Three Intersecting Crises for the Outdoors
Photo credit: Luke Helgeson. North Cascades, Washington.
Outdoor recreationists have a direct and intensely personal relationship to the outdoors. And our time outside means we are often the first to see beloved landscapes changing. The effects of climate change on outdoor recreation are wide-ranging and severe.
Recreationists see impacts like high temperatures, trail erosion from extreme weather, wildfires, floods, and drought, all of which affect the quality of the recreation experience and sometimes prevent recreationists from getting outside entirely (source). For years, the outdoor recreation community has told a compelling story about the realities of climate change and has advocated for action to address it. Most recently, the outdoor community advocated for the country to commit to 30x30, a climate and biodiversity goal aiming to protect 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030. The outdoor recreation community was also influential in advocating for the Inflation Reduction Act, historic investments in addressing climate change and protecting and restoring public lands.
Climate change threatens more than just outdoor recreation, with wide-ranging impacts on our communities, livelihoods, and globe. In 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released new data reinforcing the urgency of addressing the climate crisis, stating that “unless there are immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C will be beyond reach.”
It’s also critical that we address biodiversity—the variety of living things, from plants to animals to landscapes, that preserves and sustains life. Addressing global biodiversity loss is urgent, with the most recent Global Biodiversity Assessment calling for “transformative change” to curb the worst outcomes in terms of species extinction and habitat loss. The U.S. is rapidly losing open space to development—more than 24 million acres between 2001 and 2017 (source). This nature loss hastens climate change, taking us in the opposite direction we should be moving for climate and for our access to the outdoors.
Outdoor recreation is booming nationally, with the total number of participants increasing nearly 7% since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and with the newest cohort of recreationists more diverse in age and ethnicity (source). Protected land and waters, unique to America, are the foundation for the growth of outdoor recreation participation. Similarly, outdoor recreation’s economic value continues to grow, contributing $862 billion in gross economic output to the U.S. economy in 2021, accounting for nearly 2% of U.S. gross domestic product (source). Despite this growth, the benefits of access to the outdoors are still not distributed equitably, and we need to ensure all communities have the opportunity to connect to the natural world through outdoor recreation.
When neighborhoods lack green space or ready access to the outdoors, it also has ramifications for how they experience the effects of climate change. We know that more trees in a neighborhood, for example, help to mitigate climate-related impacts by shading and cooling neighborhoods or capturing stormwater runoff to prevent flooding. Restoring parks and green spaces, protecting land for drainage, and planting trees have immediate benefits for communities and important long-term impacts on how these places experience climate change. For example, recent grant funding from the Inflation Reduction Act will take meaningful steps to invest in planting trees and creating parks and green space in neighborhoods that need it. And protections for places like the Castner Range National Monument in Texas will provide invaluable landscape connectivity, as well as protections for the surrounding El Paso community from the effects of droughts or flooding.
For outdoor recreationists, protected land and water have always had enormous personal benefits. But our advocacy for the outdoors can be part of a bigger story in addressing the causes and impacts of climate change. We can ensure that outdoor experiences are available and welcoming to everyone in America. These three intersecting crises—climate change, biodiversity, and increasing demand for sustainable, equitable outdoor recreation—have made it even more urgent that we prioritize protecting nature.