Helping Communities Adapt to Climate Change
Even if society stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the impacts of past and current emissions would be felt for decades. That’s why the Georgetown Climate Center is working with state and local policymakers to plan for flooding in coastal communities, to address water shortages in already dry regions of the country, and to offset the public health dangers related to climate change.
The Georgetown Climate Center provides states and local governments with best-practice models, legal analysis, policy work, and legislative tracking, and seeks to maximize the federal, state, regional, and local collaborations that are needed to implement new approaches to adaptation.
Learn more about the Center’s work on adaptation.
News and Updates
Washington Lawyer's cover story for May 2013, "The Cost of Doing Nothing," highlights the impact that climate change is already having in the U.S., and the important role that Hurricane Sandy is having on public perceptions about the issue.
Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center, discussed the issue with reporter Sarah Kellogg and underscored the important steps forward that many states are taking to prepare for climate changes.
"We've seen an interest on the state level in adaptation and resilience, even in states that are not that progressive on climate policy,"...
A new study calls on the State of Virginia and coastal localities to launch a comprehensive and coordinated planning effort to avoid catastrophic flooding related to sea-level rise.
The report predicts that flood risk will continue to worsen for at least the next 50 years. For example, more than 40 percent of Virginia's Accomack and Northampton counties could face severe flooding from an estimated sea-level rise of one and a half feet and storm surges of an additional three feet -- numbers the study says represent “a very moderate assumption” for the region.
The report was issued by a group led by he Virginia Institute of Marine Science (...
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently released updated Flood Insurance Rate Maps for parts of New York City that double the number of structures located in flood zones. The maps include the hardest hit parts of Staten Island, Queens, and Brooklyn during Hurricane Sandy.
The maps, released in January 2013, will not formally go into effect for the purposes of the National Flood Insurance Program for about two years, but the mayor’s office is already preparing an executive order to support owners of damaged homes in rebuilding to higher standards. For instance, a home in the expanded flood zone could be...
Georgetown Climate Center staff and state experts from Maryland and Alabama recently discussed important opportunities states can pursue to expedite the adoption of living shorelines and better prepare their communities for climate changes.
Living shorelines are defined as shoreline stabilization techniques that use natural habitat elements like tall grasses to enable communities to become more resilient to coastal flooding and erosion. They provide an alternative to "hard armoring", the common use of concrete and other man-made barricades, which is intended to protect property but can often divert flooding to another coastal area and increase erosion.
During the March 21 webinar, Jessica Grannis, staff attorney for the Georgetown Climate...
The State of Adaptation in the United States surveys activities underway to help communities prepare for climate change and identifies needs, challenges, and potential actions that communities can now pursue.
The report was commissioned by the MacArthur Foundation and was undertaken by EcoAdapt, the Georgetown Climate Center, the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington, and the University of California-Davis.
The report provides examples of societal...
Federal agency sustainability plans released on February 7, 2013, include climate change adaptation plans that outline initiatives to reduce the vulnerability of federal assets, programs, and investments to climate change impacts such as sea-level rise and more frequent and severe extreme weather events. Executive Order No. 13,514, issued by President Obama in 2009, set environmental and energy goals for federal agencies and required them to develop annual sustainability plans outlining how they will meet these goals. Agencies are required to reduce petroleum use in vehicles by 30 percent by 2020, improve water efficiency by 26 percent by 2020, divert or recycle 50 percent of waste by 2015, and meet other targets under the order....
In a new report, Preparing for the Rising Tide, the Boston Harbor Association finds that before 2100, nearly six percent of the city will be flooded twice daily at high tide. The report’s figures are based on an anticipated five feet of sea-level rise by 2100.
The severe flooding is also a problem in the here and now, report authors say. If Sandy’s storm surge had hit Boston five and a half hours earlier at high tide, the city would have experienced a 100-year coastal flood, which also could have left about six percent of the city submerged under water. As the seas continue to rise, so will the flooding problems created by storm surge. A similar 100-year storm surge...
