Climate Change Resilience Series

Guest Speakers:

November 14 - Dr. Susanne Moser. Devastating wildfires and drought, catastrophic flooding and sea level rising, deadly urban heat waves. Is it possible to sustain hope in the face of climate change? Why do we need hope? Is there a “hope deficit”? And how do we sustain our own and foster hope in others? Join renowned research scientist Susanne Moser, Ph.D., Director and Principal Researcher of Susanne Moser Research & Consulting to understand what hope entails and how we can turn that knowledge into practical, actionable use in communication and engagement.
November 28 -  Kristin Baja. Kristin is USDN’s first Climate Resilience Officer, responsible for helping cities identify strategic ways to advance climate resilience planning and implementation and building their capacity to take action.

Summary: There is broad scientific consensus that climate change is occurring and is caused by human actions. However, there is limited implementation of climate adaptation to help create resilient local communities. Local and regional governments have access to a wide range of resources that can help them become more resilient to climate impacts. Even with this information, communities still face significant barriers bridging the gap from planning to action.  In fact, the US Third National Climate Assessment lists implementation as the number one significant gap in the success of adaptation. In order to overcome many of these barriers at the local level, civic engagement is needed to support municipal implementation of climate mitigation and adaptation actions. Engagement is a broad term that is often a precursor toward a specific action or behavior. In order to sufficiently engage the public on climate change, it is important to understand how people relate to this issue. In particular, what prompts individuals to take action or become involved in an issue. If we are looking for community members to collaboratively solve complex issues to achieve climate resilience, then we need to have a thorough understanding why people engage in an issue or specific behaviors. Collective actions at the societal level (civic or political action behaviors) include involvement and support of policies, plans, and funding for implementation of municipal projects that could increase local climate resilience. Community engagement with the issue of climate change typically is lacking at the local level. How individuals feel about climate change, how much they know about the issue, and how they act are all types of engagement that are needed for societal change. Research indicates a range of predictors that affect engagement, including emotions, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, identities, knowledge, worldviews and values, personal efficacy, response efficacy, mental models, meaningfulness, habits, routines, and social and cultural context. This module will provide guidance on how to effectively engage the general pubic in order to build the political will and public support needed for implementation. Learn how to identify and implement an effective communication and engagement strategy through evidence-based tactics, including a stakeholder process that can be used to develop place based responses. The course will also touch on the inequity of impact to populations due to climate change and build understanding of the social justice ramifications associated with climate change vulnerabilities.

Learning Outcomes The expected learning outcomes include:

• Be able to identify communication and engagement best practices
• Learn various evidence-based engagement tactics to create and facilitate a communications strategy for engagement (e.g., use of polling, surveying, microtargeting)
• Learn basic principles for crafting an effective engagement strategy and common barriers
• Become familiar with the role of using imagery, visualization, and meaningful dialogue to increase urgency and motivation to engage in a public planning process
• Learn how to successfully engage vulnerable populations (e.g., income, race, ethnicity, age)

Summary: Climate change disproportionately affects communities of color and communities facing poverty. This module will focus on understanding how the intersections of social injustice and climate change can intensify the effect of climate impacts in communities that have been historically marginalized. This course will train current and future resilience professionals to work in a more inclusive manner with diverse constituencies and to advocate for and implement strategies that yield more equitable outcomes. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about equitable adaptation strategies and tools, as well as on-the ground case studies from a community-based perspective. Participants will learn process oriented methods and outcome oriented strategies for integrating equity considerations into climate resilience initiatives in various settings, as well as developing interpersonal and leadership skills that will allow them to effectively support equitable outcomes in their work.

Summary: Burning fossil fuels and our changing climate have a significant impact on public health. Existing health threats will intensify, and new health threats will emerge. In addition, climate change has the worst effects on individuals already lacking health equity. Public health impacts include increased respiratory and cardiovascular disease, injuries and premature deaths related to extreme weather events, changes in food supply and access, along with water-borne and other infectious diseases. Climate change negatively impacts mental health as well. This can be through psychological trauma cased by personal injury, injury or death of a loved one, damage to or loss of property and pets, and disruption from the loss of livelihood.

This course will focus on how to leverage existing public health infrastructure to build climate resilience and engage and serve front line communities that are most vulnerable. Participants will learn about the various climate impacts that directly and indirectly affect public health, be familiar with the steps necessary to conduct a public health climate impact assessment, and how climate solutions can achieve ambitious health targets through win-win strategies that promote climate justice, health and health equity, resilience, and a sustainable economy.

Summary: Already communities are being impacted by a changing climate: the flooding of communities along the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Coast due to sea-level rise, the long-term droughts in the South and Upper Midwest, the wildfires and subsequent landslides in the West and the hospitalization and associated deaths from extreme temperatures in cities due to extreme temperatures. In responding to such climate-mediated impacts there are three leading criteria in choosing a response strategy: effectiveness of any specific recommendation, ease of implementation and costs. This module focuses on the associated costs analyses that should accompany any on-the-ground response to projected climate impacts. Marginal cost analysis will be covered, as well as dollar-based valuation approaches, including avoided damage costs, replacement costs and substitution costs. The issue of financially discounting the future in light of inaction will be addressed. Finally, funding sources and financing strategies will be introduced.

Learning Outcomes At the conclusion of the course, participants will be able to:

• Show an understanding of scenario analysis in light of uncertainty about the future
• Demonstrate the ability to create a basic dollar-valuation model
• Appreciate the cost of inaction
• Understand the role of marginal cost analysis when considering replacing damage infrastructure
• Be able to research potential funding sources most appropriate for the specific action to be taken

Summary: Human activity has exacerbated the shift in global climate and is resulting in impacts to natural systems and human-built infrastructure, which will influence future economic development and business decision-making. In the Fifth Assessment Report, the IPCC concluded: “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems” (IPCC, 2014a). These impacts include sea level rise, flooding, droughts, heat waves, and other extreme weather events. The concept of resilience associated with the ecological field has appeared in various discourses, and since Holling (1973), has had a substantial impact in the field. The term resilience has resulted in different interpretations by different fields of study. Since Holling (1973), there have been distinctions made between the uses in engineering, psychology, economics, disaster risk management, ecological, and socio-ecological resilience in the climate change discourse. Many municipal decision-makers tend to think of climate change preparedness as engineering resilience. They strive to return to or “bounce back” to what the community looked like and how it functioned prior to a disaster. However, this prior state may have included social injustice, inadequate public infrastructure and housing, other hazard vulnerability, and a weak local economy. Therefore it is important to define and recognize the aspects of resilience that involve “transformative socio-political change”. In addition, resilience needs to incorporate both the spatial and temporal scales to be successful and not result in mal-adaptive solutions. The glossary of the AR5-WGII report defines maladaptation as: “Actions that may lead to increased risk of adverse climate-related outcomes, increased vulnerability to climate change, or diminished welfare, now or in the future”. Unfortunately, there exists a myriad of climate responses that can increase resilience for one group, sector or geographic location while simultaneously increasing vulnerability for a different system, location or group of individuals. This module consists of foundational knowledge in the science of our changing climate, understanding the boundaries of “uncertainty” in future projections being posited by the scientific community, how to translate the “risk” being faced by a community, business, or sector, and finally, the different concepts of climate resilience and how they manifest as solutions.

Learning Outcomes At the conclusion of the course participants will be able to:

• To demonstrate a basic understanding of the scientific consensus supporting anthropogenic-influenced climate change.
• Understand the specific projections being put forth regarding regional impacts.
• Articulate the various definitions of climate resilience and how this manifests in climate adaptation solutions.
• Effectively demonstrate an understanding of the interrelation amongst climate change, energy use, and security issues.

Summary: Local and regional governments are leaders in climate change due to their unique position to make a wide range of decisions that can mitigate and adapt to our changing climate. Because they are on the frontline, many communities have conducted vulnerability assessments and engaged in adaptation planning. This module will enable participants to assess impacts to a business, community, or sector based on specific climate projections for a specific locale. This focuses on identifying what and who are most vulnerable to such impacts, which requires the ability to facilitate a stakeholder process to prioritize these identified vulnerabilities, including with respect to business supply chains, and actionable responses. This module will also provide you with the overview of planning for resiliency and adaptation at different scales. After this module, you should feel comfortable knowing what steps need to be taken to integrate resiliency recommendations and projects into community planning and policy processes.

Learning Outcomes At the conclusion of the course, participants will:

• Understand and know what is required to facilitate a vulnerability assessment in a specific business, community or sector.
• Be familiar with the U.S. Climate Toolkit and how to use it for adaptation planning.
• Understand the relationship between hazard mitigation plans & vulnerability
• Be able to demonstrate the various venues for including climate resilience in the adaptation planning process.

Summary: The United Nations Secretary-General called the 6th IPCC report “an ear-splitting wake-up call to the world. It confirms that climate change is running faster than we are – and we are running out of time” (United Nations Secretary General, 2018). But how do individuals take action beyond reducing their own carbon footprint? How can we advocate for the policies that will help solve this global crisis? While there is growing awareness among world leaders, in the U.S. Congress and by regional and local decision makers that action must be taken, legislators have little incentive to act unless there is focused engagement by constituents and advocacy for effective evidence-based solutions. This course will provide participants with step-by-step skills in utilizing the tools of democracy to take meaningful civic action on climate change. Participants will learn the levers for building political will and the essentials of climate change communication. You will apply your learning by taking action in collaboration with an environmental organization, and further your learning with your peers via Antioch’s online learning platform and optional one-on-one meetings with the instructor. There is an art and science to effective advocacy. We will tackle theory, practice, and research as a means of understanding effective venues, strategies and tactics for advocacy. We will engage in ‘hands on’ opportunities to build skills, knowledge, experience, and demonstrated ability. We will explore the role of the environmental professional as advocate in the formation and implementation of public policy at all scales and domains: international, national, state, and local levels and within private sector organizations and industries. This includes an advanced discussion of the environmental professional as a change agent in social, political, and economic contexts, and the environmental professional’s roles within private and public sectors.

Learning Outcomes At the conclusion of the course, participants will:

• Develop an understanding of the current climate change policy environment, at various scales of policy making (e.g., local, state, national, regional).
• Develop and hone policy advocacy and research skills such as campaign/project research, and effective communication (e.g., legislative analysis, policy brief, advocacy letter).
• Master theory and concepts and develop analytical skills for evaluating the effectiveness of climate change policy advocacy campaigns and the climate movement.
• Gain confidence and effectiveness in advocacy on climate change.