Mike Powell

I think you will all agree with me that Terrafirma is the single most significant change to the Stewardship landscape since the first Stewardship endowment was created.  It isn’t only the safety net that specialized conservation insurance provides; it’s the incredible wealth of knowledge and support that Terrafirma creates and provides for member land trusts.  In particular, the actuarial data that Terrafirma generates provides incredibly useful information for land trusts who are developing, updating, and refining risk management strategies to hold up to the long rigors of a perpetual timeline.  I have accepted this nomination because I believe that I can help Terrafirma not only continue to provide the incredible floor-raising support they do, but to build on that support and continue to build the land trust community into a firm, robust, just, and equitable sector from the largest land trusts to the smallest.

If elected to the Members Committee, of course, my first and foremost obligation would be to fulfill my fiduciary duties and provide representation and the best counsel I can summon for all Terrafirma members.  However, I believe I can provide particular representation and counsel on two issues that are the next phase of growth for our risk management strategies.  First, I believe that I can offer the perspective of small organizations who grapple with questions of risk management in fundamentally different ways than organizations with larger portfolios and deeper resources.  Many organizations – including Greenbelt, where I have been Executive Director for 7 years – have distinct needs and risk calculations, and Terrafirma can improve its effectiveness by incorporating their perspective into the decision-making process in a more robust way.

Second, while attorneys are well-represented in the knowledge base and decision-making processes of Terrafirma, my background in Alternative Dispute Resolution topics including negotiation, arbitration, and mediation allow me to offer a unique legal perspective into the Stewardship process.  As land trusts, much of our conversation about stewardship and enforcement understandably center on adversarial legal processes – most notably, the decisions of courts.  While the precedent court action creates is vital, it is also limited.  Court action is extremely expensive, enormously time consuming, frequently unpredictable, and potentially catastrophic for the perpetual relationships between land trusts and landowners.  As such, it should be a last resort for resolution of disputes between land trusts and their landowners.  Terrafirma can encourage and train land trusts to rely more on strategic relationship building, robust communication, early and intentional negotiation, and ongoing conflict management strategies.  In doing so, we can avoid costly and difficult litigation by reducing the likelihood of escalation, which benefits all parties.

Thank you for your consideration.