Building Resilience With Nature
Policy recommendations to reduce climate threats to communities and wildlife
2020 brought us new and familiar examples of the deadly consequences of our failure to address climate risks. Record-breaking hurricanes, wildfire, and drought—on top of the COVID-19 pandemic—battered communities across the nation. As we begin to rebuild and recover from these compounding crises, Congress and the Administration have important decisions to make—not only to invest in our nation’s infrastructure, but also to restore and conserve our natural infrastructure.
Just like roads and bridges, our natural landscapes—wetlands, beaches, and barrier islands—provide critical services to our communities. They serve as safe recreational spaces, enhance our resilience to climate threats like increasing flooding and drought, and improve habitats for birds and other wildlife. Our elected leaders have a historic opportunity to harness America’s immense natural wealth in efforts to support the economy while also addressing both the causes and consequences of climate change.
The Climate Challenge
Climate change is already affecting our communities and ecosystems. Rising seas, more intense and frequent storms, heavier rainfall events, and more extreme droughts are increasingly impacting people, property, and habitats.
Climate change also threatens critical habitats that are vital to the survival of birds, fish, and other wildlife. With human development and changing environmental conditions shrinking bird habitats, the U.S. has lost 3 billion birds since the 1970s, with a 70-percent decline in sea- and shorebird populations over the last 50 years.
The burdens of climate change are also not affecting all communities equally. Communities on the frontlines of climate change—primarily lower-income communities, communities of color, and Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities—are being hit first and worst by its impacts.
The way communities choose to adapt to these threats could further exacerbate these harms. If we choose to “wall in” our communities in an effort to keep flood waters at bay, this will erode and drown the coastal and riverine ecosystems that provide natural flood protections and other ecological services that are essential to the well-being of both people and wildlife.
Gray infrastructure—like sea walls and levees—will be necessary in some places to protect critical infrastructure and already built out communities, but these types of solutions degrade natural flood protections and will also become less protective over time as sea levels rise and rainfall patterns change.
What Natural Infrastructure is and Why it is Important
Natural infrastructure is engineering with nature—protecting, restoring, and mimicking natural landscapes and features like wetlands, living shorelines, oyster reefs, and barrier islands—to enhance the ability of communities to withstand the impacts of climate change. It recognizes that nature—just like roads and bridges and other forms of infrastructure—provides critical services to communities.
Examples of Audubon's Natural Infrastructure Projects
Audubon is working with communities around the country to deploy natural infrastructure projects and to demonstrate the effectiveness of nature-based approaches for building climate resilience. These and other Audubon projects demonstrate the multiple benefits that natural infrastructure can provide to both communities and birds and other wildlife
Select a site from the list below then click on the pin to see more details.
How Congress Can Advance Nature-based Approaches to Climate Change
Invest in nature based solutions
- Direct funding to restoration and resilience programs like the National Coastal Resilience Fund
- Promote nature-based projects through disaster recovery and hazard mitigation programs and investments in surface transportation
- Encourage green infrastructure approaches for addressing water pollution through investments in water infrastructure.
- Prioritize investments in frontline communities that face the greatest threats from climate impacts.
Promote climate-smart land-use practices
- Bolster and expand protections provided by the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, which limits development in vulnerable coastal areas.
- Protect natural flood buffers by discouraging building in floodplains through the National Flood Insurance Program.
Recognize the role of blue carbon in addressing the climate crisis
- Protect, restore, and enhance coastal ecosystems that capture and store carbon pollution, through legislation like the Blue Carbon for Our Planet Act .
How the Biden-Harris Administration Can Advance Nature-based Approaches to Climate Change
Direct federal agencies to invest in climate resilience
- Fund Army Corps of Engineers’ projects to restore ecosystems and beneficially use dredged materials, as authorized by the Water Resources Development Act.
- Promote nature-based resilience projects through disaster recovery, hazard mitigation, and surface transportation programs, and through legislation to fund COVID-19 economic recovery.
- Coordinate funding across federal programs to support innovative large-scale natural infrastructure projects, and monitor project outcomes to assess the efficacy and long-term resilience benefits.
- Provide technical assistance to help communities assess climate risks and develop and fund resilience projects, and prioritize frontline communities in administering federal grants.
Promote climate smart land-use practices
- Bolster and expand protections offered by the Coastal Barrier Resources Act by reversing Trump-era policies that enable environmentally harmful sand mining.
- Quickly and fully implement federal flood standards, and discourage federal investments that would promote development and redevelopment in increasingly flood-prone areas.
- Encourage preservation of floodplains and nature-based approaches to reducing flood risk through the National Flood Insurance Program.
Remove federal law barriers to natural infrastructure
- Update and align methodologies for conducting benefit-cost analysis across federal programs and account for the ecosystem service benefits of projects.
Natural Infrastructure In the News
- Putting nature's infrastructure to work for North Carolina - op-ed by Andrew Hutson, Executive Director of Audubon North Carolina
- 'Blue Carbon' could help preserve Volusia, Flagler, St Johns fragile coastal ecosystems - op-ed by Chris Farrell, Northeast Florida policy associate at Audubon Florida
- Congress should invest in nature to build disaster-resilient communities - op-ed by Dr. Kathy Sullivan, oceanographer, astronaut, National Audubon Society board member, and former NOAA administrator
Audubon's full natural infrastructure policy platform is available below.
