Climate Resident

The Climate Resident will work closely with TNC Maine’s Climate Adaptation Team to support the chapter’s climate adaptation initiatives, including Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) policy and finance, project implementation, community resilience, and equitable adaptation.

Both residents will work closely with MEEA’s Maine Environmental Changemakers team to support the growth of our network.  This work includes but is not limited to network building, event planning, communications support, storytelling initiatives, outreach, fundraising, research and evaluation.

The Nature Conservancy in Maine

TNC in Maine’s Equity Approaches

You can learn more about MEEA’s work and our approaches here.

The Community Initiatives Resident will work with the Community Program Director to build connections with communities with the goal of building relationships, rapport, and reducing barriers to access to outdoor spaces.

About the Hosting Organizations

The Nature Conservancy was founded in 1951 to conserve lands that were considered “special places” and then biodiversity. These lands are the homeland of the Wabanaki. We respectfully acknowledge these People of the Dawn–past, present and future–and their sacred connection to these lands and waters.

More recently, we have become a global organization working in more than 75 countries focusing on conserving the lands and waters that all life depends and acting to reduce carbon emissions. s. As a science-based organization, we create innovative, on-the-ground solutions to our world’s toughest challenges so that we can create a world in which people and nature thrive. 

The Nature Conservancy in Maine is the fourth oldest chapter, founded in 1956 by Rachel Carson and other leading Maine citizens concerned about the loss of wildlife habitat.  More than 8,000 families, foundations and corporations have helped the Maine Chapter play a role in protecting over 2,400,000 acres of Maine’s most important lands. The Conservancy owns and manages almost 300,000 acres in Maine, including the largest system of nature preserves in the state. 

Over time, the scope of our work has expanded to include river and stream restoration, work with fishing communities to sustain fisheries in the Gulf of Maine, and act on climate change mitigation and adaptation. To learn more, visit www.nature.org/maine or follow @tncmaine on social media.

 The Nature Conservancy in Maine works with people to ensure healthy forests, clean free-flowing rivers, abundant oceans, and action on climate change. Our work in Maine and around the world historically focused on protecting nature for nature’s sake. More recently, we have recognized that the well-being of nature and people cannot be separated, and that conservation is inextricably connected to social and environmental justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

We began our equity learning journey in earnest in 2017 with the initiation of voluntary monthly lunch and learn sessions, incorporating “equity moments” as part of monthly staff meetings, participating in a New England division hiring study, and establishing a staff led DEIJ committee. Next, we began incorporating environmental justice and bystander questions as part of all hiring processes, engaged in a statewide (and ongoing) learning journey with Maine’s Indigenous Peoples, and instituted mandatory trainings focused on difference, power, and allyship for all staff.

In 2020, we partnered with an external equity consultant to design and pursue an approach to increase our shared commitment to equity, understand how race is operating in our chapter and our work, and explore how to transform our culture. As part of this effort, we are building a container of intentional norms and skills; learning to apply a racial equity lens; learning about race as a power system, and about the history of race in conservation and here in Maine. From this we have established work teams to carry out a racial equity analysis and carry it on as we carry out our mission.

This journey has led us to clarify some faulty assumptions and problematic truths that we continue to explore as a chapter, and also to see cross-cutting opportunities to move our chapter forward. Every step of this journey has deepened our commitment, our learning, and our understanding. And we acknowledge that we are only just getting started.