Program: Sustainable Land Use

CVI’s goal is to champion sustainable land use solutions that make conservation both possible and profitable, protecting the health of our biosphere and human well-being.

The Need: The impacts of humanity’s unsustainable land use include devastating levels of habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution (soil, water and air), and toxin-induced diseases.  To protect and restore the health of both humans and the biosphere, we need solutions that dramatically improve the efficiency with which we use land, water and other natural resources.

Top scientific societies emphasize that in order to advance these solutions, experts need to help improve communication of the relevance of our knowledge to citizens and decision-makers.

CVI’s rare combination of scientific and communication expertise makes us uniquely qualified to answer the above call by carrying out this program.  Across our research and educational projects, we champion strategies that enable citizens, businesses and government agencies to simultaneously sustain ecosystem services and human well-being.

This program is managed by CVI’s Founding Fellow, Dr. Jonathan Gelbard, whose past projects in environmental problem-solving include over 15 years of academic research, writing and speaking in the fields of conservation biology and management, invasive species biology and management, and conservation communication.

Dr. Gelbard has completed projects with The Nature Conservancy and ranchers in New Mexico and Arizona, with agencies and environmental groups in Colorado, with academics, ranchers, and agencies in California, with consulting firms and environmental groups in Oregon, and has been an instructor at WWF’s first two Climate Camp workshops.
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