The Coastal Solutions Fellowship Program from the Advisory Board´s Point of View
By Michael Groove – Principal Landscape Architect at Sasaki, Boston, Massachusetts.
I am trained as a landscape architect and I am also a graduate of Cornell, so serving on the advisory board for the Coastal Solutions Fellows Program is a joyous opportunity to give back to not just a place that was so formative in my lived experiences, but more importantly, to give back in whatever capacity I can to the next generation who are inheriting the earth and working hard to make impactful change.
For decades, if not longer, design disciplines like mine were divorced from science, and especially the natural sciences. Planning, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Civil Engineering were typically siloed – entrenched in the echo chamber of their own disciplines to solve acute problems. This lack of collaboration and communication not only stifles innovation, it exacerbates pressing global issues like climate change, social justice, and biodiversity loss.
Beginning in the 1960s and 70s, awareness of the environmental movement began to shift the status quo. And the existential crisis of climate change put the designs disciplines not simply on alert for our culpability, but also has sparked a new era of collaboration on contributing to solving the bigger global problems. In the past decade or so, the focus has been on reducing operational carbon, and more recently has been tackling embodied carbon. These are noble goals, and significant progress has been made. But the point I’d like to make is that if we stop emitting carbon dioxide, climate change could be stopped or reversed. But if we lose species, they’re gone forever. Biodiversity loss is not something that is being talked about with as much rigor in the design professions, and that needs to change. The Coastal Solutions Fellowship is at the center of making that change.
We’ve seen species extinction and the degradation of ecosystems proceed at rapid pace. We’re losing species at a rate of about anywhere from 100 to 1,000 times faster than the background rate, based on previous extinctions. Addressing climate change will remove one threat to biodiversity, but it won’t stop its decline. If we fix climate change tomorrow, we still are dealing with a massive degradation of nature and biodiversity.
We’re coming up with ways to deal with carbon. But nature is infinitely more complex than a molecule of carbon, so we’re still learning a great deal. When we lose ecosystems and genetic diversity, this impacts our ability to survive as a human species, not to mention all the other more-than-human species that inhabit this planet with us. The food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the medicines we use are all directly related to nature. If we lose nature, we’re going to severely impact all the things that keep us alive and thriving.
While we look to the sky trying to figure out what to do with climate change, nature is being pulled out right out from under us. Which is why we are supporting these incredible interdisciplinary cohorts that include wildlife biologists, conservation ecologists, architects, landscape architects, and planners who are using this platform to not simply further their own research agenda but are taking their knowledge directly into communities that will benefit from saving these important places. By embedding themselves into the fabric of the landscapes where they work is an incredible opportunity to educate others and collaborate with them as partners in conservation. In essence, they are not simply individual stewards, they are ambassadors of the environment and capacity builders to allow others to take up the torch.
I’ve learned so much about the Pacific Flyway throughout my tenure on the advisory board, and I’m looking forward to expanding my knowledge of the Atlantic Flyway from future cohorts and continue to celebrate this incredible initiative.
The Coastal Solutions Fellows Program builds and supports an international community to design and implement solutions that address coastal challenges across the Pacific Americas Flyway. Our main goal is to conserve coastal habitats and shorebird populations by building the knowledge, resources, and skills of Latin American professionals, and by fostering collaborations among multiple disciplines and sectors.