by Peter Senge
By every measure, The Nature Conservancy is one of the world’s most successful environmental organizations. Its brand is known and respected around the world. From a financial standpoint, it is one of the world’s largest environmental NGOs, with annual expenses of close to a billion dollars. It has an established business model – raising money to identify and protect key parcels of land and watersheds that have critical environmental impact – and it has spend several decades learning how to do this effectively. TNC’s members and staff take justifiable pride in its impact.
Yet, when board member Roger Milliken flew by small plane over the mouth of the Mississippi River in the fall of 2010 investigating the BP Deep Water Horizon oil spill, he felt for the first time, “viscerally how upsetting all of this contamination (in the river) was and that TNC had to do more.” He also knew that, beyond the effects of the oil spill, the accumulated agricultural runoff of ‘nutrients’[1] (namely nitrates and phosphorus) from the river into the Gulf over decades had created one of the largest hypoxic (dead) zones in the world – reaching a surface area roughly the size of New Jersey in 2017 [2]. But he also knew just how difficult it was for TNC to do something impactful about this.
One key to TNC’s success has been a decentralized structure that mobilizes people who are locally committed and knowledgeable to protecting the environment, evident in a vibrant network of state chapters through the US and similar local control in programs around the world. The down side is that problems that cross state boundaries are elusive. “I was involved in the Maine chapter for 6 years and then invited onto the national board of directors to serve as Chair from 2009-11.” During this time, “there was a fair amount of discussion regarding the need to work on the level of large systems…” but “we were making no headway.”
To prime the pump, he and his wife Margot planned a gift of $2.5 million in 2012 to be used on whole system projects. “One paradox of TNC is that it’s the world’s richest conservation organization, but it also has no discretionary money because all the money originates with state-based programs and projects.” He added that the organization “has always been balkanized; it has always held a state-based focus and that is the biggest hurdle to overcome — seeing 31 states engulfing the Mississippi as one state.” So, it came as little surprise when they studied the ensuing four proposals for work within the US, one was in the Gulf of Mexico and one was on the Mississippi River, and “there was exactly zero overlap between the two proposals. This highlights the problem we had to face about thinking systemically.”
The story that follows is about a river and an organization – or more precisely, about our ways of organizing. Few of TNC’s members or staff would question the value of reducing toxins moving through the whole of the Mississippi River basin. Few would question the strategic significance – ecologically and economically – of reducing the enormous hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Few would question that if any organization could potentially impact such an immense challenge, TNC could be such an organization. Yet, few imagined it possible. To many, it seemed just too big a challenge.
And, it may well not be possible. It will be decades before any conclusive scientific evidence of success will be available – both because of the long delays in reducing the countless sources of significant nutrient loading along the river and the many other external factors that will also influence it. But “moon shots” are not just about getting to the moon.
The disconnect between our deep systemic ecological and social challenges and our current institutional capabilities is a defining feature of this age. Whether it is climate change, warming and acidification of oceans, destruction of species, or growing gaps between rich and poor, political instability and the consequent massive global migration flows, it is easy to look around the world and feel fatalistic about the future. Sooner or later, we need to feel we have the ability to muster solutions commensurate in scope and scale with our problems.
Since Roger and Margot’s initial investments on system-wide projects, TNC has changed. Some hundred or so professionals from across the country are working together on what today they call the MsB (Mississippi River Basin) initiative. State Chapters are helping one another. An organization that has always prided itself on being science-based is investing in transforming the abilities of people to have deeper and more productive conversations across boundaries. And there is a sense of simply doing something that matters, regardless of knowing precisely how to do it.
[1] ‘Nutrients’ in this context is defined by TNC as “the overuse and runoff of phosphorus and nitrogen applied to farm fields across the Mississippi River Basin to our lakes, rivers, streams and coastal areas – in these freshwater systems, these ‘nutrients’ cause harmful algal blooms and create dead zones. Globally 20% of fertilizer nutrients used on farms to support food production never reach the plant but instead are lost to the environment where they negatively impact drinking water quality and habitat for fish, birds and other wildlife.”
[2] https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/noaa-forecasts-very-large-dead-zone-for-gulf-of-mexico