Managing Climate Risks in Coastal Communities: Strategies for Engagement, Readiness and Adaptation

Managing Climate Risks in

Coastal Communities

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Managing Climate Risks in

Coastal Communities

Strategies for Engagement, Readiness

and Adaptation

Lawrence Susskind, Danya Rumore,

Carri Hulet and Patrick Field

Anthem Press

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This edition first published in UK and USA 2015

by ANTHEM PRESS

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Copyright © Lawrence Susskind, Danya Rumore,

Carri Hulet and Patrick Field 2015

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Susskind, Lawrence.

Managing climate risks in coastal communities : strategies for engagement, readiness and adaptation / Lawrence Susskind, Danya Rumore, Carri Hulet and Patrick Field.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-78308-486-9 (hbk) – ISBN 1-78308-486-3 (hbk) –

ISBN 978-1-78308-489-0 (pbk) – ISBN 1-78308-489-8 (pbk)

1. Coastal zone management. 2. Climatic changes–Risk management.

3. Coastal engineering. I. Title.

HT391.S867 2015

333.91’7–dc23

2015027938

ISBN-13: 978 1 78308 486 9 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1 78308 486 3 (Hbk)

ISBN-13: 978 1 78308 489 0 (Pbk)

ISBN-10: 1 78308 489 8 (Pbk)

Cover photo by Wells Reserve at Laudholm; cover design by Lisa Young.

This title is also available as an ebook.

CONTENTS

Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

PART I

1. Helping Coastal Communities Prepare for and Respond to Climate Change-Related Risks

2. Assessing the Social Landscape, Understanding the Readiness Challenge

3. Why Public Engagement is Necessary to Enhance Local Readiness for Climate Adaptation

4. NECAP Summary Risk Assessments: Creating Usable Knowledge to Help Communities Manage Climate Change Risks

5. Enhancing Readiness to Adapt through Role-Play Simulations

6. Reflecting on the New England Climate Adaptation Project—Lessons Learned

7. Toward a Theory of Collective Risk Management

Appendices

Appendix 1: Climate Change Projections: Barnstable

Appendix 2: Climate Change Projections: Cranston

Appendix 3: Climate Change Projections: Dover

Appendix 4: Climate Change Projections: Wells

Appendix 5: Workshop Pre-Questionnaire

Appendix 6: Workshop Post-Questionnaire

Appendix 7: Data Appendix: Workshop Survey and Public Poll Tables

Pre-Workshop Survey

Post-Workshop Survey

2013 Public Poll

2014 Public Poll

PART II

Introduction

Stakeholder Assessment: Dover, New Hampshire

Summary Risk Assessment: Barnstable, Massachusetts

Role-Play Simulation: Wells, Maine

Case Study: Cranston, Rhode Island

Public Poll Report: Wells, Maine

About the Authors

New England Climate Adaptation Project Partners

Index

FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1.1 NECAP Project Timeline

Figure 2.1 Poll Results—Consideration of Local Climate Change Impacts

Figure 2.2 Poll Results—Concern about Local Climate Change Impacts

Figure 2.3 Poll Results—How Significant Planning for Climate Change Should Be

Figure 2.4a Poll Results—Responsibility for Preparing for Local Climate Change Impacts (2013)

Figure 2.4b Poll Results—Responsibility for Preparing for Local Climate Change Impacts (2014)

Figure 2.5 Poll Results—Factors Preventing Local Action

Figure 2.6 Poll Results—How Significant Planning for Climate Change Should Be versus Will Be

Figure 2.7 Poll Results—Willingness to Pay Higher Taxes for Local Action

Figure 2.8 Poll Results—Potential Factors That Would Increase Willingness to Pay Higher Taxes for Local Action

Figure 2.9 Poll Results—Importance of Local Stakeholder Involvement in Preparing for Local Climate Change Impacts

Figure 2.10 Enhancing Community Readiness to Collectively Manage Risks

Figure 3.1 Spectrum of Processes for Collaboration and Consensus Building in Public Decisions

Figure 3.2 Tools for Public Engagement to Build Readiness

Figure 3.3 Tools for Joint Decision-Making about Adaptation

Figure 4.1 Sandy Neck

Figure 4.2 Barnstable Sea Level Rise Projections

Figure 4.3 Determinants of Risk (Modified from IPCC 2001)

Figure 4.4 Comparison of Wells and Cranston Sea Level Rise Projections

Figure 4.5 Process Steps

Figure 4.6 Example of Graphical Representation of Climate Matrix—Projections for Barnstable

Figure 4.7 Maps and Resources Collected

Figure 4.8a Cranston 2010 Flood Extent

Figure 4.8b Flooding in Dover

Figure 4.9 Projected Sea Level Rise and Impact of Sea Level Rise on the 100-Year Flood Plain in Cranston

Figure 4.10a Critical Facilities in Dover

Figure 4.10b Sensitive Populations in Dover

Figure 4.11 Adaptation Options

Figure 5.1 Workshop Results—Concern about Local Climate Change Impacts

Figure 5.2 Workshop Results—How Significant Planning for Climate Change Should Be

Figure 5.3 Workshop Results—Responsibility for Preparing for Local Climate Change Impacts

Figure 5.4 Workshop Results—Importance of Local Stakeholder Involvement in Preparing for Local Climate Change Impacts

Figure 5.5a Poll Results—How Significant Planning for Climate Change Should Be versus Will Be

Figure 5.5b Workshop Results—How Significant Planning for Climate Change Should Be versus Will Be

Figure 5.6 Workshop Results—Pre-Survey versus Post-Survey

Figure 5.7 Workshop Results—Confidence in Local Ability to Effectively Prepare for Climate Change Impacts

Figure 5.8 Workshop Results—Support for the Decision-Making Process Modeled

Figure 7.1 Three-Step Approach to Collective Risk Management

Table 2.1 Workshop Survey: What Should Local Response Be?

Table 4.1 General Circulation Models

Table 4.2 Example Climate Matrix—Projections for Barnstable

Table 5.1 Demographics: Public Polling Data versus Workshop Data

Table 7.1 Aggregate Public Poll and Workshop Survey Data

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We extend our thanks to our partners at the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS): Tonna-Marie Surgeon Rogers and Kate Harvey from the Waquoit Bay Reserve; Jennifer West from the Narragansett Bay Reserve; Steve Miller and Chris Keeley from the Great Bay Reserve; and Christine Feurt, Annie Cox and Mike Mahoney from the Wells Reserve. NECAP would not have been possible without the support and guidance of our municipal partners: special thanks to JoAnne Buntich and Elizabeth Jenkins from the Town of Barnstable Growth Management Department; Jason Pezzello and Peter Lapolla from the City of Cranston Planning Department; Steve Bird and Chris Parker from the City of Dover Planning Department; and Jon Carter, Mike Livingston and Jodine Adams from the Town of Wells.

We benefitted immensely from the expert advice of our project consultants, including Paul Kirshen and Cameron Wake at the University of New Hampshire, who produced the downscaled climate change projections used in our Summary Risk Assessments and provided ongoing technical guidance throughout the project. Also, our thanks to Ona Ferguson at the Consensus Building Institute, who advised our Stakeholder Assessment process, and to Michal Russo at Tufts University, who guided the preparation of our Summary Risk Assessments.

It took a large staff of graduate and undergraduate students to complete the research on which this book is based. We want to thank MIT graduate students Casey Stein, Toral Patel, Katie Blizzard, Julie Curti, Lisa Young, Jessie Agatstein, Melissa Higbee, Erica Simmons, Hannah Payne, Katherine Buckingham and Zachary Youngerman for their work as municipal coordinators and research assistants. Rebecca Silverman, Paula Gonzales, Elizabeth Berg, Kaylee Brent, Priyanka Chatterjee, Tiffany Chen, Anthony McHugh, Jordan Mlsna, Madeline O’Grady, Fiona Paine, Tiana Ramos, Emily Shorin and Emily Thai served as Undergraduate Research Assistants supported by MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program.

We are enormously appreciative of the invaluable help of Lisa Young, Katie Blizzard, Julie Curti, Hannah Payne and Emily Shorin in preparing this book. Lisa provided graphic design support, including designing the book cover. Katie was integral in creating Figures, checking data and providing assistance with many of the chapters. Julie, Hannah and Emily provided writing, research and editorial help whenever it was needed. We also send our thanks to Melissa Deas, a Masters of City Planning student at MIT, for preparing the text box on Cal-Adapt in chapter 2.

The work of the NECAP team generated a great deal of data. It was analyzed with the help of Ella Kim, Tijs van Maasakkers and our Analytics Advisor, Ezra Glenn. Takeo Kuwabara, Sossi Aroyan, Julie Herlihy and Dory Dinto provided superb administrative support throughout the preparation of this book.

We are enormously appreciative of the feedback and advice provided by Susan Podziba, whose suggestions guided us in refining and better communicating our ideas. We are also very thankful for the assistance of Jeffrey Cruikshank, who helped polish the final draft.

The research for this book was supported with funding from the University of New Hampshire and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Cooperative Agreement No. NA09NOS4190153 (CFDA No. 11.419) and the National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network Grant No.1140163. Kalle Matso, Dolores Leonard, Justin Stadler and Cindy Tufts at the NERRS Science Collaborative were enormously helpful throughout this research. The opinions and recommendations contained in the book, of course, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of New Hampshire, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the National Science Foundation.

ABBREVIATIONS

PART I

Chapter 1

HELPING COASTAL COMMUNITIES PREPARE FOR AND RESPOND TO CLIMATE CHANGE-RELATED RISKS

Lawrence Susskind and Danya Rumore

Bay Point is a midsized coastal New England town. Two years ago, a major flood destroyed the town’s sewage treatment plant, which was located near the harbor. Estimates suggest that it will cost the town $18 million to rebuild the treatment plant. Since Bay Point does not have this kind of money on hand (and it was self-insuring the plant), the town will have to finance the project through a 30-year bond issue. The resulting revenues will pay for the plant, but the accompanying debt service will increase the town’s annual operating budget for the next three decades.

As the town considered various rebuilding options, some officials and residents argued that the plant should be moved to a different site, farther from the harbor. This would require purchasing a new property, which in turn would add about 10 percent to the total cost of rebuilding. Moving the plant inland, moreover, would require reworking the network of underground feeder pipes. This would involve tearing up streets and seriously disrupting summer tourism—a major industry for the town—which would likely result in economic losses. Given all of the costs associated with moving the plant inland, local public officials decide to rebuild at the old location. Their reasoning: a major flood like this only happens once every 100 years, right?

This scenario reflects the circumstances faced by coastal communities throughout New England, the United States and much of the rest of the world. Like Bay Point, few communities are giving serious consideration to the fact that the climate is changing as they make everyday planning decisions. For a coastal New England town, this means the need to prepare for a future with an increasing number of severe storms, increased chances of flooding, serious coastal erosion and—perhaps most ominous for communities directly on the water—ongoing sea level rise. In the case of Bay Point, this means that the 100-year flooding window that helped determine the outcome of the planning process is, simply, wishful thinking. In fact, there is a very high likelihood that the new sewage treatment plant will be damaged or destroyed, and perhaps even submerged permanently, before the 30-year bond has been paid off. Unfortunately, the infrastructure planning team in a community like Bay Point seldom has the advantage of climate change projections or professional vulnerability analyses to inform its rebuilding efforts. No one is there to tell them the bad news: that the likely costs of rebuilding at the old location could far exceed the costs of moving the plant inland.

Like public officials in Bay Point, decisions-makers in most communities— coastal and otherwise—continue to plan for the past climate rather than the likely future one. They simply don’t understand that the severe storms that used to occur about once every 100 years may soon happen once every 20 to 30 years. Even if public officials in communities think climate change is real—and not all do—they often choose the politically easier path—for example, rebuilding the sewage treatment plant at the old site in order to avoid additional upfront costs. While this may make short-term political sense, it ignores longer-term risks and vulnerabilities and thereby adds to their communities’ liabilities. Of course, some public officials understand climate change risks and are ready to take them seriously, but even in this group, many feel they don’t have the public support they need to make the necessary investments, particularly in light of other, seemingly more pressing problems. If the choice becomes framed as providing a quality education to our children today, or guaranteeing public safety, versus worrying about a hypothetical storm that may be years or decades off, today’s school children and police forces naturally tend to prevail.

In this book, we argue that preparing for climate change should begin immediately. The everyday choices that individuals and communities make—such as whether to build a sewer system large enough to manage storm overflows in Dover, New Hampshire, or to impose low impact development regulations in Cranston, Rhode Island—will have long-term financial and public health consequences. Those consequences will come back to haunt these communities if climate change-related risks are ignored. Failing to prepare for and take account of climate change-related risks today will only make those communities and regions more vulnerable and increase the costs they have to pay in the long run—infrastructure damage, degraded or devastated ecosystems, adverse public health impacts and even the loss of human life.

We also argue that preparing for climate change—which is typically referred to as climate change adaptation—is primarily, although by no means entirely, a local issue. State, federal and international initiatives can support adaptation, but the impacts of climate change risks are largely local, as are the efforts needed to respond to them.

To help clarify what these local efforts will likely entail, we reframe adaptation in terms of local preparedness and collective risk management. Preparing for and managing climate change-related risks will require whole communities to act to increase their resilience, regardless of what the future brings. For this to happen, cities and towns must prepare their citizenry to plan for a range of possible futures. They should not assume that past climatic conditions are an adequate predictor of what the future holds. Local decision-makers and their communities must make the changing climate a key factor in their everyday decisions about infrastructure investment, issuing of development permits, administration of zoning and building codes and judgments about land conservation.

Communities must come to terms with the possibility that sea levels will rise, temperatures will increase and precipitation levels and storm intensity will change. As a consequence of these climatic changes, coastal erosion may be exacerbated and whole ecological systems may be put at risk. When investing tax dollars and making development decisions, therefore, municipalities have to consider making long-term resilience a priority, even though building in such resilience requires additional costs in the near term. All of this needs to happen in a context of finite resources, irreducible uncertainty about what future climate conditions will be and differing perspectives and interests within each community.

Collectively managing climate change-related risks is no easy task. Few, if any, communities are ready to proceed. It was this recognition that spurred the creation of the New England Climate Adaptation Project (NECAP). As explained below and in subsequent chapters, NECAP represented an attempt—a successful one, we believe—to develop and test a new approach for enhancing local readiness to engage in collective risk management. The project proceeded in collaboration with four partner coastal New England communities: Barnstable, Massachusetts; Cranston, Rhode Island; Dover, New Hampshire; and Wells, Maine.

In this chapter, we set the scene by explaining why climate adaptation is increasingly urgent and why, despite the fact we think reducing carbon emissions—or climate mitigation, as it is called—is important, preparing for and managing climate change-related risks is perhaps even more important. We make the argument that adaptation is primarily a local issue. We describe the challenges inherent in collectively managing climate change risks and introduce our theory of what it will take to enhance the readiness of cities and towns to engage in such efforts at the local level. We conclude the chapter by exploring how these insights informed our approach to NECAP, and introducing the remainder of the book.

Climate Change Risks: Why Mitigation Is Critical, but Adaptation Must Be a Priority

Most of the climate change debate over the past several decades has focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to mitigate or stave off climate change. More than 160 countries, including the United States, met in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to hammer out and sign a treaty that spotlighted global warming as a serious worldwide risk. Since then, the nations that signed the 1992 Rio Framework Convention on Climate Change have met every few years. This included a successful effort in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, to set timetables and targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction (Susskind and Ali 2014).

Eighteen years later, however, most countries have still not met their mitigation targets. Indeed, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have had a hard time gaining traction. Recent international meetings in Copenhagen and New York City have become mired in acrimony. Developed nations demand that the developing world take action now, since they are burning fossil fuels at a rapid and increasing rate. The global South demands that the North bear the brunt of emissions reduction, since it was the North’s industrial development over previous decades and centuries that caused the problem in the first place.

The lack of effective climate mitigation is not surprising. Nations have strong incentives to maintain the status quo, as their economic well-being and future development are directly tied to (although not inseparable from) the continued emission of greenhouse gases. Further, climate change mitigation is a common pool resource problem: no single country can realize the direct fruits of its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions unless all countries act together. Related to this, each country has to worry about others free riding, i.e., some countries taking advantage of everyone else’s hard work to combat the problem while continuing to emit greenhouse gases covertly. Many nations use concern about free riding as an excuse for their own inaction. Without serious incentives and some method of enforcement, nations and the individuals within them are unlikely to make serious progress on climate mitigation any time soon (Moomaw and Papa 2012). While this should not be a reason to give up on mitigation all together, it does suggest that we will have to learn to deal with climate change impacts for decades to come.

The conclusion is inescapable: even if all the countries of the world were able to dramatically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, we would still be facing significant climate change (IPCC 2014; Solomon et al. 2009; Wigley 2005). Indeed, it would take decades for the greenhouse gases in the global system to dissipate, even if we entirely stopped our emissions. This means that communities throughout the globe will feel the effects of climate change over the next 30 to 50 years, regardless of whether we reduce the drivers of climate change in the next decade. Some climate change impacts are unavoidable, and we need to act accordingly (Moser and Boykoff 2013; Susskind 2010).

Climate change poses serious risks for all regions of the world, although impacts and risks will vary considerably by region and over time. As our colleague Adil Najam aptly notes, climate adaptation is largely about dealing with too little or too much water in the wrong place at the wrong time. Coastal New England will have to grapple with sea level rise and more severe storms, while much of the southwestern United States will face more frequent wildfires and drought. Some regions may experience few effects over the next decade; other may literally be underwater in the not-too-distant future (USGCRP 2014).

Given that some amount of climate change is unavoidable, efforts to plan and prepare for—or adapt to—climate change risks will be increasingly important. Again, even if global emissions of greenhouse gases were reduced immediately, a failure to begin adapting to climate change would impose significant and unnecessary costs on a great many coastal communities. Increased flooding alone may require many cities and towns to rebuild their sewage treatment plants, water pumping stations, power plants, roads, schools and other public buildings as they are destroyed or seriously damaged by flood waters—in some cases, repeatedly.

In the not too distant future, decision-makers and their constituents are sure to ask, Is there any way we can reduce or avoid these repeated costs? The answer will be, Of course: make sure global mitigation efforts are underway. This is the only way to attack the source of the problem, rather than just the symptoms. In the meantime, increased preparedness and strategies for reducing vulnerability are the only alternatives. This means, among other things, halting development in flood-prone areas, bolstering infrastructure so that it can withstand increasingly intense storms, and protecting ecosystems so they can better respond to climatic changes. In sharp contrast to the common pool resource problem of climate mitigation, moreover, all investments in climate preparedness will yield direct local benefits, regardless of what others do.

There are some hopeful longer-term scenarios. For example: Perhaps as communities and decision-makers at multiple levels of government begin to realize the full and repeated costs of climate change, they are likely to look for ways to reduce the scale of the impacts they face. When that happens, they will be more likely take climate mitigation seriously, and some of the obstacles to change described above may diminish. In the meantime, though, communities need to protect themselves. Yes, climate mitigation is critical; meanwhile, climate change adaptation is a crucial short-term priority.

Reframing Adaptation as Local Climate Preparedness and Collective Risk Management

Not only should climate change adaptation be a priority; it should be a priority for all levels of government. State and federal agencies have important roles to play in supporting and enabling climate change adaptation, including the provision of technical support and funding (Moser and Boykoff 2013). Yet as we’ve seen, cities, towns, counties and metropolitan and regional entities will bear the brunt of coastal and inland flooding, storm surge impacts, drought, heat waves and related effects (Rosenzweig et al. 2010; Wilbanks and Kates 1999). Additionally, past, current and future decisions at the local level—such as choosing to build or rebuild sewage treatment plants on the oceanfront, as in the case of Bay Point—will determine local and regional resilience and vulnerability as the climate changes. Whether they like it or not, local and regional entities will be on the frontline of adaptation efforts (Susskind 2010).

Since climate change impacts will vary by location, there is no single blueprint that all cities, towns, and resource managers can follow (Barnett et al. 2013). Adaptation strategies need to take account of local resources, geography and context-specific risks. Local cultural and political factors, too, will influence which adaptation approaches are most likely to succeed in a given place (Schipper and Burton 2008).

To help localities get traction in responding to climate change risks, we suggest thinking in terms of preparedness and risk management—terms that are much more compelling than the vague concept of adaptation. For example: Rather than preparing a separate, stand-alone Climate Adaptation Plan focused on what might happen in 25 years, cities and towns should focus on doing everything they can to build climate change-related risk management into their everyday decision-making. Climate change-related risk management needs to mainstreamed—in other words, factored into all agency and community decision-making (Moser and Boykoff 2013). If Cranston is going to build a new school now, for example, it should consider whether the chosen site might become increasingly flood prone as the sea level rises or storm intensity increases. Even if the site is currently outside the 100-year flood zone, within ten years it could be in that zone. Additionally, the city may want to consider designing the school to include central air conditioning to account for the projected increase in the number of days of extreme heat.

Preparing for and managing climate change-related risks—such as by designing new schools to account for a changing climate or making bridges and roads less vulnerable to major storms or sea level rise—will require collective action, including the investment of public tax dollars. Since everyone is implicated and municipal governments will be largely responsible for responding to climate change risks, climate adaptation is fundamentally a collective risk management problem (Susskind 2010; Susskind and Rumore 2013). And while collective risk management will be necessary, it won’t be easy.

Why Collectively Managing Climate Change Risks Won’t Be Easy

People continually make decisions about how to manage risks in their personal lives. They decide whether to buy insurance, put aside emergency funds or act in less risky ways—for example, by eating healthier and exercising to avoid potential health problems. While research shows that individuals do not always make purely rational decisions regarding the personal risks they face (Kahneman 2011; Slovic 1987; Sunstein 2002), individual decision-making about personal risk is a relatively straightforward process.

Collective decision-making about shared risks is far more challenging. People in all communities—whether local, regional or international—perceive risks differently and have varying levels of risk tolerance (Sarewitz 2004; Slovic 1987; Slovic 1999). This makes it hard to agree on whether and how to manage risks, particularly those that stem from highly uncertain or unfamiliar events, such as climate change.

Of course, communities of all kinds have been engaging in collective risk management for centuries—for example, as they have tried to prepare for and reduce the impacts of earthquakes and other natural hazards through development, design and resource management decisions. Even for a threat as well understood and familiar as earthquakes, however, collective risk management is difficult. There is still no good method of predicting when earthquakes will occur or how severe they will be. Efforts to require earthquake-resistant construction, which can increase costs dramatically, are often opposed by groups that complain that there has never been an earthquake in their area.

In the context of climate change, opposition to collective risk management efforts is likely to be magnified for a number of reasons. First, modern society has never experienced global climate change. Because of the availability heuristic (Kahneman 2011), we tend to assume the future will be like the past and have a hard time grasping that a future climate might be very different from what we are used to (Marx et al. 2007). Additionally, while municipalities and regions have always had to cope with some uncertainty in their planning—for example, budgetary and political uncertainty (Carmin and Dodman 2013)—the long-term nature of climate change impacts and the irreducible uncertainty associated with climate change forecasts may make the problem seem overwhelmingly complex. Collectively managing climate change risks is further complicated by tensions between efforts to ensure public health and safety on one hand and the rights of private property owners to do what they please with their land and buildings on the other—not to mention the persistent skepticism of certain stakeholders as to whether climate change is a problem worth addressing (Susskind 2010).

To undertake collective climate change risk management, public officials will have to build widespread political support so they can make the kinds of investments and regulatory decisions needed to reduce their community’s vulnerability and enhance its resilience. There are a few things that decision-makers and individuals can do more or less unilaterally to increase local resilience. For example, the local public works department can replace old storm water pipes with larger ones to account for more severe future storms. Homeowners can flood-proof their homes. In most cases, though, implementing collective climate preparedness and risk management strategies will require cooperation and collaboration across diverse institutions, jurisdictions, and land ownerships (Stein and Shaw 2013, 62). This will, in turn, require communities to reach general agreement about what needs to be done. For example, even if one segment of a community is open to the notion of limiting the property rights of residents along the water to minimize flood risks, others almost certainly will argue that local government should keep its hands off private property. Additionally, who gains and who loses is very much on everyone’s mind when major infrastructure investments and policy changes are initiated. Even if sea walls are built, they won’t provide equal protection for everyone. Such tensions will have to be addressed if communities are going to be able to address climate change-related risks effectively and avoid maladaptation—that is, interventions that limit future ability to adapt, decrease adaptive capacity, erode social and ecological resilience or increase greenhouse gas emissions (Moser and Boykoff 2013).

Further complicating things is the fact that climate change is a perfect example of what Rittel and Webber (1973) called a wicked problem—one that has no clear definition, no stopping rule and no clear solution. Addressing it requires ongoing and persistent attention. This means that adaptation success cannot be defined and addressed once and for all; rather, it is a moving target (Moser and Boykoff 2013). Managing climate change risks will require responding to changing conditions as they occur, and adaptation goals and targets almost certainly will have to be renegotiated over time (Susskind 2010). Thus, adapting to climate change will necessitate flexible and adaptive decisions, such as infrastructure and planning decisions that are more malleable (Haasnoot et al. 2013; Susskind 2010; Quay 2010). Decision-makers will have to avoid lock-in and minimize path dependency (Haasnoot et al. 2013). In line with the principles of adaptive management (Bocking 2004; Scarlett 2013; Susskind, Camacho and Schenk 2012), this will require learning by doing. It will require incremental, sequenced and scenario-based planning approaches (Haasnoot et al. 2013; Quay 2010). Rather than looking for optimal solutions, communities will probably want to focus instead on no-regrets moves that produce short-term benefits and increase resilience, regardless of how the future climate evolves (Bulkeley, 2001; Carmin and Dodman, 2013).

For all of these reasons, it is not surprising that with the exception of a few large metropolitan areas such as New York City and San Francisco, very few cities and towns in the United States have begun to tackle—or even seriously talk about— climate preparedness and risk management. Of those that have, most have not yet moved beyond what Moser and Ekstrom (2010) refer to as the understanding phase: the process of recognizing and beginning to raise awareness about the issue.

We argue that to move forward with adaptation and get beyond the understanding phase, communities need to build their capacity to collectively manage climate change risks. A first step in doing so, we maintain, is to enhance the readiness of citizens and local institution to undertake collective risk management.

Enhancing Readiness to Undertake Collective Risk Management

Climate adaptation begins with public officials placing the issue of preparing for climate change-related risks higher on their political agenda. In addition, the public needs to understand these risks, believe that their community can manage them and support collective risk management efforts. As discussed further in the following chapter, this requires readiness—that is, a shared awareness and concern, as well as a collective commitment to take action and to jointly problem solve.

The first step in addressing climate change-related risks is achieving collective recognition that such risks represent a problem worthy of government attention. In reality, most local officials in towns like our NECAP partner communities have not, until recently, given much thought to incorporating climate change-related risks into the day-to-day decisions they have to make. Prior to NECAP, the public officials in our partner towns underestimated how concerned residents in their own communities were about climate change risks. Meanwhile, the residents of these communities—while concerned about local climate change risks—had no sense that they needed to push their elected and appointed officials to take appropriate action. In other words, many people didn’t see responding to climate change risks as a local problem, assuming (for example) that the federal government was doing something about it. When pressed, very few had confidence in the ability of their community to respond effectively. For all these reasons and more, there was no shared sense of urgency (see chapter 2).

As part of generating shared concern about local climate change risks, residents and officials need to achieve a baseline level of literacy about climate change risks and adaptation options. A key piece of this is creating trusted, usable information that will help with day-to-day decision-making. Communities need forecasts of how local temperature, precipitation and sea level are likely to change over the next 20, 40 and 60 years, and what this will mean in terms of local vulnerabilities. They also need ideas about how they can prepare for and manage these risks. Perhaps most important, this information needs to be produced in ways that make it salient, credible and legitimate in the eyes of those who have to use it. To achieve these goals, such information must be produced with input from stakeholders (Cash et al. 2003; Clark et al. 2011; see chapter 4). Without usable information and citizen literacy about climate-related risks, communities will have no way to envision what it will take to manage those risks effectively.

Once community literacy has been achieved, work must still be done to ensure that residents and officials believe that informed agreements can be reached, regardless of their political differences. For many communities, this means learning about collaborative decision-making and stakeholder engagement. To be truly ready to engage in collective risk management, officials and residents also need to see pathways forward—that is, they need a clear sense of the actions they can take to prepare for and respond to climate change risks. These dimensions of readiness, as we argue in the next chapter, are crucial.

The New England Climate Adaptation Project: Enhancing the Readiness of Communities to Prepare for and Manage Climate Change Risks

Recognizing the need to enhance local readiness, we initiated the New England Climate Adaptation Project (NECAP). We have already introduced NECAP, but more detail about the initiative might be useful at this point. NECAP was a participatory action research project aimed at testing the effectiveness of science-based role-play simulations as a tool for educating the public about climate change risks and for building support for adaptation efforts (see Rumore 2014; Susskind and Rumore 2013). It was a two-year effort involving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Science Impact Collaborative, the not-for-profit Consensus Building Institute (CBI), the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS) and four partner coastal New England municipalities: Cranston, Rhode Island; Barnstable, Massachusetts; Dover, New Hampshire; and Wells, Maine (see box 1.1 for an overview of these municipalities).

The project was funded by the NERRS Science Collaborative, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-supported organization that puts NERRS-based science to work for coastal communities. NECAP was launched in August 2012 and ended in December 2014. See the project timeline provided in figure 1.1 below.

Box 1.1 NECAP Partner Municipalities

Barnstable, Massachusetts

The Town of Barnstable, Massachusetts is home to about 45,000 people. It is the largest town, both in size and population, on Cape Cod. It is also the county seat of Barnstable County, which encompasses all of Cape Cod. The median household income in Barnstable is approximately $54,000, and the median age is 49. The town is 89 percent White, 3 percent Black or African American, 3 percent Latino or Hispanic, 1 percent Asian, and 1 percent Native American.

Situated about halfway along the arm of Cape Cod and with 170 miles of coastline, Barnstable is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, including sea level rise and damage associated with intensified and more frequent storms. Further, while Barnstable has a fairly diversified economy, tourism, and maritime industries both play key roles. The future of these industries relies greatly on the protection of Barnstable’s ecology, natural resources, beaches, and coastal infrastructure, all of which are also threatened by climate change.

In Barnstable, our NERRS partner was the Waquoit Bay Reserve, and our municipal partner was the Town of Barnstable Growth Management Department.

Cranston, Rhode Island

With a population of about 80,000, Cranston is the third-largest city in the state of Rhode Island. The city is located