Host: Liz Fly, PhD

Editor: Nicole Pehl

Music: Matt Williams

Cover Art: Amy Nguyen

Funding provided by Honda

Created by the Nature-Based Exchange

Produced by The Nature Conservancy South Carolina

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, and Amazon Music

The world is facing huge obstacles, including climate change, biodiversity loss, civil unrest, and disease, among so many others. In South Carolina and the Southeast, these obstacles often present as chronic flooding issues, excessive heat, air and water pollution, soil contamination, and loss of pollinator species, all of which can disrupt people’s lives and livelihoods. The term “resilience” has been labeled as a solution to many of these obstacles and its repeated use has turned it into a popular buzzword. But as with many buzzwords, definitions can get cloudy and misunderstood with use. So, what exactly does “resilience” mean and how do we achieve it?

 Resilience in nature is defined as the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a disturbance by resisting damage and recovering quickly. The traits that make a system resilient – diversity, redundancy, decentralization, self-renewal, and self-repair – are the essence of good nature-based solutions. As their name suggests, nature-based solutions are methods that keep nature at the heart of the solution. They offer multiple benefits, including ecological and community resilience, increased biodiversity, physical and mental health advantages, recreational and cultural amenities, and economic opportunities.

 People have been using nature-based solutions for millennia, though the practice has declined as people have become increasingly out of touch with nature. We need to rediscover how to live with nature, and how to apply nature’s wisdom to the obstacles we currently face.

 Each month we will sit down with a nature expert or enthusiast who will share some of the wisdom and best practices that nature has taught them. Together, we will learn more about nature, ways we can design nature-based solutions to address obstacles, and suggestions on how to communicate, plan, and fund equitable nature-based work.

Watch the trailer

Trailer created by Rabun Shwany. Features Jen Howard, Howard Schnabolk, Dale Threatt-Taylor, Erin Stevens, and Cheryl Cail.