A New Fund Seeks to Preserve the Appalachians and Capture Carbon in the Process
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Photo: Chuck Sutherland via Open Space Institute
About a decade ago, a big new idea took off in the world of conservation. An emerging body of science pushed the field away from analyzing the impact of climate change on species—or ignoring it altogether—to considering the “resilience” of landscapes, or the ability of an area to support plants and animals over the long term, even as the climate is altered.
It was a transformational shift for conservationists. Among those inspired by the new approach was the Open Space Institute, a land conservation nonprofit, which partnered with a coalition of national and regional foundations to launch a fund guided by the framework, ultimately conserving more than 50,000 acres across 11 states.
This February, the institute announced a new fund, with many of the same partners, that once again reflects ascendant concerns within the conservationist movement and sheds light on how existing efforts are reshaping to pursue those goals.
Called the Appalachian Landscapes Protection Fund, the new $18 million initiative will continue to consider climate resilience in its decisions, while also seeking to maximize the carbon-capturing potential of the forests it preserves and to ensure equity for the region’s underserved communities.
Other conservation efforts have set their sights on similar goals. One example is the Climate and Land Use Alliance, a group of nine foundations that supports forest protection and indigenous land rights as climate solutions abroad, including in Brazil and Indonesia.
But amid escalating action on climate change, burgeoning efforts to quantify nature’s carbon capture potential, growing awareness of the far-reaching impacts of institutional racism, and President Joe Biden’s plan to conserve 30% of U.S. land and waters by 2030, the emergence of funds like the Appalachian Landscapes Protection Fund could serve as a preview of the forces that will drive the next generation of conservation philanthropy in the United States.
The fund has raised $12 million to date, including $6 million from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the largest partner in the prior effort and a longtime supporter of conservation as a climate solution. Other supporters of the prior fund, the Lyndhurst and William Penn foundations and Jane’s Trust, have also signed on as backers, along with some newcomers, including the Tucker and Riverview foundations, and two anonymous funders.
The Appalachians’ climate contributions
As its name suggests, the fund, unlike its predecessor, specifically targets the Appalachian Mountains, the rugged chain of forested slopes and valleys that stretches 1,500 miles from Alabama to Canada.
The choice of geography reflects the fund’s carbon mission. The eastern United States contained about two-thirds of the nation’s forests and accounted for about 78% of forest carbon sequestration in 2013, a share that’s projected to rise to 91% by 2037, according to a report in Nature. The Appalachians, broadly defined, account for the “vast majority” of those eastern forests, according to Peter Howell, executive vice president of conservation capital and research programs at the Open Space Institute.
“The forests of the west are what we call carbon sources—they are burning and there are huge problems with pests,” he told me. “It’s the forests of the east that are actually sequestering and storing huge amounts of carbon.”
Yet only 17% of Appalachian forests are protected at a time when the nation loses a football field of forest a day to new development, according to Howell. The fund’s goal is to conserve 50,000 acres in three target areas stretching across nine states—Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.
Howell acknowledged that the target is only a “small step” toward doubling the region’s rate of protection in line with the Biden administration’s “30 by 30” benchmark. But the broader aim is to inspire more states, private funders and conservationists to pursue such efforts as climate change solutions.
“It’s not just about smokestacks and electric cars,” he said. “Nature has a really important role to play.”
Taking steps to make conservation more equitable
Racism casts a long shadow over the environmental movement, and conservation in particular. Some influential early conservationists, such as Madison Grant, were known for their eugenicist and white supremacist views. Native American tribes were often forced off their land to make way for national parks and monuments. The Sierra Club, among other conservation groups, has publicly grappled with its own racist past.
“Land conservation has typically been about buying land from wealthy people,” Howell said. “It’s the most inequitable activity imaginable,” though he added that is offset when the benefits of conservation are broadly shared.
One of the measures the new fund will take is to consider how potential purchases can benefit underserved communities, such as by purchasing land upstream from low-lying, lower-income areas to protect key floodplains.
The institute hopes to leverage as much as $66 million in additional investments by requiring recipients to match the contributions they receive by four to one. But that requirement will be reduced or waived if necessary for applications from organizations with Black, Indigenous and people of color leaders.
“That’s one thing we can do to level the playing field for groups who have historically been excluded from the conservation movement or, in the case of tribes, have been historically separated from their lands,” Howell said. “That’s a small thing. We want to go further.”
The institute convened a group of equity advisors to inform the development of the fund and is working to ensure its accessibility to the region’s tribes. The first round of grants may inform further changes to make sure the fund reaches beyond traditional conservation audiences.
“We’re still wrestling with this—how do we reach those communities?” Howell said. “Typically, the land conservation community does their work and then they go into the communities and say, ‘I need your support.’ That’s not the model that works.”
How the fund will work, and what’s next
As it often does, the Open Space Institute will serve as a funding intermediary for this initiative, directing grants from the fund to nonprofits that will work with landowners to acquire lands and arrange conservation easements. The institute is also partnering with organizations including American Forests, the Nature Conservancy, and the Land Trust Alliance to share knowledge and ensure their efforts are aligned.
Most of the funding will go to securing land, but nearly a 10th will support education and training for land trusts and others on topics like incorporating climate science into their work and determining which forests to prioritize for protection. Howell said it’s one way for smaller foundations, whose resources may not go very far in acre terms, to make a meaningful contribution.
“In some ways, that complimentary work is even more catalytic,” he said. “You can only buy so much land. But if you can educate and train—it’s that ‘give a man a fish’ versus ‘teach him how to fish.’”
As more and more communities across the United States experience climate change as a present-day reality, from increased flooding in inland communities like Chattanooga to record-breaking hurricane seasons, Howell is optimistic that more people are starting to awaken to the urgency of action. Conservationists have been heartened not only by Biden’s victory after four years of climate denial, but also by his administration’s climate ambitions, particularly the 30 by 30 goal.
“There’s a paradigm shift that’s occurring,” Howell said. “For those of us who work on the land, we’ve thought about land conservation as recreation and access and wilderness. But we’re seeing that we’ve got to protect this land for the climate. I’ve seen a shift in thinking in land trusts and the people in conservation. It’s time for all hands on deck.”
