Previous Projects of Focus (Taos, New Mexico)

Project of Focus:

Working Lands Resiliency Initiative

In Northern New Mexico, our traditional agricultural lands face complex and interrelated threats resulting primarily from increased development, out-migration of youth from farming families, and the impacts of climate change. Older members of our community have fewer people to whom they can pass down regional farming traditions. Properties are increasingly broken into smaller and smaller tracts as families move out of the community or land is sold for development. Combined with increasing climate vulnerability, our valley is experiencing dramatic agricultural land loss. This threatens Taos’ agricultural heritage, disrupts a 400+ year-old acequia system, and challenges efforts towards ecological and community resilience.

The Working Lands Resiliency Initiative combines community organizing with research and advocacy to begin venturing solutions and support to protect Taos’ agricultural heritage and landscapes. In 2019, partners engaged in a process of deep inquiry with community members to better understand the unmet needs, concerns, questions, and barriers to protecting our working lands through the completion of a Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment (VCA). The VCA identifies both the absolute and relative vulnerability of Taos’ working lands and agriculturalists to climate change impacts, development pressures, and resultant fragmentation of working lands and agricultural productivity loss through an acequia-based approach.

The Working Lands Resiliency Initiative is both a process and an inquiry: to learn more, please visit https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/13cf6c6cdf164d2ab37ebafd22db6fc8 or https://taoslandtrust.org/working-lands/

Project of Focus:

Rio Fernando Revitalization Collaborative

The Rio Fernando Collaborative is a diverse partnership of local and regional stakeholders who are united around the common goal of resolving differences and improving the health and vitality of the Rio Fernando de Taos watershed. This group is committed to the collaborative process and recognizes the social, environmental and economic benefits of a healthy watershed to both the urban and rural context. The Collaborative process informs the work each individual organization undertakes within the Rio Fernando watershed. Realizing and resolving the multifaceted issues facing the Rio Fernando de Taos requires an evolving approach to watershed management; a comprehensive solution focused on locally supported initiatives that integrate the environmental, economic, and cultural needs of the Taos Valley. Collaboration between numerous and diverse stakeholders is an essential tool in this approach. The trust that is developed through collaboration leads to stable, long term relationships and solutions that will hold through the shifting political winds.

While Collaborative members individually implemented projects in the Rio Fernando Watershed for years, the formation of the Collaborative was the first time this team of key stakeholders with sometimes disparate land and water management objectives sat down to discuss challenges and how to address them, together. This enabled Collaborative members to create a shared vision, and engage the participation of diverse stakeholders through open, inclusive, and transparent dialogue and decision making. The Collaborative continues to engage allies through robust stakeholder outreach, community meetings, and issue specific educational events aimed at cross education within the Collaborative and throughout the community.

I am honored to have served as a Fellow and a Facilitator for this group and process, 2018-2021.

To learn more, please visit: www.riofernando.org