Learning Opportunities for Environmental Sustainability
Park agencies are striving to meet the needs of their local communities while navigating unique and ever-changing environmental circumstances. NRPA has collaborated with park professionals across the country and experts in the field to create learning opportunities to advance the environmental resilience of parks. No matter where you are in your sustainability journey or what your team’s capacity is, there are tools and resources to support you along the way.
If your agency is starting to consider climate readiness and environmental sustainability actions, below are several of the resources developed collaboratively to support your efforts.
Sustainability in Practice Program
During the last two years, NRPA has supported rural and suburban park and recreation agencies at the early stages of their environmental sustainability journey by offering the Sustainability in Practice program: a 16-week peer learning program for agencies to participate in alongside a partner community-based organization.
They learned a lot from each other, and we learned a lot from listening to their experiences. As a result, we created several of the resources outlined below to address often-mentioned needs and support NRPA members in building relationships and systems to successfully implement environmental sustainability practices at parks.
Sustainability Training Centers
These NRPA Training Centers are on-demand, curated collections of learning resources available to our members to advance their knowledge of community-driven and environmentally sustainable actions at parks.
Sustainability Skill Builders
These flexible learning opportunities are designed to fit your busy schedule, be more responsive to your professional development budget and align with your professional development goals around advancing environmental sustainability at parks.
- Where to Begin: Environmental Sustainability Mile Marker (1 hour) – This short training helps you to identify potential “easy wins” for park sustainability that can encourage buy-in from staff and stakeholders. It also offers insight into who in your community might already be implementing these kinds of actions, how to leverage community support, and where to look for funding.
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How To: Sustainable Parks Assessment Tool Mile Marker (1 hour) – This training breaks down and easily explains how to use NRPA’s Environmentally Sustainable Parks (ESP) Assessment Tool to identify what sustainability actions you’re already taking and, with a thorough list of other actions, decide with your team which actions to prioritize next.
Helpful Tools
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Environmentally Sustainable Parks (ESP) Assessment Tool – This tool provides a thorough list of park-based sustainability actions across ten categories. It can be used to identify what sustainability actions you’re already taking and decide with your team which actions to prioritize next. Check out the How To Skill Builder above to learn how to make the most of this tool!
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Park Prioritization Tool – Created with Lynnwood Parks and Recreation, this tool helps agencies make informed decisions about what parks and projects to prioritize and optimize the use of limited resources based on key factors such as accessibility, deferred maintenance, cost, and more.
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Quick Action Environmental Data Assessment Checklist – If you’re looking for where to source your baseline environmental data, this checklist links to several resources to track all kinds of environmental sustainability metrics at your parks.
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Environmental Resilience Library on NRPA Connect – This Resource Library for NRPA members catalogues documents shared by peers across the country that can serve as helpful templates as well as resources created by NRPA.
Contact Us
NRPA is consistently seeking and creating opportunities to prepare and position park professionals as leaders in environmental sustainability in their communities. If you have ideas or questions, please contact us at resilience@nrpa.org.
