We live in a dynamic world that is accelerating in many ways. We have more tools, knowledge, and collective ability than ever before. AI is bound to transform the ways we access, distill, and share information and resources. Remote learning and work has changed where and when we connect with each other. As we look to support stewardship practices in this complex space, we often focus on simply trying to keep pace. We feel lucky to maintain the capacity we have, with little time to imagine “what’s next?” and “how might we do our work differently?” so that we might have greater impact. In this session, Shawn Johnson will share some of his emerging thoughts, layer on insights and ideas from the landscape conservation and stewardship community with whom he works, and engage with those gathered. The hope is that we can collectively spend time looking beyond today’s horizon to glimpse and prepare for what tomorrow might bring.
Beyond the First Horizon: Exploring Tomorrow’s Stewardship Opportunities
Guests
Shawn Johnson
Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy at the University of Montana
Managing Director
Shawn Johnson is Managing Director of the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy at the University of Montana and co-director of the Center’s graduate certificate program in Natural Resources Conflict Resolution. Shawn organizes and leads strategic planning and capacity building workshops for a wide variety of organizations focused on natural resource policy and management and has served as a facilitator and mediator on issues ranging from land use planning and forest management to conservation priority setting and regional collaboration. For the past ten years, he has helped advance a joint effort between the Center and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy on regional collaboration and large landscape conservation. The joint effort explores questions of policy, leadership, and governance at regional or landscape scales, where there is often a mismatch between the scale of an existing challenge or opportunity and that of existing organizations and jurisdictions. In May 2011, Shawn helped organize and convene a group of large landscape conservation practitioners that led to a new network of practitioners throughout North America who are working to improve community and conservation outcomes at the large landscape scale — the Practitioners’ Network for Large Landscape Conservation. Shawn is co-author, with Matthew McKinney, of Working Across Boundaries: People, Nature, and Regions (Lincoln Institute, 2009). He also contributed to Large Landscape Conservation, A Strategic Framework for Policy and Action (Lincoln Institute, 2010) and Remarkable Beyond Borders: People and Landscapes in the Crown of the Continent (Sonoran Institute, 2010). Prior to his work at the Center, Shawn earned a Master’s degree in Public Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and spent three years as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Max Baucus.