The Ruckelshaus Legacy: Nature’s Way Out of the Vacuum
From the EPA’s founding to global natural capital leadership, the Ruckelshauses show that environmental policy can succeed with innovation, listening, and collaboration.
Environmental history rarely unfolds as a family story. But in the case of Mary Ruckelshaus (NatCap executive director from 2010-2025) and her father, William D. Ruckelshaus, it does. This father-daughter duo, with cumulative careers spanning more than half a century, has played major roles in shaping environmental policy in the U.S. and globally.
William “Bill” Ruckelshaus served as the first chief of the United States Environmental Protection (EPA) from its founding in 1970 through 1973, and then again from 1983 to early 1985. Mary Ruckelshaus has worked in over 70 countries, advancing the integration of nature into national and global policies. As executive director of the Natural Capital Project (now the Natural Capital Alliance), she helped lead the creation of Belize’s first Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan in Belize, and its innovative finance implementation plan.
When it comes to engaging stakeholders and policymakers to incorporate nature in decisions, the Ruckelshauses have each faced their moments of environmental, socio-political, and climatic crisis, leaving a legacy of foresight, pragmatism, and collaboration.
During the 1960s, decades of unchecked industrial and urban development led to deadly smog in cities, and rivers slick with pollution had a habit of catching on fire. It was largely W. Ruckelshaus and the newly minted agency EPA who helped implement sweeping new air and water standards to target “big polluters,” developing a powerful regulatory framework for passing and enforcing landmark legislation (notably the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act 1972).
The “legislative heyday” of the 1970s, combined with grassroots organizing and mobilized citizens, marked a transitional period that expanded the definition of ‘environmentalism’ and created new political opportunities. During his return to the EPA in 1983, Ruckelshaus advocated for a more “constructive” approach, writing in the 1983 EPA journal:
“Protecting human lives and our environment cannot be done in a vacuum, protection must be harmonized with other social goals, with goals involving our economy and the production of adequate energy...The issue today isn’t whether we are going to clean up, but how.”
His attempt to strike this balance of economic and ecological interests was simultaneously championed and vilified by partisans on both sides. Today, the question of “how” has been set in motion, with few people having navigated that evolution as deliberately as Mary. She has helped to pioneer what is now widely known as a natural capital approach, a way of analyzing and then acting upon the interdependent relationship between people, economies, and nature.
In some circles, natural capital and ecosystem services have been viewed with suspicion, seen as conceding to the same economic systems that had driven environmental degradation in the first place. However, Mary describes natural capital information as a process fundamentally concerned with “shining light on alternative futures,” providing evidence that allows the full costs and benefits of nature to be considered alongside conventional economic and social metrics in development decisions. The linchpin remains a simple but powerful idea: just because nature’s contributions have historically fallen outside formal markets does not mean they should be ignored in policy decisions or denied financial support. As she puts it:
“It’s a different way of doing what in the early days would have been called ‘conservation.’ It is still in our best interest to save, protect, and restore nature, but doing so through bridging different communities, including people and actors in governments, civil society, finance, and the private sector.”
I gave Mary a call to understand exactly how she learned to “make this case for nature” and how she helps others do the same. We talked on the phone as she crossed Puget Sound in her home state of Washington - the same place where she once worked alongside her father. The following Q & A is an abbreviated transcript from our conversation.
Collaboration and “Letting People Spill Their Cup”
Q: What lessons - from your family or early collaborations - inform the way you lead natural capital initiatives throughout your career?
A: Before NatCap, I was lead scientist for a collaborative group called the Puget Sound Partnership. It represented such a big area, you know 16 county governments, 100 mayors, 21 Native American treaty tribes, federal government agencies like the EPA, NOAA, all the state natural resource agencies, civil society, a ton of NGOs. Hundreds of people were a part of this collaborative process with 16 big watersheds. I was working on the project together with my father, with the goal to develop watershed and nearshore marine recovery plans encompassing the needs of both ecosystems and people.
I remember so clearly watching my dad, alongside another environmental lawyer and a tribal leader named Billy Frank, set the agenda for these engagements. We’d meet once a month, with 300 people, and we’d have a pretty tight agenda. People were driving all up and down the west coast of Washington, sometimes taking ferries like I did today, so, you’re kind of watching your clock, and getting nervous like, okay, we’re starting at 9, but then people gotta go catch their ferry at 5, or they have to hit the freeway or whatever, because they’re farmers, or parents, and everyone’s working.
Then, various tribal elders from Puget Sound’s 21 treaty tribes would help start these meetings. The Pacific Northwest tribes have a different way of beginning a meeting—telling stories that meander through their history, and eventually come full circle to the purpose of the session. These introductions would just blow up our naively constructed agenda from the very beginning. Two hours in and we’re still not past the first step. Everyone is still introducing themselves. All of the non-tribal, you know, uptight Westerner-type people, we’d all be thinking, oh my god, now what? We have to completely redo the agenda, because we’d overly focused on how far, “behind we were.” But I know from talking to my dad about this, that this was one of his main lessons: you have to “begin by letting people spill their cup.” Let people say their piece. It’s the first step towards building trust.
Often, a lot of tension is then let out of the groups, everybody is much more willing to work together, because they feel respected. For the tribes it was simple: first, we need you to hear our story. And it really was their communities that became so critical in all the problem solving that we then were able to do, strategizing to come up with solutions that were designed with their extensive knowledge; actions would work for them. It’s a great lesson I’ve brought with me to NatCap.
Alternate Futures
Q: How do you balance the need for acceleration with a collaborative approach that can move slowly?
A: At NatCap we as an organization acknowledge up front that we are not the deciders. Our role is to bring information, to shine light, as we often say, on alternative futures. It is the people in the countries with whom we’re collaborating who pick the future they want, who know what the big sticking points are, they have to be the decision makers. A lot of places have been stung by being treated badly, by organizations kind of swooping in, thinking they have the answers, and then leaving. Often there’s no lasting benefit to the people in the country, so we have to show them that we mean it when we say all this.
When it comes to collaboration, I've just seen how ineffective one-sector-at-a-time, or one-stakeholder-group at a time kind of approaches can be. Maybe you get a project done, with a subset of stakeholders creating proposals with their priorities in it, and they did it pretty expeditiously. But then they come to a meeting, and they have to “sell it” and it often goes nowhere. There is just a big difference between speed and effective pacing.
Finding the Opening Sentence
Q: When you’re working with policymakers or finance ministers or the private sector to describe how nature matters for their work and agendas, how do you know where to start?
A: To me, a [key part] of what we’re trying to do especially when we’re working with new audiences like finance ministers, or businesses is to stop for a moment and ask yourself: what’s our opening sentence with this person? Because after that, it’s all the same message. It’s that people and nature’s futures are intertwined. We can’t live without each other. But what’s the pitch? That’s where you grab somebody or you lose them. Often, your new collaborator gives you that opener. In one of our early projects in Belize, the finance minister told us,
“I don’t know what nature-positive investments mean. I need people-positive investments. That’s my job.”
The way he said it was very powerful, and I’ll never forget that. It was like, oh yeah, of course, that’s just a different way to make the case for nature.
You don’t have to start with “Nature matters.” You don’t have to walk in and say: “We care about biodiversity. We care about coral reefs.” You actually can say instead: “We care about livelihoods, and reducing risks from coastal storms. And a way to do it could be by protecting coral reefs or mangroves…” (which we do!) and then by sentence three, you’re right into nature.
For example, finance ministers have recently shaped the message to their constituents in part as: Belize’s economy has been suffering because of COVID and because of its dependence on tourism. The reason tourists come is because of the beautiful natural resources that Belize has, and when these are lost the tourist economy suffers.
It is still that same core narrative, people and nature. Most people’s hearts are attached to natural world, but when it comes to practical decision-making: “I’m trying to run the government, I’m trying to balance the books for the country,” then you have to… take it a little bit more into your head, from your heart, and begin to give it credence, and specific quantifiable benefits.
That’s where it gets interesting and where natural capital comes in. For example, in Belize – I keep using this example because it was one of our earliest ones – everybody talked about nature so eloquently, but at that point communities didn’t necessarily have ways to articulate or demonstrate with evidence how the reliance on their natural systems might affect their job, or their economy. In many ways our job is to begin articulating a narrative that helps connect the dots.
Natural Capital Information in Action
Q: Earlier you mentioned the idea of alternate futures - can you share a concrete example where natural capital information directly informed a decision by illustrating different costs and benefits?
A: In Belize, about 15 years ago now, we had a community workshop with the government, civil society, and people from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) plus regional development finance institutions to share the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan we co-created, with the bottom line outcomes based on values in terms of both Belizean dollars and biophysical metrics they defined as things they care about.
It was one of the first cases where we showed that you could quantify nature’s benefits to people in different terms: pounds of lobster landed, or Belizean dollars at the market, avoided damage costs from hurricanes, or how many meters of beach erosion was avoided. These basic relevant results for people.
The IDB got really excited about this work, saw its general usefulness, and asked us to replicate the approach in the Bahamas. But the Bahamas had a very different cultural and governmental context. They were wary of central government, tired of overseas investment that was fickle coming and going, and facing more frequent severe hurricanes (Category 4 and 5). They were a lot more worried about their livelihoods and how to become economically self-sufficient, and they had so much natural resources to build on. Some of the traditional sectors (such as public works) were hesitant about our nature-based work, until a hurricane hit during our collaboration, and damages were highest exactly where our coastal vulnerability models predicted.
We’d done the same basic modeling we’d done in Belize: quantifying spatial values from coral reef, mangroves, and seagrasses. And completed a coastal vulnerability model across the island where we pinpointed the hot spots of vulnerability.
By chance, right after we finished our models for the island, these huge storms came in, and the damages were, by far, the worst in those areas that our models had predicted. In this case, it was this horrible disaster that became a galvanizing moment for the Bahamians. They just said, okay. This is real. We see the potential for even the most (simple) ranking models, where suddenly we are able to see where benefits from nature were providing the greatest value to people and property.
Then, they started working on legislation right then and there that incorporated this information into spatial development planning on Andros Island that used this new information related to coastal protection, lobster fishery, and tourism benefits. It was a moment in time that no one wanted or wished for, but it brought home how valuable those natural habitats are to their safety, and their lives and through the economy, and they saw potential in what could happen with reduced damage costs.
Our models helped the government target investment. They could see on the maps where efforts and financing could be most effectively put towards maintaining healthy reefs and seagrasses and mangrove habitats, spurred by being able to see where the damages (and subsequently the costs) to coastal infrastructure as a result of real (not just modeled) storms were way lower in those hotspot locations.
The Bahamas experience made clear that when natural capital is quantified and visualized, it can guide not just emergency responses but also inform proactive decisions - showing where investments in nature can reduce risk and protect livelihoods.
Resilience, Risk, and Return
Q: From the investor side - banks and others - how is natural capital information useful for proactive planning and investment decisions?
A: Both banks and governments realize the need to be much more proactive in their investments and policies. Banks are doing what they call ‘upstream’ natural capital evaluations and assessments in their lending. What this means is that they are starting to do these assessments themselves, and then they also support governments to conduct assessments to inform their upstream planning. Together they are evaluating: how can I reduce my risk? How can I maximize my benefits? How might this change if a country maintains intact habitats, or landscapes, or diversifies land use types…..you know, coastal habitats, forestry, ranching. So yeah, I think that’s one clear use: banks have become much more able to conduct preventative, proactive assessments for climate resilience and development, and that this theme of resilience is informing bank lending.
Resilience is now a guiding theme for investment. Private sector investors want due diligence and proof that their investments are low-risk, high-return. Development banks are increasingly supporting these blended finance partnerships. Businesses want to know if they’re going to invest in a new development plant somewhere, or in developing infrastructure, that the country has done due diligence, and that they can prove this investment in new infrastructure projects will be durable.
Integration across sectors is also key. In the past, a development bank might provide a government with a tourism-related loan, which was separate from an infrastructure or transport loan, separate from a fishery loan (they were siloed). But now they're much more thinking about the potential for integrated cross-sectoral loans. The IDB and the Asian Development Bank’s natural capital divisions are highly focused on the integration piece, and nature becomes one of those cross-cutting themes for resilience and planning.
In many cases, jobs and the cost of living are the primary concerns for people. Long-term, much of this can be improved if we prioritize better care and stewardship of the environment. That connectivity is a compelling argument.
Demand for these solutions is exploding, and we cannot (and should not) meet it alone. Empowering an expansive, positive vision of transformation for planetary stewardship and development reveals the incredible potential that emerges when we start to listen.