Unusual Places with Unexpected Partners: Welcoming All-Comers to Restore, Improve and Protect Nature

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I recently had the honor and pleasure of meeting Mary Robinson, the former and first woman president of Ireland, a global advocate for women and children and a leader in climate change justice. She was fresh from the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris and optimistic about the result. As we talked, she told me that the two forces that could make a huge difference in progress toward COP21 goals were women and business. She felt it essential to harness the passion and power of women who, in the developing world, will be hardest hit by a changing climate, and to harness the power of business to create passion and momentum toward the goal of keeping global temperature rise significantly beneath 2 degrees Celsius.

Her exhortation that business is an essential player in this issue echoes so many others who are beginning to understand that business has, for many reasons, a key role to play in protecting our planet.

Wildlife Habitat Council’s mission is to facilitate business playing this key role with respect to biodiversity and the conservation of nature. Our “big tent” approach welcomes all-comers who want to work with us to restore, improve or protect nature.

If a company wants to act to improve its lands for nature, we want to encourage and enable them to do so, whatever the scope of their aspirations. We do this by working with them to design strong and appropriate projects and recognize their efforts. When we evaluate projects, we evaluate their impacts on nature, employees and community.

Our unstated mission is to place upward pressure on industry to adopt better practices in their operations and on their lands. We do this not by advocacy, policy or litigation, but through “show and tell,” by working with the individuals on the ground who conceive of the projects, implement them, own them and transmit their successes up through the corporate chain. Once this is repeated across locations within a company, it can become embedded in the culture of the company and lead to fundamental changes in both culture and operations. Imagine if conservation programs on corporate lands become as common as recycling in corporate offices. That’s the goal.

In terms of conservation outcomes, there are some compelling reasons to work where others may fear to tread:

Every act of conservation matters. A tree planted in the ground at a corporate campus, a ready-mix facility, or a restored quarry can be as valuable as a tree planted in protected woodlands. Habitat destruction and fragmentation remain the leading causes of biodiversity loss across the world, and by doing acts of conservation along the entire urban-rural spectrum, in unusual places with unexpected partners, we help create a mosaic of nature that fills the spaces in between, provides connectivity and increases population resilience.

Opportunity knocks on corporate lands. Natural resources extraction carried out by business leads to restoration, which can in turn lead to opportunities for ecological enhancement. Site clean-up and remediation, mainly the responsibility of business, can result in quality conservation outcomes. Maintenance and operations on corporate campuses and manufacturing sites can be altered to benefit nature by changing landscape management regimes to increase native plants or altering the movement of goods and materials to break invasive species pathways. Every corporate property has the potential to contribute.

Not all communities are created equally. Not every community has a well-endowed park, a vibrant nature center or easy access to safe outdoor recreational activities. In under-served rural and urban settings, corporate lands can provide a lake to take a child fishing, a nature center to teach environmental basics, or a trail to encourage exercise and provide the physical and mental health benefits of being in the natural world. By recognizing high-quality access and education, we encourage other businesses to open their doors and become true members of the community.

Most everything we buy, eat, wear, drive, look at or listen to is made by a company in a facility somewhere with the potential to contribute to biodiversity in a large or small way. Our approach is to help this contribution happen, recognize it when it does, and hope that the recognition in turn contributes to the program’s longevity.

There are many roads along which we all try to better the world. In the environmental community, some groups advance the cause of a healthier environment through litigation, regulatory change and advocacy. Some promote the road of direct action while others advance the cause through education and public awareness. WHC’s road is, with apologies to Robert Frost, less traveled but engaging business in conservation can make all the difference.

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Setting a New Standard: Every Act of Conservation Matters

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It starts with the act. The act can be simple – a scattering of seeds on fertile ground to create a native plant garden. The act can be complex – grading land to reach the water table to create vernal pools. The act can be affordable – a packet of seeds is pretty cheap. It can be expensive – earth-moving equipment and technical expertise come at a cost.

Without the act, nothing changes. Policies, regulations, goals, objectives and philosophies remain words on pages, budgets on spreadsheets, and statements in reports. The act is all that matters.

An act of conservation that I am currently obsessed with is a stream daylighting project a few blocks from my home in Washington, D.C. My husband and I came upon it by lucky accident one afternoon returning from a hike in nearby Rock Creek Park. Where there was unproductive mowed landscape, there now flowed an open stream through step-down pools lined with wetland vegetation and air humming with dragonflies and goldfinches. From low biodiversity value and poor ecosystem functioning, the District Department of the Environment had acted and restored not just a habitat but an entire ecosystem. Mark Twain may have commented that they’re not making any more land, but in this small corner of a densely-populated urban area, they are making more nature.

When Wildlife Habitat Council embarked on the design of a new standard for corporate conservation, we knew we wanted it to be accessible, credible and ultimately drive change. In my first blog post about the new standard, these three design principles were introduced and discussed.

As we moved through the process, deciding how to recognize conservation on corporate landholdings, we returned again and again to the question of what we wanted to recognize. We easily answered “Why?” – to drive change and increase the number of corporations engaged in quality conservation activities. We quickly answered “Who?” – corporate landholders of all types and sizes. But, we really dug into “What?” – what do we value as an organization, and how can we create a standard to recognize it?

We ultimately agreed that we value the act of conservation. Yes, we care deeply about the outcome, but it is in the act that we see the benefit both directly and indirectly. It is through the act that we make a difference to planet and people.

In “Our Once and Future World,” author Paddy Woodworth is overjoyed when he discovers that the natural world is more resilient than he had previously thought; that ecosystems can be restored to full functionality, and that there is a movement across the globe to restore nature. The author sets out to explore restoration projects of different shapes and sizes in different communities and cultures for a diverse set of reasons with a diverse suite of outcomes. In each one, he sees the need, the challenges and the difficulties, but he also sees the results. He recognizes the power of these projects not just to restore nature, but also to restore our relationship with it.

An emerging practice called Civic Ecology also seeks to restore nature and our relationship with it. Civic Ecology envisions a future where people are no longer divorced from nature or separate from each other. It sees restoration of green spaces from broken places as essential to our future and recognizes the movement-building potential that the act of conservation creates. Civic Ecology is thousands of individual acts of conservation connected into, and beyond, communities.

From an individual’s attachment to a stream restoration through an author’s journey across the world of habitat and ecological restoration and into communities where groups and individuals are coming together to engage in hands-on restoration and ongoing stewardship, we can see clearly the power of the act of conservation.

As we prepare to launch our new standard and recognition program, Conservation Certification, we know that the act of conservation matters to the thousands of individuals working on WHC projects across the world. We see many of them at our annual conference every November, and hear from them how each act has made a difference. We also know how the acts of conservation, aggregated into metrics, matter to the sustainability, CSR, community outreach and EHS professionals in the companies we work with.

Every act of conservation matters. It’s our mantra and our call to action. Through it we pay homage to the thousands of acts of conservation we have recognized since our inception, while looking to the future, where ecological restoration, civic ecology practice and a myriad of other approaches to improving nature and our relationship with it flourish in broken places, wilderness areas and everywhere in between.

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Setting the New Standard: Driving Change through Conservation Certification

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This is the eighth in a series of monthly blog posts exploring the development of a new standard in corporate conservation certification.

Regulation is often blamed for creating a “race to the bottom” where fulfilling mandates becomes the only achievement. Recognition programs present an opportunity to turn the race around by using regulation as a floor, creating competition and providing incentives for participants to excel. Good recognition programs drive change.

Since we awarded our first certification 26 years ago, Wildlife Habitat Council has used regulation as its floor. To be recognized, a project has to exceed any pertinent regulatory requirement. This criterion allowed WHC to create a consistent approach from which to operate across multiple regulatory environments and impel participants to exceed expectations.

By creating this framework for implementation and recognition, WHC has driven change across corporate lands since 1989, today counting 827 certified conservation and education programs as evidence of these efforts.

As we prepare to launch our new Conservation Certification program, WHC is seeking to accelerate the pace at which we drive change in two ways. We are valuing conservation actions that have not been part of our standard before, and we are configuring our assessment of projects to allow for consistency in data collection and better reporting.

When we explain how WHC Conservation Certification can drive change through better reporting, we refer to the philosophical question about the unheard tree falling in the woods. With our new program, WHC will not only be able hear the tree falling, we will be able to ascertain the species of the tree, the time and date of the incident, and the extent of the habitat impacted as a result. (Metaphorically of course, as we prefer to see trees growing, not falling.)

To create this standard, WHC broke into units the very thing we value as an integrated whole to create manageable-sized projects for assessment and reporting.

With this new structure, we will be able to join the dots of current and future certifications by requiring applicants to submit through a consistent framework that collects data across 25 possible project units, reporting the acts, the objectives, the people, and the purpose of the project.

In future reports, WHC will be able to count and report on the types of conservation projects within each certified program and enumerate the habitats being improved, the species being managed, and the education and outreach being offered. Applicants will contribute data on their conservation objectives, their actions to meet these objectives, the numbers associated with the projects – acres, hours, people, practices – as well as the alignments with existing conservation plans, connectivity with neighboring projects, and contribution to landscape-level efforts..

What will truly drive change will be WHC’s ability to report these measures company-wide and industry-wide, to help Sustainability Officers, CSR managers and others to use the information for their own internal and external initiatives. WHC will also report across industry sectors to inspire others in that sector to participate and encourage friendly competition between those already on board. With these data reports, WHC will cause an upward shift in standards of land management on corporate lands away from a regulated floor and towards excellence and measurable conservation results.

By valuing conservation actions that have not been part of its standard before, WHC will drive change by recognizing these acts and requiring them to be carried out according to best practices.

One of the new areas of recognition is land preservation. Setting land aside in perpetuity is one of the most effective methods for addressing some of the issues that impact our environment. Land preservation can reconnect landscapes, save critical habitats and species, and provide access for recreation in nature. With Conservation Certification, WHC will recognize actions taken to set land aside permanently or to enter into agreements that allow the land to be used for conservation activities. We will value strategic approaches over opportunistic efforts and look for investments for future stewardship needs.

Another new area of recognition where WHC can drive change is in the practice of green infrastructure. Rain gardens, bioswales, and vegetated roofs and walls all provide high quality environmental mitigation services. With Conservation Certification, WHC will recognize efforts that go beyond the basic service and design biodiversity into engineered solutions. If a rain garden is planted for pollinators as well as to manage stormwater run-off, and a roof is planted for wildlife as well as for heat mitigation, it will be recognized. Through this recognition, designers and engineers can begin to consider how green infrastructure can contribute to biodiversity, especially in urban areas.

When we launch Conservation Certification in November at the Conservation Conference, we will once again drive change in corporate land management through broadened recognition and data-driven reporting.

Read more WHC blogs.

Setting the New Standard: Aligning Conservation Goals with Existing Priorities

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This is the seventh in a series of monthly blog posts exploring the development of a new standard in corporate conservation certification.

Last month’s blog post reflected how the world of conservation is awash in theories and stances on what is credible or not. It is also awash in objectives, priorities, plans and approaches. Every entity engaged with nature has a plan with a set of priorities, whether national or regional. Every state and territory in the U.S. has a State Wildlife Action Plan –  a blueprint for securing biodiversity in the future. The EU has a biodiversity strategy for 2020, as do many countries, including Australia, Japan and Kenya. Across the NGO landscape, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) promotes its priority conservation areas, IUCN frames its work around its Red List, and BirdLife International has its Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas. At a more local scale, biodiversity and the ecological health of watersheds, estuaries, sites of significant interest and other natural areas are all addressed with suites of priorities, many supported by science and most with attendant actions.  Many such plans have significant overlap, though none are universally adopted.

These plans highlight priorities, set targets and describe best practices towards meeting conservation goals. The most basic plans are informative only, while the best provide metrics, a clear picture of the desired end state, and a road map for implementation.

When Wildlife Habitat Council embarked on the re-design of its signature certification program and developed the soon-to-be-launched Conservation Certification, it took a different approach to ensure that the participants in its programs were implementing projects that met global conservation goals. Instead of creating more plans and priorities, it chose to align with existing plans and incentivize its participants to create explicit associations with them. We aligned with the wheel without reinventing it.

For WHC this approach makes a lot of sense for a variety of reasons.

WHC’s applicants – both members and not – are not conveniently located in a single conservation landscape. They cannot jointly adopt an initiative to recover a specific species, restore a regionally important ecosystem, or even focus on a single biome. To overlay a conservation priority that would have meaning for all possible locations would require that the priority be so general as to be meaningless. Instead, by aligning with existing priorities, WHC’s projects become part of the mosaic of efforts being done to advance landscape-scale conservation across the globe.

Also, having worked at the intersection of nature and business for almost three decades, WHC knows that a corporate conservation goal will only be achieved if the implementation on the ground has local meaning and significance. A narrow and specific goal that brooks no localization and allows for no real innovation will have no ownership and no longevity.  Some of the strongest projects we recognize have deep meaning in their communities. By incentivizing alignments with regionally-appropriate conservation plans, WHC provides for the freedom for practitioners to find goals and priorities that are important to them, thus increasing the likelihood of success both in the near and long terms.

An additional benefit of alignments is the increase in the importance of partnerships. WHC has always valued partnerships with conservation groups that invest in on-the-ground work. By encouraging alignments with these same groups’ priorities, we increase the likelihood of successful, goal-focused partnerships.

Finally, one of the principles we adopted as we designed our new Conservation Certification was accessibility to allow projects of all shapes and sizes to receive recognition and to encourage building of successful projects. By eschewing the development of our own conservation priorities, we secure accessibility for our participants and double down on our mantra that every act of conservation matters.   This approach has been designed into Conservation Certification, and an applicant will be steered towards aligning their efforts from the design phase through project maintenance and monitoring.

Under WHC’s new Conservation Certification, a program being submitted for recognition must meet a number of mandatory requirements, as follows:

  1. Have a stated conservation or education objective
  2. Provide value or benefit to the natural community
  3. Have measured outcomes supported by documentation
  4. Exceed any pertinent regulatory requirements
  5. Be locally appropriate

These criteria introduce the concept of alignments with other conservation plans, as project owners will have to determine what is ecologically appropriate for the location and what objective would be meaningful within that context.  A national conservation strategy, like the President Obama’s Pollinator Health Task Force, will provide a certain level of alignment on a broad scale, while a more local plan will be more specific with direct references to locations, partners and even plant lists. We encourage our participants to seek out the plans that are meaningful to them.

Once the criteria have been met, the applicant will be asked, for each project, to state what initiative they are aligning their goals to and how their actions are supporting them. Incentives, in the form of higher points, will be given to projects designed with explicit alignments and executed to secure them.

By not developing our own priorities but instead aligning with existing ones and leveraging existing efforts, WHC is being efficient in its approach and true to its mission and values.

Read more WHC blogs.

Setting the New Standard: Enhancing Credibility with Stakeholder Involvement

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This is the sixth in a series of monthly blog posts exploring the development of a new standard in corporate conservation certification.

Credibility is not an absolute. It cannot be viewed or exist independently. It has to be relative to something or someone–a set of standards, an audience, an individual or an entity. Credibility is hard to establish and measure. It must be earned. It cannot be self-anointed. In the conservation world, credibility is often challenged as NGOs, academics and authors defend their preferred approaches, deploy science to support their own arguments and dismiss efforts that are not in complete agreement with their own.

Take forest management as an example. In the conservation community, the views on how to manage healthy forests are as broad and varied as forest ecosystems themselves. One school of thought insists that the only credible forest management plan is one where no tree is removed for any reason. Another adheres to the principle that forests must be managed within a strict framework of minimally invasive activities, while a third advocates for aggressively managing forests for economic reasons – cutting and planting to meet market demands. While all approaches may be valid given a particular set of circumstances, adherents to one approach tend to perceive adherents to different approaches as lacking in credibility, as either too “green” or not “green” enough.

In the conservation world, credibility is often challenged as NGOs, academics and authors defend their preferred approaches, deploy science to support their own arguments and dismiss efforts that are not in complete agreement with their own.

Witness the disagreement between The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the old-guard environmentalists, embodied in a The New Yorker article in May 2014 that was subsequently followed by a chorus of ayes and nays as environmentalists took sides for and against approaches to conservation and prioritization of implementation. This war of words culminated in an open letter to the conservation community signed by 240 co-signatories telling the community to stop arguing and get back to work. Then there was Jonathan Franzen, who, again in The New Yorker, decided that the National Audubon Society was not credible because its message about climate change overshadowed many other threats of more immediate concern to avian species. National Audubon is well aware of these threats and is passionately addressing them. More recently, the newly-convened eco-modernists made a shot across the bow with their argument that the environment be de-coupled from human development processes, resulting in several impassioned responses from others who disagreed and accused them of lacking credibility and being techno-optimists. Old conservationists, new conservationists, rewilding proponents, de-growth advocates, pragmatic ecologists, natural capitalists and eco-modernists all fight for space on the green stage, dismissing and embracing approaches under the moniker of credibility[1].

Credibility and the New Standard

When seeking to design credibility into its new standard, WHC sought to remain outside of the academic debates, putting a distance between itself and the arbiters of “correct” conservation. At the beginning of the design of the new standard for corporate conservation, WHC teased apart different conservation themes. For each theme, it convened a group of experts. These experts have included NGO partners, representatives from government agencies, consultants, academics and, in some cases, our own members. Each expert group was guided through a series of conversations designed to establish a suite of conservation and education objectives, a list of credible approaches to meet these objectives and a set of baseline standards that each project would be required to meet in order to receive WHC recognition. The conservation themes were categorized by habitat, species management, education and awareness and a category that addresses overarching approaches like Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) or Invasive Species. By bringing groups of experts together, WHC did not adopt a single entity’s objectives or priorities but instead encouraged individuals representing diverse points of view to offer suggestions and agree on standards within a pragmatic, not academic, framework.

Credibility within WHC’s new standard will be earned through WHC’s approach to building the standard, but secured only through the verified results of increased biodiversity and habitats being managed and monitored according to best practices that meet global conservation objectives.

This multi-stakeholder approach is fascinating and challenging, though also frustrating at times. It was interesting when a group of well-informed and engaged experts “got it,” and understood both the opportunities and challenges of working in the corporate context, as happened in discussions about invasive species and green infrastructure. When it clicked with a group, ideas and observations came fast and furious. It was challenging, trying to find that sweet spot between accessible and meaningful, and setting the bar high enough for aspiration yet realistic enough to encourage implementation. It was frustrating when conservation partners just did not ”get it,” when they could not move beyond the fact that WHC recognizes conservation on lands leased, owned or operated by corporations. Happily, the frustrations were rare as most partners came to the table understanding the unique opportunities for corporations to be better conservation citizens and supportive of efforts to align their priorities.

Credibility within WHC’s new standard will be earned through WHC’s approach to building the standard, but secured only through the verified results of increased biodiversity and habitats being managed and monitored according to best practices that meet global conservation objectives.

The details of this approach will be discussed in a subsequent post that continues to explore the theme of credibility and how it informed the development of a new standard for corporate conservation.

[1] Author’s note: clicking on any links in this paragraph will lead a reader down a rabbit hole of opinions. The author is not responsible for productivity loss due to this distraction.

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Setting the New Standard: Transparency Matters

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This is the fourth in a series of monthly blog posts exploring the development of a new standard in corporate conservation certification.

In “Learning Through Disclosure,” an essay in Transparency in Global Environmental Governance, Graeme Auld and Lars Gulbrandsen show how two types of transparency—procedural transparency and outcome transparency—can impact the legitimacy of a recognition program. Procedural transparency focuses on governance and adjudication, providing a window into how a standard has been developed, who had a hand in developing the standard, and how the standard is defended. Outcome transparency shines a light on the activities being recognized. It holds certified entities to their stated practices and performance. When procedural transparency and outcome transparency overlap, an audience can understand the system in place for recognition and monitoring and view the level of compliance, and the standard can be considered legitimate.

There is enormous diversity in Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) across the globe from what the standards seek to recognize to the methods through which they create and evaluate their recognitions. An alphabet soup of standards is applied to forestry, fisheries, agriculture, tourism, recreation, buildings, energy and municipal policies. Some of these standards are government initiatives –the EPA Energy Star program and the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED) –others are private concerns developed by industry, civic institutions and academia. Some standards are complex and expensive,  others are simple and direct. Regardless of originating entity, objective, scope or market, the one thing that successful standards share is a commitment to transparency.

In the USA and beyond, the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program shares its standards freely and openly to allow anyone to build to LEED standards, whether they seek LEED recognition or not. It also provides potential applicants for certification with a clear picture of how their efforts will score, thus providing a procedural transparency that enhances accessibility, increases uptake of the program and secures the program’s legitimacy. On the other hand, the Director General for Energy, the body that oversees the EU RED, provides information about its program on request only. In addition, RED has unclear assessment criteria, no timeline for recognition, and no clear administrative procedures for post-recognition evaluation. RED is widely perceived as being opaque and unfair.

Currently, WHC provides a measure of procedural and outcome transparency through its website and in its publications. Its members are listed, its governing board is identified and contact details and bios for all staff members are available. All certified programs are listed on the the WHC Index and details of the certification cycle are provided.

When it launches its new standard later this year, WHC will commit to radical transparency in an effort to adopt the best practices of VSS, in order to provide audiences with full and complete disclosure of procedures and outcomes, and incentivize conservation at the highest possible levels.

WHC will provide clear explanations of its new criteria. For the new standard, WHC developed a suite of Project Guidance documents that form the core content of the certification process, i.e, the objectives and project characteristics needed to reach certain levels of recognition. These documents were developed through a multi-stakeholder process that will be fully explained upon launch of the new standard. The Project Guidance documents then evolved into a series of criteria against which a project will be scored. The scoring is being developed in partnership with The Conservation Fund, and a full report on the scoring model will also be available. To facilitate consistent scoring by reviewers, the criteria have been further developed into a series of questions an applicant will be asked to answer. These questions will be freely available.

WHC will provide a clear explanation of its review process. Along with the publication of the scoring model, WHC will also provide an explanation of how each application is reviewed and the measures instituted to ensure consistency and objectivity across the entire process. Governance of the review process will also be addressed to illustrate how the integrity of the process is protected. The ability of an applicant to communicate with a reviewer will be laid out clearly, and limitations set on such communications will also be elucidated.

WHC will provide a clear explanation of the certified projects and their final scores. Currently, WHC provides descriptions of all its certified programs on the Conservation Registry. This valuable tool allows audiences to see what projects are being done where and by whom. With the new standard, WHC is making a commitment to continue contributing to the Conservation Registry, but also plans to provide more evaluative measures of each program through improved data collection. Final design of this data collection is underway, and it is WHC’s hope that all certified programs will be listed along with their final score, the tier of recognition they have achieved, and the conservation outcomes they are focused on, as well as the associated educational efforts and the results of community and employee engagement.

WHC will provide a clear explanation of governance over the new standard. All NGOs have governance bodies. WHC’s Board of Directors ensures regulatory compliance, strategic clarity and ethical leadership. It does not govern programming or content. It will not govern the new standard. To ensure the new standard is governed appropriately–that change is managed, updates reflect changes in the conservation context and best practices, and stakeholders remain key informants—WHC will convene a steering committee specifically focused on governance of the new standard, made up of conservation and education experts, industry and business representatives and those knowledgeable about standards.

This new standard of certification will allow WHC to further its mission to recognize conservation efforts on private lands and encourage more conservation.By providing procedural and outcome transparency, WHC will achieve its recognition goal in a manner that is meaningful, defensible, and that will inspire others to engage in activities to restore habitats and improve biodiversity, while educating and engaging communities and employees.

Read more WHC blogs.

Setting the New Standard: Scalability is Imperative for Accessibility

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This is the third in a series of monthly blog posts exploring the development of a new standard in corporate conservation certification.

In previous posts we have outlined the defining tenets of an effective Voluntary Sustainability Standard (VSS) that will encourage broad adoption and ultimately increase conservation on corporate lands. These tenets are accessibility, credibility and the ability to drive change. In this post we will dive deeper into a key aspect of accessibility – scalability.

The Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) has been recognizing conservation on corporate lands for 27 years. This experience has shown that the one thing corporate landholders have in common is the diversity of the lands they manage. Auto manufacturers have proving grounds, technical centers, manufacturing facilities and corporate headquarters. Electric utilities have facilities that create, store and distribute energy—namely power plants, transmission systems and substations. In the building materials sector, quarries, cement factories and ready-mix facilities are all part of the supply chain. With over 800 programs currently certified, WHC understands the possibilities and challenges of conservation on a wide variety of lands.

While many VSS systems are designed for larger, more sophisticated operations and, in the case of conservation, the best available lands, WHC sees potential in every landholding and welcomes all practitioners to participate. This is why WHC views scalability as imperative to facilitate broad adoption of the new standard for corporate conservation.

In its new standard, WHC is promoting scalability in many different ways, but the best expression of it will be found in the Project Guidance documents that will provide applicants with a clear path through a conservation project.  These Project Guidances are being developed through a multi-stakeholder process that sets the minimum requirements for recognition and defined a variety of options for higher-level conservation and education outcomes.

Project Guidances will recognize a suite of themes that include habitat types, education opportunities, species’ needs and other conservation-related activities that can take place on corporate lands. When launched, the new standard will have Project Guidance documents for grasslands, wetlands, arid landscapes, pollinators, birds, reptiles and amphibians, bats, game species, formal and informal education opportunities, green infrastructure, protected lands, invasive species management, and a host of other themes around which corporate land managers can design their projects.

Every Project Guidance lays out the basic requirement for recognition, i.e., the activities that must be undertaken for the project to meet WHC’s new standard. For every project, these requirements will include the need: to be locally appropriate, to provide habitat or community value, to exceed any pertinent regulatory requirements and, to meet a stated conservation or education objective. Further requirements will be specific to the stated objectives of each project and will reflect the conservation needs of the habitat or species or best practices in the delivery of conservation and education.

Once basic requirements have been satisfied, a landowner can then choose from a hierarchy of activities that will lead to higher outcomes and higher levels of recognition. This will allow a landowner to create projects specific to their site’s spatial or other limitations and then scale up to meet the full potential of the location and its surroundings.

Scalability is not merely about the size of the project. It can be accomplished in a variety of ways, as follows:

  • In a pollinator project, expanding from a basic native garden to a garden with plants supporting multiple pollinator species across multiple seasons or meeting the entire life cycle needs of a specific pollinator.
  • When implementing invasive species management, expanding from addressing a single species in a single location at a single time to reviewing operations across the location to ensure the spread of invasive species is minimized both on-site and off.
  • Creating outreach to a community by providing trails and signage, or expanding to embrace the local schools across a number of grades and connecting into the core learning standards.

Scalability allows a program to start small and then grow to encompass larger amounts of land. At General Motors’ Warren Tech Center in Michigan, the project team started on 8 acres in a former parking lot and now manages over 70 acres across the facility.

Scalability allows a program to add new projects or expand existing projects as it matures and continue to create conservation and education value. In Gaithersburg, Maryland, Asbury Methodist Village manages all available acreage for wildlife, but adds value by creating signs and interpretive materials for residents, hosting guest speakers to talk about the natural world, inviting elementary school students on site and installing structures like bird boxes to support wildlife.

Scalability allows a program to go beyond the fence line and connect to contiguous habitat or into the community. In Brazil, Monsanto Do Brasil’s Camaçari Plant does both as it restores and reforests a parcel of land that will serve to reconnect two large fragments of Atlantic Forest, one of the most threatened biomes in the world, and uses the project as a teaching tool for students from 40 neighboring schools.

For a VSS to be successful, it must be accessible. To be accessible to all landholders, it must be scalable. WHC is enshrining scalability in its Project Guidance documents, which will be published with the launch of the new standard later this year. In doing so, WHC will ensure that every applicant—regardless of the size and other strictures on their landholdings—will be provided with a clear path towards program establishment, growth, and recognition.

Read more WHC blogs.

Setting the New Standard: Embracing Accessibility with a Scalable, Transparent, and Supported Approach

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This is the second in a series of monthly blog posts examining the vision for establishing a new standard in corporate conservation certification.

“To reduce barriers to implementation, standards systems minimize costs and overly burdensome requirements. They facilitate access to information about meeting the standard, training and financial resources to build capacity throughout supply chains and for actors within the standards system.” Voluntary Standards Systems by Hoffman et al.

Throughout its history, WHC’s certification program has embraced accessibility. Within its current framework, WHC recognizes and celebrates all acts of habitat conservation on corporate lands. It does so for many reasons, outlined in former blog posts here and here that explore the importance of empowering the simple act of conservation, creating connections to nature and building communities engaged in enhancing the natural world.

As WHC builds a new standard for conservation on corporate lands, it is embracing accessibility to honor and build on its current approach, and also to adopt best practices in this arena that require that all possible practitioners be provided with an equal right to participate. Accessibility in this context means removing barriers to participation by providing multiple entry points, reducing bureaucratic hurdles and providing a clear and transparent path towards recognition. It means supporting all potential practitioners regardless of resources (land, people and budget), industry sector, project size or location.

WHC is building accessibility into its redesigned certification program by embedding scalability, allowing the smallest, simplest acts of conservation to be recognized alongside more complex efforts; embracing a radical transparency for both process and outcome and; providing support through an intuitive online platform and access to WHC’s experts in corporate conservation.


Embedding Scalability

The recent focus by the conservation community on large landscape-scale conservation is essential to maximize limited public dollars for biodiversity protection, but the rejection of smaller-scale efforts from the conversation ignores opportunities for small-patch ecosystems and local-scale species and populations. In California, PG&E is working on local-scale species in their efforts to protect and recover the Bay checkerspot butterfly, which, with its dependence on serpentine grasslands, will not be protected under large landscape-scale conservation efforts.

Websites like The Nature of Cities show clearly how urban green spaces provide refuge for wildlife and, if managed correctly, benefit these species. Urban planners can now consider how their choice of plants, structures and water bodies can protect wildlife and enhance biodiversity, although, as a recent focus group study from Finland points out, few move beyond the consideration of energy and transportation in their plans. Designers can also integrate wildlife habitat in their smaller spaces by installing structures that provide habitat for declining species like a hexagonal bee hotel built by French designers for an architectural festival.

Further, small-scale efforts can have impacts beyond an immediate conservation enhancement, as these efforts can be pilot projects eventually replicated across a portfolio of properties. They can be restoration projects that seek to increase ecosystem functionality towards a conservation goal, or they may just be small local efforts that enhance nature on a small, local scale for the needs of the human community. Small-scale efforts can also impact connectivity by providing essential corridors for movement and by building resilience.

Conservation on multiple scales is not only laudable, it is necessary. Through its recognition program, WHC seeks to ensure that multiple scales, multiple approaches and multiple outcomes can achieve a WHC Conservation Certification.

Yet, even without these reasons, WHC would be designing its new certification program with multiple points of entry for all project sizes due to its adherence to one of the key principles of the development of Voluntary Sustainable Standards (VSS) – accessibility.

A VSS without accessibility cannot achieve the impact it needs. Without accessibility a conservation certification program will remain an unattainable standard, excluding those who own marginal lands, fragmented lands or land in urban and suburban settings. By obeying the principle of accessibility, WHC is drafting a new standard that all landowners regardless of size and location can participate in.

While designing for scalability, WHC also recognizing that all outcomes are not equal. An effort to restore a wetland to functionality or manage a rights-of-way system for pollinators across hundreds of miles will have a greater conservation impact than a native flower garden on a fraction of an acre or an isolated action to remediate the impact of invasive species. With its new standard, WHC will, for the first time, offer tiers of recognition that honor all actions but highlight exceptional outcomes. Tiers of recognition are themselves aspects of accessibility, as they provide larger landowners with an incentive to participate and all applicants with a reason to excel.


Embracing a Radical Transparency

Scalability through multiple points of entry and tiered levels of recognition can only be supported through the radical transparency being embraced as part of this redesign process. Transparency designed into the system underpins accessibility by showing a roadmap to certification while also supporting credibility.

WHC is embracing transparency of process – how the multiple points of entry were determined, how the projects are evaluated, where the tiers of recognition start and finish and how the wall between program support and project evaluation is maintained. It is also embracing transparency of outcome – what efforts are being recognized and who owns those efforts.

Applicants will know what is required of them, how their efforts will be evaluated and how the system is governed. Observers will understand how the system was built and who participated in building it. Reviewers will have clear direction on how projects are assessed, and everyone will understand the limits and possibilities of this new certification.

Andrew Winston, a respected author and leader of corporate sustainability efforts, used the term “radical transparency” in his recent book The Big Pivot to show how consumers and technology make opacity in business harder and harder to defend. WHC is designing transparency into its new certification system so that businesses will not only be able to view a route towards recognition, but view openly how their programs rank in terms of effort and outcome. This transparency will ultimately drive change by providing an open door to the possibilities and a reason to engage.


Providing Support

All interested parties will also receive support from WHC, from program design through project implementation and application for recognition.

Many WHC applicants are not professional conservation actors or trained educators. They implement conservation projects for a variety of reasons and with a variety of resources at their disposal. To help applicants build for success, WHC will provide support at all stages of the project. WHC staff is expert in working within the corporate context, understanding the challenges and opportunities of implementing conservation and education projects on all types of corporate landholdings and connecting corporate lands to the right local partners. Within the new certification program, this expertise will remain available and WHC staff will deploy as needed to ensure success.

Just like in its current system, the review process must be separated to retain credibility. When the new program is launched, the wall between support and review will be clearly delineated and the radical transparency designed into the program will explain how.

WHC is also designing support into its new certification program through a new intuitive online application that will take each applicant step-by-step through a process that will provide them with the multiple entry points, show them the actions they need to take to implement good projects and list the evidence they need to gather before application. In this way, any landowner seeking to pursue WHC Conservation Certification will see a clear path with all the necessary information in one place, experience reduced burdensome bureaucratic requirements and come across few, if any, surprises.

Many VSS systems are accessible only to the top tier companies in each industry, leaving smaller operators without the tools or support to drive change. This barrier may be due to the “price of entry,” the complexity of approach or a certain set of mandated minimums like available acreage, size of facilities or number of employees. Through its new certification program, WHC wants to encourage participation through accessibility designed around three principles: transparency, scalability and support. It wants to encourage participation to increase impact – recognizing more conservation projects on corporate lands, engaging more employees in this aspect of corporate sustainability and connecting more communities to their corporate neighbors.

Read more WHC blogs.

Setting the New Standard: A Radical Redesign to Embrace Accessibility, Enhance Credibility and Drive Change

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This is the first in a series of monthly blog posts examining the vision for establishing new standards in corporate conservation certification.

Certification of adherence to a set of predetermined standards is an effective way to illustrate performance across a variety of concerns. Certification of professionals has been used since the 19th century to proclaim an individual’s qualifications and suitability to operate in a field like health, finance or education. Certification of goods and services can provide testament to the source of the goods, the efficacy of the services and connect customer expectations with resultant experience. More recently, certification of management practices of natural resources has been used as a way to highlight best practice, encourage participation and ultimately, to drive change.

Certifications of management of natural resources have joined other such programs focused on environmental, social, ethical and safety issues to create a large body of what are now known as Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS). The United Nations Forum on Sustainability Standards (UNFSS) was convened in response to the increase in establishment of such programs. The ISEAL Alliance, an international group that codifies best practice for design and implementation of sustainability standards systems, exists with the belief that voluntary standards systems that are effective and accessible can bring about significant positive social, environmental and economic impacts. In short, the growth of the use of standards has led to the development of groups to assess the standard setters.

Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) has been certifying voluntary management of natural resources on corporate lands for 26 years. In that time it has seen an evolution in standard setting and expectations from its certification programs. Over these decades, it has embraced many of the tenets of strong recognition systems to create clear criteria for assessment and certification that recognizes and incentivizes continual improvement of effort and outcome.

This year, WHC is entering the final stretches of a redesign of its signature certification program that will embrace fully and overtly, the principles of VSS while also remaining true to its roots recognizing the simple act of conservation and the individuals who carry it out.

In an article last year for the The Huffington Post, Laurèn DeMates, co-founder of The Sustainability Co-Op, outlined seven factors that make a sustainability certification system successful. These factors are: stakeholder collaboration, clear and realistic criteria, a streamlined process, support and assistance, sliding scale pricing, audits, and impact evaluation. According to DeMates, sustainability programs that gain widespread acceptance incorporate these elements.

At WHC, these factors and others, including transparency, are being used to inform the radical redesign of our certification program.  It has become clear through this redesign work that these disparate factors can all be distilled into three key elements – accessibility, credibility and change making – that are the essence of an effective certification effort.

Over the next 10 months, as WHC rolls out its redesigned certification program, this blog will explore these three elements and illustrate how they are being used to construct the new framework for certifying conservation on corporate lands while honoring and strengthening the current approach.

As we move into the future, it’s important to reflect on how these elements inform the present:

Accessibility: Throughout its history, WHC’s certification program has embraced accessibility. Within the current framework, WHC recognizes and celebrates all acts of conservation on corporate lands. It does so for many reasons outlined in former blog posts here and here that explore the importance of empowering the simple act of conservation, creating connections to nature and building communities engaged in enhancing the natural world while using the lessons it teaches to educate the next generation.

Credibility: WHC understands the operational rhythms of a landfill site or quarry, the regulations restricting access to a manufacturing facility or mine and the rules around personal safety and protective gear on any operating facility. It also knows the opportunities that can transform buffer lands into biodiversity zones and engage local schools in meaningful learning and doing. It’s 25 plus years of operating at the intersection of business and nature has given it a skill set that brings value and credibility to its unique approach and allows it to engage with sites of all sizes and programs of a wide variety of complexity.

Driving Change: When a multinational company like General Motors makes a commitment to conservation through the WHC certification program, it drives change. When Waste Management established a goal of 100 certified locations in its portfolio by 2017, it drove change at a local and corporate level. When Exelon celebrates its 19 Wildlife at Work and six Corporate Lands for Learning projects in its annual CSR report, operations change, minds change and conservation outcomes change. With over 800 certified programs worldwide, WHC has driven change at an individual level, a facility level and an institutional level.

The puzzle for WHC is how to reconcile its present incarnation with its future vision. It must build a program that continues to value voluntary acts of conservation, community engagement and place-based education while striving to incorporate the lofty goals and practices of VSS as embodied by the UNFSS and the ISEAL Alliance.

WHC is, in some ways, attempting to “square the circle,” but we are going about it in a thoughtful and structured manner so that we can realize our vision of growth with new partnerships and new conservation stories, while continuing to drive change both on the ground and in the offices of our corporate partners.

Read more WHC blogs.

Calling Nature Back: Celebrating Random Acts of Conservation

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A presentation entitled “Avoiding Random Acts of Conservation” recently came across my desk and my first thought was, Why would anyone want to do that?

The point of the presentation was that by avoiding random acts of conservation, we ensure that resources provided for conservation are used strategically and outcomes are evaluated efficiently, but we also create a barrier to entry, exacerbating the growing distance between people and nature. The presentation had an important message for conservation professionals, but an unfortunate title for everyone else engaged in efforts to improve our natural world.

Imagine if random acts of kindness were strategic, objective-based and measurable. Little old ladies would be abandoned, forced to cross the road by themselves. The injured and old compelled to stand on crowded trains. Doors no longer held open for the burdened. Tips for services no longer rendered. A generation would emerge for whom kindness becomes something that is done by organizations with core competencies in the practice of kindness, and the resources to set kindness objectives and measure the outcomes.

Levity aside, my point is a serious one. The distance between humanity and the natural world is large and growing. Studies, books, presentations and TED talks illustrate this fact. According to the United Nations, more than half the world’s population is now living in cities, migrating further and further from natural places. A recent report on outdoor recreation in the U.S. shows that participation in outdoor activities has fallen and that the biggest motivation today to get outside is not exploration of nature, but getting exercise to overcome a sedentary lifestyle. Across the planet, efforts are underway to encourage children to spend unstructured time in nature following studies that find technology, perceptions of danger and lack of easy access to the outdoors all culpable in keeping a generation of children indoors.

The language we use accelerates the growth of this distance. A child will not rejoice installing a unit of carbon sequestration, but will always remember the first tree they plant. A school group will never fondly recall the productive use of natural capital on a localized basis, but will enjoy the salsa and pesto made from their school gardens. A team of volunteers will never proudly wear t-shirts that proclaim them ecosystem service engineers, but will gather as wildlife teams, river stewards or nature clubs to perform the same acts.

We need to call nature back. Let’s bridge the growing distance, arresting some of the trends or at least mitigating their impacts, not just on nature but also on future generations of nature lovers. Let’s celebrate random acts of conservation and ensure that children, volunteers and others see a role for themselves in making a difference in small but significant ways.

The Wildlife Habitat Council, along with our members and partners, is doing its part. At our 26th Annual Symposium in November, over 400 individuals engaged in random and non-random acts of conservation gathered to celebrate their individual and cumulative impacts on nature through projects as simple as pollinator gardens and trails, to more complex efforts like wetlands restoration, site cleanup and restoration and reclamation projects.

During our awards banquet, extraordinary efforts are honored not only for their contribution to conservation, but also their efforts to engage employees and community:

  • Vulcan Materials Company, at its Liberty Quarry in South Carolina, manages 400 acres for upland and wetland ecology and, through its partnership with Liberty High School, has installed nesting structures for waterfowl, migratory songbirds and bats involving students in designing, implementing and maintaining natural areas.
  • In Indonesia, Freeport-McMoRan’s extensive restoration of its Grasberg facility will reclaim hectares of mangrove swamps, create a herbarium and a butterfly sanctuary, and engage 70 local schools in using the lands for learning, providing internships and on-the-ground practice for budding ecologists and restoration professionals.
  • General Motors in Arlington, Texas, has built a trail and outdoor classroom for students to learn from the on-site wetland and prairie that is part of this assembly plant, and at their facility in Lansing, Michigan, efforts to control invasive species and restore meadows is being carried out in partnership with a local congregation.

These examples represent four of the more than 100 newly certified and re-certified projects we recognized at our Symposium this year which, when added to existing efforts, brings the efforts of our members and their employees to over 800 acts of conservation worldwide. Each one serves to call nature back by giving it a place to thrive in a corporate setting and connecting people through access, education and recreation. These acts of conservation are truly worth celebrating.

Read more WHC blogs.