Climate Change Project-Level Guidance

The Nature Conservancy is excited to offer this practical tool to our staff, partners, and any individuals or groups who can benefit from its use. This document is one tool in a suite of tools and approaches being developed by The Nature Conservancy to help practitioners, conservation organizations and decision makers respond to the impacts of climate change around the world.

How can we improve project-based strategies and actions for the realities of conservation in a changing climate?  The guidance in this document is intended to help answer that question. 

 

   

 

Introduction

The Guidance Document was prepared by The Nature Conservancy and is based on methods tested at the September 2009 Climate Adaptation Clinic. The methodology outlined in these guidelines was originally developed to assist 20 Nature Conservancy and partner projects to adapt their existing conservation strategies to climate change. These guidelines reflect the learning and insights gained from the application of the original guidance at the 2009 Climate Adaptation Clinic and can be used more broadly in our Conservation Action Planning efforts.

Methods for incorporating climate change in our conservation strategies and actions will be evolving rapidly over the coming months and years. Thus, these guidelines should be treated as a work in progress with future drafts reflecting our dynamic learning.

And we look forward to hearing from individuals and groups using, and testing these guidelines and associated tools. Please send us your feedback and ideas to Adaptation@tnc.org.

 

Audience

This guidance is written for conservation practitioners, and the methods and guidance described in this document follow the Conservancy’s primary project planning methodology – Conservation Action Planning or CAP.

For more information about CAP, please refer to the Conservation Action Planning Materials.

 

Intended Use

The guidance is intended to help conservation practitioners more systematically and explicitly take into consideration the potential impacts of climate change on their conservation strategies and actions. The methods were originally written for and tested by projects that already had a basic Conservation Action Plan but that did not adequately consider the potential impacts of climate change in their original plan. Thus, the guidance is best applied to existing projects that have some understanding of the conservation challenges and opportunities they face but that have not yet systematically considered climate change – these guidelines will help practitioners consider the potential effects of climate change and adjust their strategies and actions accordingly.

We also believe these guidelines can be used by projects just beginning to develop a CAP who want to incorporate climate change impacts from the start. However, please keep in mind that the guidelines have not been tested or fine-tuned for this specific application.

 

Scale

Conservation Action Planning methods and tools can be applied to conservation projects at any scale or scope. Selecting the scale at which to develop a CAP and/or assess the potential impacts of climate change is an ongoing issue and is part of the emerging discussion related to climate adaptation planning. We recognize that improvements are needed in the basic CAP guidance for developing strategies at a regional scale. These basic improvements are beyond the scope of this climate change guidance. The CAP methodology and guidance will be improved and enhanced in relation to regional scale projects over the coming year.