Working Group

The newly-formed Climate Change working group will help the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition understand the potential impacts of climate change on rural communities, including their surrounding natural landscapes, and the roles that rural communities and community-based forestry organizations can play in climate change policy and mitigation. Our work will focus on articulating the relationships between forests, rangelands, and climate change, the relationships between the social and economic well-being of rural communities and climate change, and the opportunities for RVCC to shape management choices related to climate change on public and private land. In 2008, the Climate Change working group will focus on developing an issue paper on the role of forests in climate change and related economic structures and incentives. The working group will also develop recommendations for RVCC about the role of rural communities and our coalition in climate change policy that will ultimately lead to the development of the RVCC platform and policy recommendations on climate change.

Chairs: Gerry Gray, American Forests; Kathy Lynn, Resource Innovations

For up-to-date information on climate change policy, contact information for policy shapers, and clear information on climate issues important to rural communities view the Rural Climate Change Policy website.