Outdoors as a Climate Solution

Overview

States increasingly recognize outdoor policies – outdoor education, recreation, access, and equity – as critically-needed, high impact climate solutions. Highly effective climate solutions rethink and restore human-nature relationships. Accessing the benefits of time outdoors – such as improved health, learning, equity, economic growth, and resilience – improves behavior towards the environment in a feedback loop. More benefits from nature lead to more behaviors that protect nature, and so on. Outdoor policies provide the time in nature required to grasp the urgency of climate change, offer immediate relief for many emerging climate issues, and ground humanity in the knowledge that humanity is inextricable from the environment. This briefing book offers examples of how outdoor policies are being implemented as climate solutions by states across six key areas: 1. Nature-Based Solutions, 2. Outdoor Access and Equity, 3. Green Connections, 4. Outdoor and Climate Education, 5. Outdoor Economies, Workforces, and Industries, and 6. The Future of the Outdoors.