Nature's Carbon Sponges: Restoring Meadows in the Sierra Nevada

As institutions look for ways to fight climate change, the College of the Atlantic has made the search for solutions a central part of its curriculum.

Geography and climate change challenge the viability of sea-level cities in Vietnam, but architects, researchers, and urban planners work together to find creative solutions. One architect in Ho Chi Minh City designed green roofs to absorb the rainwater that causes floods.

Women4Climate is a new alliance of women mayors from major cities who are determined to act against climate change with or without federal support. Instead, they mentor each other in innovative solutions, cross-promote important causes, and share best practices to help stem the negative effects of greenhouse gas emissions, empowering women everywhere to participate.

Nearly a billion people living in the arid regions of the Himalayas depend on glaciers for their water supply. But with climate change, glaciers have been retreating drastically every year, threatening the life source of villagers like those in the Ladakh region of Kashmir. One engineer, Sonam Wangchuck, has come up with an ingenious feat of engineering to help the villages store glacier water by constructing stupas - or towers - using thorn branches that retain ice in tall structures, which melts and provides clean water for drinking and agriculture during the dry season.

Threatened wildlife co-exists with poverty stricken communities who inhabit the Arizona-Mexico border region. Borderlands Restoration's conservation scientists are hoping to alleviate poverty while repairing the local environment by providing jobs that help preserve and renew the environment.

Climate change is destroying coral reefs at a startling rate - threatening the livelihoods of millions of people, increasing the damage caused by storm surges, and affecting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Scientists are now exploring revolutionary - and sometimes controversial - methods to learn more about and preserve coral reefs, including selective breeding of those species proven to survive conditions such as high toxicity and heat, and cultivating the regrowth of colonies one centimeter at a time.

The challenges of wildlife conservation are numerous, including illegal hunting and habitat loss. Numerous organizations, including the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia, are training people, from farmers to scientists, to use an ancient tool to help: domesticated dogs. Better than any existing technology, working canines are helping conservationists on numerous fronts, from sniffing out poachers to tracking elusive species, as well as protecting livestock, removing the rancher's perceived need to kill predators like cheetahs.

The largely homogenous demographic of those working in conservation contributes to disparities in representation, which in turn can lead to issues like the Flint water crises. Now several organizations, including the Alliance for the Great Lakes in Cleveland and the Environmental Fellows program at the University of Michigan, are working to include the diverse voices of different races, ages, and backgrounds in the conversation.

The 5 Gyres program is a pilot project that takes high school students from low-income districts out on boat expeditions to study the shocking amounts of plastic that can be found in our oceans, hoping to simultaneously raise awareness about this serious environmental issue for the next generation, while sparking interest in the sciences to underserved students.

A graduate student from British Columbia, the Arctic Energy Alliance, and the elders of the Inuvialuit people may seem a strange team, but together they are tackling the dual concerns of climate change and the loss of indigenous language in Canada. By inventing new terms and words in the Inuvialuit language to describe renewable energy technologies, they are increasing awareness about sustainable development while helping preserve the culture and heritage of this unique population.