Designing Nature’s Half:
The Blog
News and education about landscape conservation and design.
Beyond Defense
The conservation movement has always won by organizing. But in an era when governments can dismantle protections as quickly as they created them, defense alone is no longer enough. The next chapter of conservation must include building durable, democratic institutions capable of stewarding landscapes across political cycles and generations.
Lasting Landscapes Require Lasting Institutions
What do peaceful societies and sustainable landscapes have in common? More than we might think. Inspired by the United Nations' International Day of Cooperatives, this essay explores why transformational conservation requires not only better landscape design, but also democratic institutions intentionally designed to sustain shared stewardship over time.
Earth Day Edition: Designing What Comes Next - Ecoregional Cooperatives and the Architecture of Landscape Governance
As environmental governance falters, the question is no longer whether coordination is needed, but how it can be rebuilt. This Earth Day essay explores Ecoregional Cooperatives, landscape conservation design, and ecosocialism as democratic, place-based approaches to organizing decisions at the scale ecological conditions demand.
Designing the Energy Transition at Landscape Scale
Renewables have overtaken coal globally. China is reorganizing its energy system at historic speed. Rare earth extraction is leaving visible scars across landscapes. The energy transition is accelerating, but who decides where its burdens fall? Land is being converted. Minerals are being extracted. Water is being withdrawn. Infrastructure is expanding. The question is no longer whether the transition will proceed, but whether the landscapes that sustain it are being deliberately designed — or altered one permit at a time.
Landscape conservation design offers a framework. Ecoregional Cooperatives offer a mechanism. The durability of the transition will depend on whether regions use them.