About

About the Campaign

This program is a County-sponsored initiative to develop and implement nature-based solutions backed by science, that help address the negative effects and impacts of climate change.

Our goals are to develop local resiliency to protect biodiversity through community action. These include the protection, restoration or management of natural and semi-natural ecosystems; the sustainable management of aquatic systems and working lands; and integration of nature in and around our cities.
Through education and action, we seek to empower Santa Fe County residents to prepare the land and habitats surrounding us for a changing climate. With the high potential for severe drought and wildfire, we need to work together to create meaningful, positive change. Join us in implementing nature-based climate solutions that are backed by scientific research and build a movement of hope, resilience, stewardship, and restoration to empower our community collectively.

Nature-based solutions involve working with nature, as part of nature, to address societal challenges, supporting human well-being and biodiversity locally. They include the protection, restoration or management of natural and semi-natural ecosystems; the sustainable management of aquatic systems and working lands; and integration of nature in and around our cities. They are actions that underpin biodiversity and are designed to be implemented in a way that respects the rights, values and knowledge of local communities that also include Indigenous Peoples. – Nature-based Solutions Initiative.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are actions to address societal challenges through the protection, sustainable management and restoration of ecosystems, benefiting both biodiversity and human well-being. - IUCN.

Science Factor:

Science serves to measure, track, and quantify patterns that are verified through evidence based methods in order to identify trends. Identifying patterns in nature and measuring outcomes is a practice humanity has applied in almost every part of their journey through the life cycle.

Witnessing the patterns of weather, agriculture, plant life, wildlife, shelter materials and structures, helps us to create better systems for survival in these areas and many more. As tools become more accurate and skills increase, so does our understanding of the cause and impact of these patterns. As we highlight “nature-based climate solutions” or (NbCS), it is important to acknowledge that Indigenous and traditional ecological understanding of natural patterns have been actively applied and practiced long before western approaches and ideologies.

Ancient knowledge carries within its framework, a longer and more holistic timeline of wisdom and understanding that linear approaches fail to capture. Currently, we have an opportunity for even greater understanding benefiting from innovative measurement tools, and institutional research, which serve to shed light on the interconnected benefits of nature and allow us to build upon a hologram of knowledge, for the purpose of supporting and restoring local ecosystems.

The Santa Fe County Climate Action Plan (CAP), is a guide that incorporates many science-backed, nature-based, solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build resilient communities through measurable, results focused programs such as 4Nature.

Community Factor:

Young to old, community members impact our climate and can contribute to fostering positive ecosystem health and resiliency in our regional landscapes. The 4Nature program is open to anyone who is interested and eager to be a part of solutions that support the struggling environment through best practices for mitigating the effects of a warming climate in our back yards, pastures, gardens, rivers and streams; wherever nature is.

We ask the community of Santa Fe County to help lead that charge, starting with the understanding that the smallest effort can make a large impact over time. It is imperative that community members have a platform to raise concerns about possible solutions from which we all benefit. The 4Nature program focuses on bringing community members together to exchange knowledge and help reduce the effects and impacts of climate change through the solutions provided by nature.

Shining a light on those who have and continue to steward nature, the nature based approach also endeavors to increase resiliency through partnerships. These partnerships work to provide the foundational needs for healthy ecosystems: building nutrient rich soils required to feed and sustain plant life, cooling surfaces through planting for coverage and canopy shade, and collecting and harvesting surface water strategically for infiltration and irrigation. We can all do this work by partnering with nature to foster biodiverse habitats in our yards and lands.

4Nature participants positively support the growth of native species, and pollinators to provide habitat for bees and insects vitally important to the delicate balance of our planet and food systems for all species. Through networking together, we can and are, building the foundations for resiliency and health within places the we are charged to protect and preserve.

Let’s pull up our sleeves and make it happen 4Nature, and for us Santa Fe! Please join us here; no participation is too small and every effort counts toward the solution.