Environmental Resilience

The natural environment provides a multitude of benefits to people. For example, healthy, functioning ecosystems offer provisioning services or the provision of natural resources and raw materials, like food and water. Ecosystems also regulate or maintain essential ecological processes and life support systems for human well-being, such as flood and disease control. Additionally, cultural services that enhance emotional, psychological, and cognitive well-being are derived from ecosystems, as are supportive services that maintain the conditions for life on Earth, such as photosynthesis. These benefits we receive are known collectively as ecosystem services and underpin the human quality of life.

A thriving natural environment is, in and of itself, a benefit known as Existence Value. In other words, the environment (or nature) is valuable for no other reason than the fact that it exists. However, because a healthy natural environment offers so many other services to people and communities, there is additional value in preservation, conservation, and protection of natural resources. In fact, nature is so important to our well-being that many communities have been implementing nature-based solutions into their local and regional resilience planning efforts.  

Natural infrastructure planning involves taking inventory of natural areas in and around communities, assessing their conditions, and identifying the services and benefits they provide.  Natural infrastructure planning can help maintain and enhance biodiversity and protect the habitat of native species of plants and animals, enhance pollinators benefiting local agriculture, reduce the spread of nuisance species, and promotes long-term sustainability. Geospatial data can help determine land cover over time, habitat types, areas set aside for conservation, identify environmentally sensitive areas, flood zones, and future habitat change.  

Nature-based solutions are actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural and modified ecosystems in ways that address societal challenges to provide both human well-being and biodiversity benefits. Natural features – like marshes, oyster reefs, or dunes – provide important ecosystem services like reducing shoreline erosion and increasing shoreline protection, making them a valuable resource for reducing vulnerability to environmental or manmade events, risks, and threats. Communities in the Coastal Bend of Texas depend on natural features to provide environmental resilience against events such as coastal flooding and rising sea levels.

One example of planning for nature-based solutions is in Refugio County. Recently, the National Wildlife Federation has partnered with Harte Research Institute and Refugio County leadership to  design a nature-based project in support of environmental resilience in Refugio County . The natural features of Refugio County play a dual role of supporting local fishing and tourism-based economy while buffering the shoreline and reducing wave energy to provide hazard risk reduction benefits. The potential nature-based solutions in the county can help balance extreme event vulnerabilities, strengthen natural features to withstand these impacts, and support the long-term development goals of the community members. Through this project, community experts have been engaged through workshops and team meetings to identify and prioritize nature-based projects that are feasible and relevant to the county’s interests. The process also includes a community-wide survey to collect input from residents, as well as an open house event to raise awareness and foster local pride in and ownership of environmental resilience in Refugio County.  Maps such as land management, landcover, flood zones, population, and shoreline erosion trends were useful in discussion and planning for nature-based solutions. Explore shoreline trend data near your community in the map below.