Creating a Carbon Conservation Trust Movement
Carbon Market graphic from Land Trust Alliance, 2020
Archived video of this presentation.
What if we applied the tools of private land conservation, including real estate acquisition, conservation easements, stewardships, and fundraising, to the important work of climate protection? That is, what if we extended our land protection model to both protect existing carbon reserves and capture and sequester additional carbon? The presentation will describe an institutional framework, organizational design, and financing system -- based on current law and the use of markets -- to acquire and secure legal rights to subterranean and biospheric carbon reserves. Acting on behalf of the public, including future generations, a Carbon Conservation Trust (CCT) system could help stabilize the climate by averting carbon emissions and expanding protected carbon reserves to mitigate atmospheric carbon levels.
About the Speaker
Steve Hollenhorst has been Dean of Western Washington University's Huxley College of the Environment since 2012. Prior to that he was the Associate Dean of the College of Natural Resources at the University of Idaho, founding director of UI’s award-winning Building Sustainable Communities Initiative, founding director of the UI McCall Outdoor Science School (MOSS), and editor of the international academic journals Society and Natural Resources and the International Journal of Wilderness. Prior to that he was on the Forestry faculty at West Virginia University, where he served as Vice-Chair of the West Virginia Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, founded the West Virginia Land Trust, and was a founding board member of the Monongahela River Trail Conservancy and the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. He earned his B.S and M.S. degrees from the University of Oregon, and Ph.D. from the Ohio State University. His research is in the areas of land use policy and management; land trusts and conservation easements; and environmental leadership.
Environmental Speaker Series
The Environmental Speaker Series is hosted by the College of the Environment at Western Washington University.
The Series is free and open to the public. Talks are held each Thursday at 4:30 pm in Academic Instructional Center West room 204 - AW-204. Talks will also be streamed via zoom. Register with the Alumni Association for the zoom link. Paid parking is available in lot C.
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