Since last June, I have had the exciting opportunity to work on the Northeast Ecosystem Services Assessment Fellowship offered by the Extension Foundation. In association with the Association for Northeast Extension Directors (NEED) and the Northeastern Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station (NERA), this fellowship aimed to produce a landscape assessment of policies, programs and institutions geared towards the provisioning of ecosystem services on working lands in the U.S. Northeast, which includes the following states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia as well as the District of Columbia.
Quite a mouthful and lots of buzzwords, I know—but what exactly does any of that mean? Allow me to explain.
Humans rely on the natural environment for a variety of things, from soil and water cycling, to carbon sequestration and food production, to recreation and the aesthetics of natural landscapes. These are all services that nature provides (what are called ecosystem services, by some, or nature’s contributions to people, by others). Without these services, society as we know it would not be possible. In the age of climate change and rising land-use pressures, however, the ability for nature to continue providing these services is being increasingly undermined. To address these issues, many programs and policies have been developed in recent years to help improve the provisioning of these services on working lands (which includes everything from forests, to agricultural lands, to pasture lands and even fisheries).
Now, there is a whole deep and convoluted conversation to be had here as to why many current practices on working lands tend to detract from rather than add to ecosystem services. The vastly-abbreviated version of this conversation (and now the Marxist in me is really itching) is CAPITALISM! In our current political-economic context, profit is incentivized above all other considerations. For many landowners, especially for small farmers struggling to compete, switching to more sustainable practices is often quite finance/labor/resource demanding and the payoffs, while ecologically beneficial, are not necessarily profitable.
In other words, in order to improve ecosystem service provisioning on working lands, programs and policies are needed to offset the costs and risks associate with implementing more sustainable practices. This can be done in a number of a ways, but primarily by providing incentives to land owners (like farmers or ranchers) and land management organizations (like land trusts) in the form of grants, loans, tax abatements, and even direct payments.
The goal of this fellowship was to create a catalogue and database of the current programs and policies being implemented in the U.S. Northeast. Along with my colleague, Dr. Alicia Coleman, we spent the past months researching, compiling and analyzing almost 1,300 programs to better understand what was being done and where, as well as the gaps to be addressed and opportunities to be leveraged going forward. From this work, we produced a series of 4 broad conclusions, 8 recommendations, and 16 points of guidance for both Cooperative Extension programs and Agricultural Research Stations across the Northeast.
Today, our final report, entitled Ecosystem Services in Working Lands Practice and Policy of the U.S. Northeast: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities for Producers and Extension, has been officially published. Download or read the full report on the Extension Foundation website here: https://online.flippingbook.com/view/749315583/. Also, please feel free to reach out for more information or with any questions!
I am very excited about this project and incredibly proud of the work done by both Dr. Coleman and myself—contributing a small part to the much, much, much bigger challenge of working towards a more sustainable, resilient future for the U.S. Northeast and the world!