The EEN Morning Show – Complexity Personified:  Climate Change, Adaptation and a Future of Continuous Improvement

Presenters

Steve Adams, Climate Leadership Initiative – The Resource Innovation Group
Margaret Davidson, NOAA
Jerry Filbin, EPA
Emily Cloyd, National Climate Assessment
Andrew Fahlund, American Rivers

Overview

As observable climate impacts continue to accrue, the notion of stationarity, “the idea that natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability,” is dead. Even so, stationarity remains a fundamental assumption in long-standing environmental and natural resource management practices and the canon of environmental law that governs federal, state and local programs. From the Endangered Species Act to the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, many of our environmental policies and the programs intended to realize their goals posit some prior condition against which we aspire to return.

Many United States government agencies, philanthropic organizations and non-profits have begun efforts aimed at understanding how to adapt to climate change, but senior leadership, program managers and evaluators are only beginning to understand the new dimension of complexity that climate change brings to their work. For instance, how will we understand the impact of climate change on our environmental and natural resource programs and policies? What is the future of measuring, evaluating and continuously improving climate adaptation initiatives? Through informal discussion, EEN Morning Show guests representing policy makers, program managers, program evaluators and climate adaptation practitioners will begin outlining the key relationships between climate change, adaptation goals and how we measure and continuously improve the performance of existing environmental and natural resource programs.

Presentation Materials

2 Comments

  1. Matt
    13 June 11, 12:50pm

    EPA Climate Adaptation Policy statement: http://epa.gov/climatechange/effects/downloads/adaptation-statement.pdf

    EPA Climate Change webpage: http://epa.gov/climatechange/

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