Biodiversity for A Livable Climate

There is a clear need for a scientific, educational, and outreach organization, not only to explain biodiversity loss to a broader audience, but just as importantly to focus on successful ecosystem restoration stories at all scales. Positive news in regenerating devastated lands and waters is generally lacking, resulting in despair at our unravelling life-support systems. Biodiversity for a Livable Climate (“Bio4Climate”) focuses on presenting positive findings to land managers, scientists, students and the general public as an effective antidote to fear and hopelessness.

Regenerative agriculture, appropriate wetlands management, afforestation, normalization of the hydrological cycle, restored living coastlines, carbon capture, etc. collectively provide a holistic solution to the pressing issues of biodiversity loss and climate disruption. We aim to educate about this exciting and putative positive future.

Beyond our role as a think tank, Bio4Climate is also an activist organization with specific goals:
1. Outreach to promote understanding of nature’s role in regenerating a livable planet: Our aim from the outset in 2014 was to shift the climate conversation to include a focus on the power of the Earth’s biology. That shift is now taking place. Our next step is to disseminate this understanding of nature’s powerful role in regenerating the natural world to a broader audience, and to inspire actions necessary to regenerate billions of acres of degraded land.

2. The advancement of policies, programs, legislation and regulation, education initiatives, scientific research and investigations that urgently implement ecological restoration and restorative management practices: We strive to engage policymakers, legislators/regulators and others in the development of policies, programs, and actions that respect, preserve, restore, and sustain the biological and ecosystem processes essential for a livable world. We support approaches that respect and integrate traditional knowledge and the rights of indigenous people.

3. The development of education initiatives to implement ecological restoration and restorative management practices: Bio4Climate recognizes that traditional pedagogy in these areas has been inadequate, and thus has brought together and made accessible recent and innovative scientific and practical findings in our "Compendium of Scientific and Practical Findings Supporting Eco-Restoration to Address Global Warming" ("the Compendium"). This synopsis of scientific papers and popular articles can be found on our website, bio4climate.org. Our goal is that this knowledge becomes freely available, and is applied in curriculum development and professional training. We also acknowledge the emotional trials and stresses that today’s environmental challenges create, and encourage others to incorporate this awareness into their educational practices.

CONFERENCES: Continue to present our conferences and use them to inspire both the hope that a livable, thriving planet is still possible, and the desire to be part of its restoration.

VIDEOS: Continue to produce conference videos centered on eco-restoration and related topics, maintain them on our website, and distribute them via YouTube. Produce short videos from these resources that can reach targeted audiences and be useful to the media.

COMPENDIUM: Compose and make freely available The Compendium, published semi-annually. We also plan to publish an abbreviated version for the lay reader.

ORGANIZATIONAL OUTREACH: Embolden partners, NGOs, government entities, educational institutions and businesses/corporations to add ecological restoration and regenerative management to their public materials and to their mission statements.

PRESENTATIONS & PUBLIC WRITING: Encourage keynote/plenary/workshop invitations from other organizations. Increase publication of Bio4Climate’s articles and position papers.

PUBLIC OUTREACH: Raise the public image of ranchers, farmers, and land managers who adopt ecologically regenerative practices. Promote the purchase of products that are grown regeneratively and distributed sustainably.

NEWSLETTER: Publish and widely distribute our monthly e-newsletter.

LEGISLATION: Provide support for policies and legislation that promote healthy soils, drought and flood prevention, and appropriate forest management.

MEDIA: Establish a deeper working relationship with the press for more articles and guest appearances on radio and television news programs.

SOCIAL MEDIA: Develop extensive use of social media to reach out to activists, policymakers and the general public. Learn more about how to effectively use Twitter to reach more new contacts. Use our Facebook page more effectively to connect with the many organizations world-wide that already share our posts.

YOUTH: Further develop programming that promotes education, training, and guidance for enlightened and enthusiastic young people who are asking to be part of the solution. Affiliate with existing national youth-led organizations such as Zero Hour and the Sunrise Movement and introduce the importance of nature-based solutions. We also encourage conversations about climate change with children by using children’s literature presented in Bio4climate’s Annotated Bibliography and through presentation of a workshop for parents and teachers, Preparing Children for Climate Change.

FUNDING: Seek funding support from a variety of both public and private sources. Continue to build relationships with major donors through networking. Start a crowdfunding campaign.

Our professional staff is our greatest asset. Through hard work and dedication, we have successfully spread our message of hope to an ever-expanding network of diverse individuals and organizations. Among the capabilities that we offer are:
CONFERENCES: Our conference spaces have generally been provided as in-kind contributions by Massachusetts and DC universities.

VIDEOS: Bio4Climate has hired professional videographers and done other videos in-house. We have also live-streamed some meetups.

COMPENDIUM: Bio4Climate has a dedicated editor who produces The Compendium twice yearly. She is assisted by staff members who also survey the most germane literature, which is then summarized in The Compendium.

ORGANIZATIONAL OUTREACH: Bio4Climate is a connector organization, an active component of a large nexus of interested organizations, some of whom have applied our teachings and research to the field. We have developed skill and experience in building organizational interfaces.

PRESENTATIONS: Through our extensive network in academia and elsewhere, Bio4Climate senior staff has developed connections among ecosystem regeneration advocates. Relationships with these individuals and with our distinguished Advisory Board provide excellent practical and conceptual resources on an ad hoc basis.

PUBLIC OUTREACH: The relationships we’ve established with receptive groups and individuals have created an expanding network to further amplify our message. Bio4Climate’s Executive Director is a gifted writer who has been publishing articles on climate change since 2009.

NEWSLETTERS: Our newsletter is now published monthly by members of our staff.

LEGISLATION: Situated in Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, DC, Bio4Climate has experienced staff, board members, organizational allies and supporters who advocate for policies and legislation aimed at restoring and protecting degraded lands and native habitats.

MEDIA: We have equipment for creating video and live-streaming events. We regularly reach out to writers and journalists who may write about our work.

SOCIAL MEDIA: Our staff actively maintains our Facebook page and forwards posts to Twitter. Since its inception, Bio4Climate has published over 1,000 Facebook posts which have been read nationally and internationally.

YOUTH: We have a program focused on youth activism and biodiversity and climate education, and are actively involved with two major youth groups. Three staff members are experienced educators who develop curricula and other educational materials from pre-school through college.

FUNDING: Bio4Climate recently subscribed to a database package, Bloomerang, which tracks donors and has capabilities for raising additional funds. We have run one crowdfunding campaign and are planning another. We regularly apply for grants from foundations and are engaged in major donor recruitment.

What’s next is continuing and building on our present work, as well as further outreach and innovation.

CONFERENCES: Bio4Climate will continue to host an annual conference, as time allows, and will measure progress by the number of attendees and their critical responses to surveys.

VIDEOS: We measure progress by the number of times videos have been viewed, time spent on each video, and the geographic distribution of viewers, as monitored by YouTube Analytics.

COMPENDIUM: We continue to publish two copies of The Compendium annually. The positive feedback we receive for these publications will indicate that we are on the right track.

ORGANIZATIONAL OUTREACH: Our goal is to influence non-profits, and government and corporate/business sectors, increasing our contacts in each sector and establishing long term relationships. We define progress as the number of organizations that understand and/or incorporate our message, and the extent of our direct contacts with organizational partners.

PRESENTATIONS: Bio4Climate staff has presented at numerous outside conferences, and appeared on forums and panel discussions. We have about 50 organizational affiliations, some of which lead to outside invitations.

PUBLIC OUTREACH: We monitor attendance at meetups, special lectures, and tabling events; email signups; numbers of new volunteers, and correspondence between Bio4Climate and new contacts.

NEWSLETTERS: Bio4Climate’s newsletters currently reach around 3000 subscribers, informing them of ongoing eco-restoration projects. The number of subscribers and an average of 25% opens are the measures of our progress.

LEGISLATION: We support legislation and official efforts that protect biodiversity and address nature and climate. We work out of our DC and Massachusetts chapters, and meet with legislators and public officials in those areas. We assess progress by positive changes in policy, and the introduction and passage of positive legislation.

MEDIA: We measure progress by the number of appearances on radio, TV, online and in print media.

SOCIAL MEDIA: We measure progress by the number of Facebook hits and comments, as well as organizations that share our posts with their own lists. We regularly tweet our Facebook posts.

YOUTH: Bio4Climate currently has youth educational programs underway. We measure progress by their feedback, the number of students attending our conferences, and the extent to which our message is included in their workshops, presentations, and public statements. We also track interest in Preparing Young Children for Climate Change and the Annotated Bibliography.

FUNDING: Our progress is tracked and analyzed in our database, which provides a number of tools to enhance the effectiveness of fundraising. Clearly, progress is assessed by the growth of our funding base.