RESCAPE CALIFORNIA

Diverse Workforce Training & Climate EquityReScape's Diverse Workforce Development Program (DWDP) creates a future where regenerative landscaping drives sustainable development through equitable workforce training. Our nature-based, whole systems approach empowers individuals, companies, and agencies to transform landscapes into thriving ecosystems. We equip professionals to tackle climate challenges while driving economic success. ReScape creates a demand for our work by educating and working with public agencies and municipalities, businesses and communities who hire our 8 Principles professionals trained in policy-driven landscape standards and practices.ReScape's whole systems foundation requires that landscaping and land use must include communities of concern, those lacking access and unequally affected by a warming planet. Too much planning is based on historical models that are no longer working. We must listen deeply and work with communities, not on behalf of them, engaging in authentic partnership that recognizes the profound wisdom held within traditional ecological practices and ancestral ways of knowing. Our approach honors the fact that many communities have been stewarding land sustainably for generations. The only workable climate change solutions call in a new map that weaves together ancient wisdom with contemporary innovation, and includes racial, environmental and socioeconomic justice as foundational principles for regenerative land stewardship.

Policy AdvocacyReScape advocates for state and regional policies, permits and ordinances that encourage and enable implementation of and compliance in regenerative land use. Landscapes produce 12% of GHG emissions. Opportunities exist to reduce emissions and increase the potential to sequester carbon from the atmosphere by enhancing sinks. At a time when climate change, coupled with biodiversity loss, has created a profound, existential planetary emergency, there is an urgent need for the nature-based solutions provided by restored and climate positive landscapes. Our policy focus creates the framework for adoption of legislation at governmental and civic levels to implement regenerative principles that address earthscaping climate change issues. Our policy work is based on our Rated Landscape Program that uses a Rating System based on ReScapes Eight Principles and Landscaping Guidelines practices. Trained Raters use the Rated Landscape Scorecard, a tool to help project teams evaluate eligible landscapes and plan, track and verify the practices they implement to improve their landscapes. To qualify as ReScape Rated a landscape must earn at least 60 of 200 possible points in 14 required practices. Over 150 landscapes have been rated to date. https://www.rescapeca.org/rated-landscape-gallery