Building a multicultural coalition that prioritizes land conservation, healthy people, and livable communities.

Anticipating growth and catalyzing equitable investments

The impacts of climate change, rapid growth, and growing inequality across Puget Sound threaten both the natural landscapes and the sustainability and livability of communities. Our vision is simple: by centering equity and catalyzing greater collaboration in the planning of investments in natural infrastructure, we can strengthen and expand existing efforts to protect the vital natural characteristics that ground the region’s livability.

Filling a Vital Gap

Partnership

Building new relationships and collaborative opportunities across a diverse community through networking, convening, and online forums.

Centering Equity

Catalyzing new approaches to conservation investments that meet the needs of historically underserved communities.

Resources

Identifying new research, emerging trends, best practices, and partner spotlights.

Capacity Building

Leveraging existing investments while identifying innovative funding opportunities and initiatives.

Alignment

Pursuing a shared vision for the region’s infrastructure investments grounded in trust-based relationships and equitable access to power and resources.

Connecting across sectors to sustain the region’s natural landscapes

Kristen Ragain

Managing Director | REI Cooperative Action Fund

“Our region’s accelerating speed of growth is negatively impacting the health of people, wildlife, outdoor places, natural resources, and communities. That’s why it is a critical time for the Emerald Alliance to help the community activate around protecting and investing in the region’s natural infrastructure and open spaces. Improving the quality of life in our region and ensuring access to open spaces and nature for all people is critical to our individual and collective health and well-being.”

Sean M. Watts

Principal | SM Watts Consulting, LLC

“The Puget Sound region is both blessed and cursed with a vast array of public, private, nonprofit and philanthropic organizations working to maintain our natural resources in the face of rapid urbanization. The Emerald Alliance is crucial to coordinating this mosaic of organizations to deploy the most innovative and effective strategies to balance growth and livability in the Puget Sound.”

Skip Swenson

Vice President, Policy and Programming | Forterra

“The Emerald Alliance is overdue. It’s past time to pull together and take on our region’s interlocking issues of environment, equity, and shared prosperity. Only by acting in unison can we be successful. Forterra stands ready to do its part, using skills in community-building, policy innovation, and land conservation to secure places — urban, rural and wild — that will be keystones of our shared future.”

Christie True

Director | King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks

“King County’s Land Conservation Initiative lays out a plan for working with public and private partners to identify and protect green spaces across the County so all communities in King County enjoy the innumerable benefits of nature – now and into the future. The Emerald Alliance will not only boost King County’s efforts within our own boundaries, but ensure partners across the Puget Sound Basin cooperate smartly and work at scale. By working together, with the Emerald Alliance as a guide, the Puget Sound Region can be a model for how millions of people can live in harmony with a healthy landscape while maintaining livability in the face of unprecedented growth.”