The beach at Tybee Island, GA -- one of many Southeast local governments that
must begin to plan for sea-level rise.
Image credit: Dizzy Girl via Flickr Creative Commons

Following the recent Groton Coastal Climate Adaptation Workshop held in Connecticut, adaptation remerged as the focus of discussion several hundred miles south, at the Southeast Adaptation Planning Workshop. About two hundred participants from an alphabet soup of federal, state and local agencies as well as universities, NGOs and private partners gathered to consider the prospect of increasing coordination among the myriad adaptation planning efforts ongoing in the eight-state region served by EPA’s Region 4 Office (NC, SC, GA , FL, AL, MS, TN, KY).

For about a year, EPA Region 4 had been exploring the state of adaptation efforts in its region as well as learning about what federal agencies were up to. Their research led them to ask the question, “Would the region benefit from increased coordination of these efforts?”  The workshop, held in Atlanta on February 2-3, was designed to answer that question.

The EPA focused on two key issues -- water resources and coastal resources -- to guide discussion, and promoted discussion about what would be needed in each of those areas to overcome the identified institutional barriers to cooperation.

The workshop opened with some stage setting materials based on two papers EPA had commissioned on climate change impacts in the southeast and the state of adaptation efforts in the region. Of course, as anyone who follows this subject knows, it’s quite difficult to pinpoint the climate changes that might occur at the local level and even more so to understand the impacts that will manifest.

What each of the speakers, and several members of the audience stressed was that adaptation planning is important for a variety of reasons other than climate change. Population growth, development patterns and other factors were already stressing water resources and infrastructure, for example. Climate changes are only likely to exacerbate these issues.

So with that in mind, the audience members broke out into groups to more deeply dive into a variety of specific topic areas to brainstorm the institutional obstacles to cooperation and coordination, and then to propose solutions. The facilitators had their work cut out for them as they tried to summarize the prolific work of their energized groups. In fact, I’ll defer on trying to reproduce the themes here and instead wait until the workshop’s final report comes out later this spring. Check back for a new blog post later this year.

What I did take away is that the local perspective was a bit underrepresented as state and federal agencies excitedly discussed ways to share data and models and methodologies.  The good news is that everyone emphatically agreed that adaptation ultimately takes place at the local level and that their efforts must be “needs-driven.” They also wanted to learn more about how local governments were already adapting to conditions that might be easily predicted from the historical record.

Here at ICLEI, we would love to hear about your needs and stories. Contact Adaptation Program Manager Melissa Stults at (617) 960-3420, Ext. 303, or melissa.stults@iclei.org to share your thoughts.