Plight and Possibility: Multi-scalar Adaptation Planning

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• Identify opportunities and challenges in multi-scalar climate adaptation.
• Relate site, community, and regional adaptation strategies to personal community situations.
• Understand the importance of intergovernmental partnerships and identify potential adaptation partners.

MORE SESSION DETAILS

With attention comes opportunity. As communities grapple with climate-change impacts, attention is being increasingly directed toward adaptation as an essential part of long-term sustainability. While local mitigation only modestly blunts climate-change impacts, careful planning and design focused on adaptation can help many avoid personal harm from climate-related events. Adaptation strategies vary from place to place (as do climate-change impacts) but typically focus on moving development away from possible hazards, designing buildings and landscapes that encourage diversity and multiple benefits, and addressing social-justice issues associated with outsized impacts to disadvantaged communities. This panel engages planning and design professionals working directly with communities to address climate risk and build adaptive capacity. It focuses on a range of community-engagement processes (such as elected official institutes, design charrettes, and scenario-building workshops) that contextualize risk and vulnerability and develop strategies that suit the unique challenges and needs associated with local climate adaptation. Moreover, this work highlights the need for strategic partnerships among national, state, local, NGO, and economic sectors to build adaptive capacity. You will learn about opportunities and challenges in multi-scalar climate adaptation; specific site, community, and regional adaptation strategies; and the importance of intergovernmental partnerships in adaption planning.