal ecosystem. The Conservancy is developing potential restoration projects that would help protect the sound, including planting native cypress forests, restoring submerged aquatic vegetation beds, establishing reefs to provide habitat for native oysters, and planting brackish marsh grasses on shore lands that are likely to be submerged.
• The Arctic may be harder hit by climate change than anyplace in the world. In Alaska, the Conservancy is connecting leading climate change scientists with resource managers from federal and state agencies so that climate projections can be integrated into the decisions made by public land management agencies.
• In the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California climate change is shifting vegetation and natural communities upslope. The Nature Conservancy, the USDA Forest Service, and partners are researching an area in the Sierra old-growth forest to quantify these impacts of climate change and to develop strategies to conserve unique natural communities in the place John Muir called the "Range of Light."
• In the Florida Keys, the Conservancy and partners are working to bolster the resilience of coral reefs to bleaching caused by warming seas. We are transplanting healthy fragments of staghorn coral onto reefs and studying their growth and survival rates — advancing coral reef science while restoring an important structural component of the reef.
• In New Mexico, the Conservancy is conducting a statewide analysis to identify places, species, systems and other natural resources at risk due to climate change. The study will also propose measures that land and water managers can take to abate threats to plants, animals and natural processes as the impacts of climate change continue to grow.
• The Conservancy established the Palmyra Research Station with a team of scientists in 2005 to study the effects of climate change on the atoll and surrounding coral reefs. Palmyra’s location in the Pacific Ocean 1,000 miles south of Hawaii makes it an excellent location for scientists to study climate and air-sea interaction, enabling scientists to better project how the world’s coral reefs will respond to changes in climate, human use and conservation management.
• In Yunnan Province, China, native alpine meadows — which provide ecosystem services such as water storage, medicinal plants and grazing for livestock — are being threatened by a rapidly warming climate and local land use policies. The Conservancy is studying potential strategies to protect native alpine grasses, such as changing grazing patterns and fire management techniques.

Climate change picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Daniel & Robbie Wisdom (coral reefs); Photo © Jennifer Henman/TNC (rising sea levels); Photo © Bill Kamin (icebergs); Photo © Barry Baker/TNC (scientists); Photo © Ross Geredien (caribou).