Parks Stewardship Forum

Anthropogenic climate change is a systemic threat to conservation goals and society at large, and parks and protected areas (PPAs) are uniquely positioned to play an important role in mitigating this crisis. Reducing global carbon emissions is critical for tackling climate change and we believe PPAs serve an important role in facilitating these reductions. Drawing from Thomas Heberlein’s framing of cognitive, technological, and structural fixes, and particularly the lesson that the most effective approaches include all three, we discuss ways that PPA managers can leverage each fix to reduce global carbon emissions. We present the three fixes as pillars of a holistic carbon emission mitigation approach in PPAs and use examples to contextualize each type of fix. However, each PPA is characterized by context-dependent attributes that require climate change “fixes” to be tailored to unique social, cultural, physical, and natural conditions for maximizing long-term sustainable solutions. Therefore, managers who seek to implement or expand carbon emission mitigation strategies may refer to this article, and the examples included herein, as a framework to identify the strengths of their current approaches and to explore areas that can be further developed. [This is a paper from “Systemic Threats to Parks & Protected Areas,” the 2020 George Wright Society Student Summit.]