Nature-based solutions (NBS) to climate-related hazards are becoming an integrated part of climate adaptation work worldwide. NBS approaches reduce fire, flood, drought, and landslide hazards and exposures, through tools that can strengthen both ecosystem and human health. When NBS becomes business-as-usual with engineering approaches that mimic rather than integrate ecosystem components and processes, with little to no local involvement in the planning and use, these benefits are not achieved.

In Norway and Western Europe, as in California, Canada, Australia, and other regions worldwide, cultures have developed caretaking practices based on prevailing climates and ecosystem characteristics that can help us respond to today's challenges. For instance, prescribed or cultural burns have a deep history that extend into the early Holocene. After a century of altered land use practices, these burning practices are becoming important again as the world faces the intersections of climate change, land use changes, and urban encroachment into fire-dependent natural ecosystems.

Tools like modeling, sediment coring analyses, participant observation and interviews, and GIS mapping can help answer questions about how traditional knowledge and practices can help adapt to climate change, reduce carbon emissions, conserve biodiversity, and build and support communities. 

Images: a high intensity wildfire burns and a seasonal calendar in Kakadu National Park, Australia, coastal heath after a cultural burn and sheep at Lygra, Norway (photos: Siri Veland)

Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power increases, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened" Albert Einstein

How can our values, projects, and activities align with transformative actions for sustainability?

At academic institutions, we are taught the knowledge and tools necessary to be successful in the world, but how do we measure success? Unsustainable actions in the world come from decisions that are made out of intellect but cut off from our values and what truly benefits people and planet. Through teaching and project design, the tools for transformational leadership for sustainability (TLFS) help design in ways that align what deeply matter to us as individuals with what connects us to the wider community, helps us identify what systems and structures we need to be a part of or shift, and what specific actions we need to take to make the changes. The TLFS group is located in Norway, but connects with the Radical Transformational Leadership (RTL) here in California and in India. The approach articulates and sources the full potential of students, faculty, professionals, and community members to design for sustainability transformations. 

I integrate elements of this approach into my teaching, and actively use the tools to shape my own projects. I'm also training to be able to teach the course in its entirety to professionals, policy-makers, researchers, and NGOS.