46 Resources found
National recognition for Maine Won't Wait.
Maine announced its Climate Action Plan - "Maine Won’t Wait" - in December 2020, following an ambitious, multi-stakeholder process led by the Maine Climate Council. CBI Senior Mediator David Plumb sat down (virtually) with his colleague Peter Woodrow and colleagues at the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future to reflect on lessons learned from the facilitation of the 16-month process.
CBI pilots innovative methods to help residents of one coastal community understand and begin adapting to the complex and emotionally fraught issue of long-term flood risk.
In recent years, coastal communities across New York State have expressed an interest in moving away from sea walls and other hardened barriers toward more “green” infrastructure to help absorb storm surges and protect coastal communities from flood risk. CBI teamed with the Science and Resilience Institute of Jamaica Bay and a range of stakeholders in developing and piloting a draft statewide monitoring framework to assess the potential of nature-based features to help coastal communities in face of rising sea levels. Read Senior Mediator Bennett Brooks’ account of the project and lessons learned about structuring a successful process on such a technical issue.
For more than 20 years, CBI has been working with multilateral development banks and local stakeholders to address concerns about the impacts of development projects. A recent evaluation of local stakeholder engagement in the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) – a global partnership to help developing countries address climate change – has revealed some new insights. Read Managing Director David Fairman’s account of the challenges he has observed in effective stakeholder engagement and key lessons from the CIF’s experience.
As communities across the U.S. and the globe grapple with how to adapt to the looming climate crisis, CBI Senior Mediator Bennett Brooks' recent work with a small community just north of New York City suggests an approach that may hold promise: translating risk into the simplest and most personal terms and creating a safe space for neighbors to begin talking with one another about promising adaptation strategies.
CBI Senior Mediator Carri Hulet shares insights on managed retreat, or relocation due to climate change, while at a recent conference at Columbia University focused on this topic. After CBI launched the Climigration Network in 2015 to encourage conversation among a small number of people who were then exploring managed retreat, Carri was pleased to witness hundreds of people at the conference discussing and innovating around retreat strategies. In this article, Carri reflects on the evolution of the climigration field of practice, recent progress, and how to grapple with the complicated emotions that accompany this challenging issue – for herself as well as millions of residents who are facing tough decisions about whether to stay or go, and how to go if that is the choice.
Many municipalities are developing sustainability plans aimed at building local resilience to climate change impacts. The success of these initiatives is highly dependent on effective community engagement – and many leaders are realizing that they need to invest in networks and facilitate conversations to help build a culture of understanding and action. In this post, CBI Senior Mediator Ona Ferguson outlines questions that municipal leaders can employ to determine the most effective community engagement approach for their region.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, role play simulations serve as a powerful tool to help South Carolina communities address the impacts of climate change.
A small riverfront community in New York confronts the challenges of sea level rise head-on through work with CBI.
A comprehensive, collaborative process built by stakeholders can create solutions to conflicts over natural resource scarcity in California.