Climate-smart conservation: putting adaption principles into practice

Climate change already is having
significant impacts on the nation’s
species and ecosystems, and these effects
are projected to increase considerably over time.
As a result, climate change is now a primary lens
through which conservation and natural resource
management must be viewed. How should we
prepare for and respond to the impacts of climate
change on wildlife and their habitats? What should
we be doing differently in light of these climatic
shifts, and what actions continue to make sense?
Climate-Smart Conservation: Putting Adaptation
Principles into Practice offers guidance for
designing and carrying out conservation in the face
of a rapidly changing climate.

Addressing the growing threats brought about
or accentuated by rapid climate change requires
a fundamental shift in the practice of natural
resource management and conservation.
Traditionally, conservationists have focused their
efforts on protecting and managing systems to
maintain their current state, or to restore
degraded systems back to a historical state
regarded as more desirable. Conservation
planners and practitioners will need to adopt
forward-looking goals and implement strategies
specifically designed to prepare for and adjust
to current and future climatic changes, and the
associated impacts on natural systems and human
communities—an emerging discipline known as
climate change adaptation.

The field of climate change adaptation is still
in its infancy. Although there is increasing attention
focused on the subject, much of the guidance
developed to date has been general in nature,
concentrating on high-level principles rather than
specific actions. It is against this backdrop that this
guide was prepared as a means for helping put
adaptation principles into practice, and for moving
adaptation from planning to action.