2024 RCP Network Gathering, Collaborating for Healthier Communities

The RCP Network Gathering has become a more inclusive forum for people from the Northeast and beyond to meet and trade stories about collaborative landscape conservation. Since 2021, we’ve centered on land justice to bring attention to past injustices perpetrated on Black people, indigenous communities, and people of color. We began discussing integrating this foundational knowledge into our work and partnerships.

This year, we will discuss the environment’s direct impact on human health and how climate change’s effects are increasing pressure on society at all levels. Any path to a healthier, more climate-resilient, and biodiverse future requires collaboration among diverse people and sectors to ensure everyone benefits.

At last year’s Gathering, we heard from philanthropic and environmental justice leaders about how people must continue working in partnership to address multiple goals beyond biodiversity conservation. Nature teaches us resilience in ecosystems is achievable when balance is restored among its various components, allowing them to function harmoniously. Taking these lessons and advancing on multiple objectives outside of conservation takes diverse voices, groups, sectors, and areas of expertise. What ties all these people together? A shared desire to address more of what’s ailing society through integrated conservation work and the capacity to support their ongoing collaboration.

We’ve been discussing how regional conservation partnerships have a unique, unifying role in bringing about integrated systems change. We are building reciprocal relationships with new people and sectors, working together, sharing, and scaling the work outward, doing our part to foster healthier, more just, and climate-resilient communities.

But what do we mean by “healthier” communities, and which sectors do we need to learn from and embrace to help ensure a future where all people can thrive? What insights can public health, a sector many of us in conservation are not currently engaging in, offer to identify opportunities for collaboration and expansion while addressing social disparities? Join us on November 14, 2024, to share with your peers how you, your collaborations, and your networks advance health, justice, and climate resilience through your work.

We are seeking proposals for our 15th annual conference. Our presenters are the heart of this event. They share their voices, experiences, and lessons to help us navigate complex problems and solutions and be inspired to collaborate around common conservation goals. Will you join us this year?

Check this page and sign up for the RCP Network E-News for updates on the program, registration, and more details as the November 9 Gathering approaches.

Please contact Highstead Conservationist Katie Blake with any questions about this year’s RCP Network Gathering.

Learn more about the RCP Network Gathering.