Beyond Climate Mitigation with Nature-Based Solutions

Electricity Canada: The Grid 2022

Director of Generation and Stewardship, Electricity Canada

An interview with Bryan Gilvesy, CEO of ALUS

What comes to mind when you think of nature-based solutions? Do you think about natural spaces, like forested areas, streams, or grasslands? Do you picture somewhere in the distant wilderness of a coastal rainforest or tundra, or somewhere closer to home?

Despite hearing a lot of discussion of nature-based solutions in my work on climate mitigation and adaptation, I realized I didn’t know much about it.

Luckily, I found someone who does. Bryan Gilvesy is a farmer, a rancher, and the CEO of ALUS, a non-profit dedicated to helping farmers like him build and maintain nature-based solutions. Major corporations including several Electricity Canada members are already supporting ALUS’ innovative approach to naturalizing on-farm landscapes.

I wanted to know how Bryan started on this path, why farmers and ranchers are the key to preserving ecosystems, and how ALUS can help corporations deliver on their climate and biodiversity goals.

Jay Wilson: Bryan, it’s a pleasure to meet you! I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for making the time. Where are you coming from today?

Bryan Gilvesy, CEO of ALUS: Thanks for setting this up, Jay. I am coming to you from 350 acres of farm and ranch land in Norfolk County just south of Tillsonburg, Ontario.

JW: Well let’s get into it! To start off, what are nature-based solutions?

Electricity Canada: The Grid 2022

BG: “Nature-based solutions” is a term that refers to what communities can do to meet challenges in ways that are inspired by the environment. What we do at ALUS is help farmers and ranchers use nature-based solutions to provide cleaner air, cleaner water, carbon sequestration, erosion control, flood and drought mitigation, and pollinator and wildlife habitat.

To do nature-based solutions well, you need three things: skills, energy, and land. Farmers have all three. They also understand the rhythms of nature on their land because they live and work there and can maintain them over time.

JW: Bryan, you’re a farmer and a rancher, how did you find out about nature-based solutions? Is this something you’ve always known about?

BG: It’s not, it’s something I had to learn about. That story really begins in 2005. I was managing my land and my cattle as best I could. I had a cold-water stream on my land, and I wanted to bring my cattle over to a remote pasture on the other side without damaging trout habitat. I went looking for programs to help me, but the only funding available was tied to remediation, meaning, I could get funding only if the stream was already damaged. Fortunately, I was introduced to a group of people who were focused on creating a solution that was proactive. They helped me build a stream crossing for my cattle as well as infrastructure to keep them on the highlands. That turned out to be the ALUS Pilot Program, and I was their third participant. I stayed involved as the program grew and I eventually became the CEO. Now we have over 1,100 farmers in 33 communities across Canada, and we’re growing quickly.

JW: I know some Electricity Canada members are already involved in various ways with ALUS. You also have a program geared towards the corporate sector, the New Acre Project. Can you tell me about that?

BG: Absolutely. ALUS is focused on helping farmers develop nature-based solutions with their knowledge and resources. But corporations are also catching on to the benefits of nature-based solutions. That’s why ALUS created the New Acre Project, an initiative to help corporate sponsors fund nature-based projects by the acre. The “New Acre” concept means the investment is creating new, tangible improvements in one of our communities. We track dozens of metrics so that our sponsors know exactly what the impact of their involvement is. Corporations need to be able to measure and demonstrate the impact of their work, and our database measures, tracks and reports the ecosystem attributes that they sponsored.

JW: Corporations are under a lot of pressure to quantify their impacts – both positive and negative – and to be able to show that there is a net benefit to communities in which they operate and to the broader world. You mentioned your database. Do you do direct matchmaking of farmers and corporations? How do you manage that?

BG: We work with corporations to understand where they want to drive impact and match them with participating communities who implement the program. Projects are approved by a local Partnership Advisory Committee, mapped in the ALUS database, and assigned a unique code that will be applied to all of that funder’s acres. Then, we report back to the funder in aggregated form. We know down to the decimal point how many acres of wetland, or fish habitat or native grassland, and we can allocate those as units to corporations that want to support those specific kinds of projects.

JW: So, one of our biggest areas of focus is climate change, can you speak to how nature-based solutions can be marshalled to help with climate mitigation and adaptation?

BG: Yes, the kinds of solutions we implement help to absorb more carbon from the atmosphere. Whether that’s tree planting, wetland restoration, re-establishing native grasslands or even just modifying the way the farmer’s crops are managed, we are seeing a carbon benefit there. They also help mitigate the effects of floods and drought that come from extreme weather.

JW: Can you quantify those benefits as an offset? That’s a major priority in the electricity sector. Probably the most important word to us in “Net Zero emissions by 2050” is “Net”, because there are probably going to be some emissions that we just can’t eliminate. How does ALUS measure and account for those benefits?

BG: We support that approach, and we would say that our carbon reduction credits are better value than a traditional offset. For example, with a carbon offset from a methane capture site at a landfill, you get the avoided GHG emissions. But with a naturebased solution like New Acre’s, not only do you get the emissions benefit, but you also get biodiversity, water quality, flood resiliency, and so on.

Electricity Canada: The Grid 2022

Proper quantification is essential. We have a sophisticated system for New Acre’s work, and that system is constantly improving. We’re working on three priority areas for quantification: watershed modelling, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity. We’ve created over 150 square kilometres of impact across the country and this is still growing. The key thing is to ensure that we are creating the highest quality nature-based solutions we can, and keep improving how we quantify those as we go.

JW: Before we wrap this up, could you suggest something to the person reading this to help them better understand naturebased solutions?

BG: Absolutely. I would recommend a report released by Nature United called Natural Climate Solutions. The report lays out how nature-based solutions on agricultural land can provide most of the climate benefits we’ll need to help get to Net Zero by 2050. These solutions really have so much to offer Canada. Most agriculture is in the southern part of the country where Canadians live, work and play, so more of us can see and experience it. With nature-based solutions, you’re doing good where more people can see it.

JW: Bryan, this has been great, thank you. Where can people find you?

BG: Thanks Jay. You can read more about ALUS at alus.ca and our corporate solution New Acre Project at newacre.org. And you can follow ALUS via LinkedIn and Twitter for the latest news.

Jay’s interview with Bryan was conducted via video call and has been edited for length and clarity.

Electricity Canada’s Corporate Partner Program connects companies that manufacture, consult or provide a service to all facets of the electricity industry with decision-makers of Electricity Canada members, from every province and territory in Canada. Corporate Partners may currently be established in the Canadian market or looking for a way to introduce their products or services from outside the country to Electricity Canada members.