E&E ClimateWire: White House releases agenda to prepare U.S. lands and waters for climate change

Elizabeth Harball
October 9, 2014
E&E ClimateWire

A new federal program to squelch invasive species, improve scientific assessment of land carbon sinks and design high-rise buildings made of wood is among a wide-ranging series of executive actions announced by the White House Council on Environmental Quality yesterday to preserve America’s natural resources in an era of climate change.

The plan was welcomed by several forest industry groups, but it was met with disappointment by a number of environmental advocates, who said they think it lacks depth and misses out on important opportunities to halt the loss of key carbon-rich ecosystems.

Called the Climate and Natural Resources Priority Agenda, the announcement is the latest step of the president’s Climate Action Plan.

“States, cities, and communities depend on America’s bountiful natural resources, and climate change is putting many of these vital resources at risk,” the White House Council on Environmental Quality stated in a release yesterday. “By investing in smart strategies for conserving and restoring our lands and waters, we can help make communities more resilient to climate impacts while slowing the harmful effects of carbon pollution.”

In tandem, the White House also announced a series of commitments by both the public and private sectors to study, protect and restore natural systems. For example, the American Forest Foundation has agreed to a $10 million campaign to work with private forest owners on “climate friendly” land stewardship.

The 79-page agenda fulfills a section of an executive order released by President Obama last November that directed the many federal agencies in charge of natural resources to review and revise their policies and programs in light of climate change.

Agencies affected by the order include the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. EPA and the departments of the Interior, Defense and Agriculture. The White House includes in the agenda a “target completion date” for these agencies to fulfill each of the actions detailed in the document.

Industry groups welcome focus on ‘working forests’

For example, within the next year, Interior is tasked with creating an early detection and rapid response program for invasive species, which are projected to spread and inflict further damage on ecosystems as the planet warms.

NOAA Sea Grant will issue $15.9 million worth of grants to help fund 300 coastal resilience projects.

USDA is also directed to launch within the next six months what is called the U.S. Tall Wood Building Competition, an effort to design high-rise buildings constructed out of carbon-storing wood rather than carbon-intensive steel or concrete.

As hoped for by the forest industry, the agenda includes language in support of “working forests”: “USDA will continue to make investments to advance wood in building, wood energy use and other wood products — bolstering incentives for retaining and restoring forests — through providing life cycle analysis and technical and financial assistance.”

The American Forest Foundation, which advocates for private forestland owners, welcomed the agenda, saying in a statement that the administration has placed “unprecedented focus on the potential for U.S. forests and forest products to mitigate the effects of climate change.”

American Wood Council President Robert Glowinski said in a statement that “CEQ’s recommendations echo important facts about the wood products industry,” adding, “wood is a renewable resource and a cost-effective building material which helps reduce environmental impacts by storing carbon through its life.”

Green groups call agenda a ‘missed opportunity’

Environmental groups, however, were less impressed.

Niel Lawrence, forestry project director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an email that the agenda demonstrates a “welcome, broad-based commitment to mitigating and preparing for climate change across the country.”

But, he wrote, there are also “glaring omissions,” including “a failure to end old growth logging on federal lands and an apparent continued focus on indiscriminately thinning forests, which current research shows results in net emissions of carbon to the atmosphere, across the board.”

Lawrence and other environmental advocates pointed to the Forest Service’s recent controversial decision to award logging contracts in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, a region that now supports many old-growth trees (Greenwire, Oct. 1).

Pacific Forest Trust President Laurie Wayburn said of the agenda, “There’s nothing risky here — this is a safe way to raise these topics.”

“This was an opportunity to take some other, quite safe steps such as setting a target to reduce forest land loss,” Wayburn added, noting that due to urban growth and other development, the Forest Service projects the loss of 16 million to 34 million acres of forested land in the Lower 48 states by 2060.

“Small steps are not what we need to address the climate crisis,” Wayburn said.

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