North Central CASC Consortium Partner, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), has published a new analysis of the ways that conservation practitioners in the U.S. are embracing climate change in their work. As conservation investments are increasingly at risk of failing as the climate changes, there are signs that practitioners are experimenting with novel approaches to conservation that embrace the realities of this pressing global challenge.

The study is important methodologically, as it presents a novel classification -- the 6-point "Resistance-Resilience-Transformation" (R-R-T) scale -- that improves on existing concepts of resistance, resilience, and transformation within climate adaptation, and enables the assessment of whether and to what extent a shift toward transformative action is occurring in conservation.

Researchers at WCS and the University of British Columbia applied the new R-R-T classification to 104 climate-informed conservation projects in the U.S. that were funded by the WCS Climate Adaptation Fund over the past decade. Our results reveal that the intensifying call in the academic literature for conservation practitioners to take a more transformative approach to climate adaptation is starting to be expressed in practice.

Read the paper: R–R–T (resistance–resilience–transformation) typology reveals differential conservation approaches across ecosystems and time

Read the blog by Molly Cross discussing the research.