Coastal Flood Resilience Webinars & Podcasts

An ELI Public Webinar More severe storms and rising sea levels pose a threat to U.S. coastal communities, including millions of homes and businesses. Insured damages to coastal property are steadily increasing, insurance premiums are increasing, and private insurance companies have stopped serving some coastal states. Projected sea-level rise will push storms and disaster-related property damage to wider areas, so even more communities will be impacted. These trends pose risks to homeowners’ financial health and security. Low-income homeowners are least able to absorb premium increases and least able to manage sale of their properties and relocation. High-cost insurance, or the risks imposed by no insurance, will gradually reduce coastal property value and lower municipal tax revenues, resulting in community-scale impacts. Lag times between increased risks and premium increases will result in some properties lacking sufficient insurance, posing a risk to banks and other financial institutions. Taken together, the consequences of declining availability and increasing costs constitute a coastal property insurance crisis. Join the Environmental Law Institute and expert panelists to discuss this crisis. What are our national goals for operation of the private coastal property insurance market? What programs and policies might insurance providers and governments adopt to best guide the coastal property insurance market toward desired national goals? Our panelists will discuss these questions and many more. Panelists: Alice Hill, David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment, Council on Foreign Relations Dave Jones, Director, Climate Risk Initiative, Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment (CLEE), UC Berkeley; Senior Fellow, ClimateWorks Foundation Carolyn Kousky, Associate Vice President for Economics and Policy, Environmental Defense Fund Jessica Dandridge, Executive Director, The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans Jeff Peterson, Visiting Scholar, Environmental Law Institute; Facilitator, The Coastal Flood Resilience Project; Author, A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas; Moderator

An ELI Public Webinar More severe storm surges and rising sea levels along the coast of the United States pose a threat to coastal communities, infrastructure, and ecosystems. The Biden Administration has proposed to develop a framework to support communities that express an interest in relocating their homes and businesses to higher, safer ground. Join ELI for a webinar with panelists from academia, nonprofit organizations, and federal agencies speaking to the principles and policies that the federal government may adopt as it develops a national framework for relocation of coastal communities. A “read ahead” background paper will be emailed to all registrants before the event. Tune into the webinar for presentations by leading experts in the field of community relocation followed by a roundtable discussion, with time at the end for audience questions. Panelists: Jeff Peterson, Visiting Scholar, Environmental Law Institute; author of A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas, Moderator Gary Griggs, Distinguished Professor of Earth Sciences, UC Santa Cruz Micah McMillan, Senior Analyst, Natural Resources and Environment Team, U.S. Government Accountability Office Linda Shi, Assistant Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University A.R. Siders, Assistant Professor, University of Delaware

More information about the webinar, including read ahead material and presentations is available here: https://www.eli.org/events/managing-threats-americas-beaches-storms-and-rising-seas An edited transcript of the webinar published in the Environmental Law Reporter is available here: https://www.eli.org/sites/default/files/docs/youtube/elr/53.10355.pdf An ELI Public Webinar More severe storms and rising sea levels resulting from a changing climate pose a threat to ecosystems along the American coast, including beaches, dunes, wetlands, and marshes. These ecosystems provide significant environmental, recreation, and economic benefits. Practices to sustain these ecosystems are available but are not well understood, face legal and financial obstacles, and have not been widely implemented. ELI will host two webinars with the goal of building understanding of measures to improve and sustain coastal ecosystems and removing obstacles to the wider application of needed practices: Sustaining Coastal Wetlands in a Time of Severe Storms and Rising Seas; and Managing Threats to America’s Beaches from Storms and Rising Seas. This webinar will focus on beaches and will provide the audience with information about risks posed to beaches by more severe storms and rising seas and examples of practices and measures being implemented to sustain beaches and dunes in the face of these threats. These practices include nature-based solutions, such as restoring native plants to dunes to improve resiliency, and protecting pathways for landward migration of beaches. Background information about the value of beach ecosystems in environmental, economic and recreational terms will be presented in read ahead material along with information about the protected impacts of more severe storms and rising sea on beaches and dunes. Panelists: Jeff Peterson, Visiting Scholar, Environmental Law Institute, and Co-facilitator, Coastal Flood Resilience Project, Moderator Lauren Blickley, Hawaii Regional Manager, Surfrider Foundation Travis Brandon, Associate Professor of Law, Belmont College of Law Charles Lester, Director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center, Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara Sean Vitousek, Research Oceanographer, Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, USGS

More information about the webinar, including read ahead material and presentations is available here: https://www.eli.org/events/sustaining-coastal-wetlands-time-severe-storms-and-rising-seas An edited transcript of the webinar published in the Environmental Law Reporter is available here: https://www.eli.org/sites/default/files/docs/youtube/elr/53.10259.pdf An ELI Public Webinar More severe storms and rising sea levels resulting from a changing climate pose a threat to ecosystems along the American coast, including beaches, dunes, wetlands, and marshes. These ecosystems provide significant environmental, recreation, and economic benefits. Practices to sustain these ecosystems are available but are not well understood, face legal and financial obstacles, and have not been widely implemented. ELI will host two webinars with the goal of building understanding of measures to sustain coastal ecosystems and removing obstacles to the wider application of needed practices: Sustaining Coastal Wetlands in a Time of Severe Storms and Rising Seas; and Managing Threats to America’s Beaches from Storms and Rising Seas. The webinar is intended to provide the audience with an overview of measures and practices that will sustain coastal wetlands as a changing climate drives more severe storms and rising seas. Presenters will review work to develop tools for improved planning, investments, and regulations that can protect existing wetlands and the upland areas that wetlands will migrate to as sea levels rise. Background information about the climate change risks to coastal wetlands will be summarized briefly by the moderator but more detailed information will be included in read ahead materials rather than presented in detail during the webinar. Panelists: Jeff Peterson, Visiting Scholar, Environmental Law Institute, and Co-facilitator, Coastal Flood Resilience Project, Moderator Nicole Carlozo, Section Chief, Waterfront and Resource Planning, at Maryland Department of Natural Resources Emily Donahoe, Policy Specialist for Resilient Coasts and Floodplains, National Wildlife Federation Mallory Eastland, Project Coordinator, South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative Amanda Santori, Ecologist, U.S. EPA Office of Wetlands Oceans and Watersheds

US federal agencies use cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to make decisions about the types of infrastructure projects to implement. Current federal CBA policies tend to favor gray infrastructure projects over Nature-based Solutions (NbS). In the third session of the Nature-Based Solutions: Current Issues webinar series, hear from experts working with the federal government to think about how these policies might be updated to enable more NbS projects to get implemented. This webinar series is being hosted by the National Ecosystem Services Partnership (NESP) and the Resilience Roadmap Project at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, and we are very pleased to have the Coastal Flood Resilience Project co-hosting this session. SERIES HOME: https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/nature-based-solutions-current-issues ABOUT THE SERIES: Nature-based solutions (NbS) are actions to protect, manage, or restore natural or modified ecosystems that address societal challenges. NbS solutions are varied and multi-purpose, and are important tools to simultaneously benefit both people and nature. Interest in NbS is growing from both the public and private sectors, as is the desire to scale up implementation—so conversations around NbS effectiveness, execution, funding, and policies are more crucial than ever. Explore current NbS issues, discover promising practices, and hear from experts working in this field during a new webinar series: "Nature-Based Solutions: Current Issues." The series is organized by the National Ecosystem Services Partnership (NESP) and the Resilience Roadmap project at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability. JOIN THE NICHOLAS INSTITUTE EMAIL LIST: http://bit.ly/niemail

Our transportation infrastructure must be “future proofed” to meet the challenges of rising sea levels and increased flooding. Bipartisan infrastructure legislation (such as the recently passed #IIJA ) authorizes a once-in-a-generation investment opportunity in new and upgraded transportation facilities—roads, bridges, rail, ports, airports, and public transit. Many new transportation projects will be in coastal areas, home to almost forty percent of Americans. There is growing evidence that more severe storms and rising sea level pose a risk to transportation infrastructure in coastal areas. During this webinar, hear from experts in federal and state government and civil society on the steps that governments are and could be taking to make sure that new transportation investments are resilient to risks posed by coastal storm #flooding and rising sea levels. We’ve prepared a primer with the most up-to-date information on threats to coastal transportation infrastructure, the federal policy framework influencing resiliency of #coastaltransportation infrastructure, and state-level examples of initiatives to incorporate resiliency into decision-making. This will provide helpful context to webinar attendees and anyone else interested in this topic. Some of the questions addressed in the webinar include: * Are there new approaches or tools that can strengthen resilience of transportation investments to coastal storms and rising sea levels? * How can mechanisms such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard be used most effectively to reduce risk to transportation investments in coastal areas? * How can plans for new transportation infrastructure in coastal areas be coordinated with plans to adapt communities and ecosystems to more severe storms and rising seas? * What are the tools, policies, or regulations that have worked or are needed to support #coastalresilience planning in #transportationinfrastructure? Panelists describe how they incorporate #resiliency into #transportation decision-making, including the tools they have developed and their applicability across the United States. Panelists will have a facilitated discussion about challenges and opportunities associated with coastal transportation #infrastructure, including considerations for stakeholder engagement and equity. Taking the High Road: Strengthening Coastal Flood Resilience of Transportation Infrastructure is organized by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University in partnership with Resilience Roadmap and the Coastal Flood Resilience Project. Speakers: Jeffrey Peterson (moderator), co-facilitator of the Coastal Flood Resilience Project Heather Holsinger, Office of the Secretary of Transportation at U.S. Department of Transportation Jeremy Ketchum, California Department of Transportation Kym Meyer, Senior Attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center; Leader of SELC's Government Accountability initiative Event information: https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/events/taking-high-road-strengthening-coastal-flood-resilience-transportation-infrastructure