Adaptation to Climate Change Necessitates Watershed Restoration

Adaptation to climate change no longer implies giving up on the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that global warming is already affecting the world. A recent Yale Environment 360 article on the matter discusses this issue:

With nations in the industrialized and developing worlds continuing to pump record levels of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, hopes are fading that over the next half-century atmospheric CO2 levels can be kept below 450 parts per million (ppm) and global warming held to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit). Now, a new sense of urgency has arisen as to how the world will adapt to a warming planet, where carbon dioxide levels could hit 600 parts per million and global temperatures could rise by 3 to 4 degrees C (5.4 to 7.2 degrees F).

With these likely realities of the failure of nations worldwide to act on curbing climate-warming gases, adaptation is increasingly necessary in order to cope with the changes that global warming is already bringing. One important component of this is watershed restoration. Ecosystems are best able to adapt when they are not fettered by the legacies of past human abuse. Watersheds can best cope with global warming when their streams run untamed, high waters can flood across plains as they naturally have, wetlands abound, forests are not cluttered with roads, and stream banks are lush with vegetation. Needless to say, countless watersheds do not embody this ideal. Yet hope is not lost. We can take responsibility for our past mistakes and start to restore our prized natural areas.

Luckily for watershed restoration, doing so is also a boon to local economies. As the Yale Environment 360 article noted,

Adaptation must also be finely tuned not only to the vagaries of local geography and ecology, but to local economies and cultures. Kate Barnes, climate program associate for the MacArthur Foundation, has found that cultural, economic, and political differences affect adaptation efforts to preserve the world’s montane biodiversity from the effects of climate change.

Watershed restoration increases the resiliency of ecosystems to cope with global climate change and strengthens local economies in the process, providing living-wage jobs and supporting rural communities. It is a win-win situation. Hopefully the Waxman-Markey Climate Change Bill will facilitate greater acceptance of the need for adaptation, and provide the necessary funding to make activities such as watershed restoration happen.