Leading on Adaptation Law and Policy Issues
The Georgetown Climate Center's law and policy work has focused on the coastal and public health sectors. To date, that work has primarily considered the legal barriers involved with adaptation to sea-level rise, the increased frequency, scope, and severity of heat events and the spread of hazardous waste by increased flooding. We provide broad legal and policy mapping of issues and options, strategies to adapt to each set of challenges, and technical assistance to select states and localities.
Adaptation to Sea-Level Rise (SLR)
The potential physical and fiscal impacts of sea-level rise are clear. SLR will cause more storm surges, flooding, and erosion. Wetlands will be inundated. Governments will be required to spend substantial amounts of money on emergency response and rebuilding flooded infrastructure. Communities will be devastated and large sections of the tax base that governments rely on to provide services will literally fall into the sea. Insurance companies will refuse to insure threatened properties. more ↓
The Center's approach is designed to help decision makers manage this complexity by identifying specific land-use policy options and analyzing the legal obstacles to implementing those options.
Adaptation and Public Health
The Center's work in the public health sector began by focusing on urban heat events and on the health impacts of flooding in hazardous waste areas.
During the coming decades, heat is expected both to increase on a gradual basis and to manifest in more frequent and serious heat waves. Those heat increases will have serious health consequences for some of society’s most vulnerable, including infants, the elderly, and those with chronic diseases. Health effects can include not only heat stroke and other direct impacts but also worsening of respiratory diseases such as asthma. more ↓
The health impacts of hazardous or other waste dispersal through flooding or sea-level rise are also quite serious and can include infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, and skin infections. For both climate effects and their accompanying health impacts, states and localities will need to prepare and respond with a public health infrastructure that faces serious challenges already.
The Center has mapped policy options for urban heat events associated not only with traditional public health agency roles, such as early warning systems and cooling centers, but also those associated with more long-term adaptation strategies such as changing building codes to require or encourage use of reflective or other “cool” roofs, identifying urban heat islands for best-targeted interventions, and encouraging the planting of trees to further cool buildings in high temperatures.
Our next steps will be to organize the information gleaned during the survey phase into user-friendly charts and maps for policymakers to make decisions and set priorities and to identify the evaluation criteria with which they can make those decisions. This work provides excellent opportunities to consider coordination of mitigation and adaptation efforts.
In 2009, the Center analyzed adaptation options in Milwaukee as a test of our "bottom-up" methodology, and we plan to continue that approach in at least one other jurisdiction in the coming year. We also plan to conduct a detailed analysis of any legal barriers that could prevent particular jurisdictions from implementing their chosen policy options to adapt to public health challenges.
Assisting with State Adaptation Policy
The Georgetown Climate Center provides assistance to states that are working to address specific adaptation barriers. In 2009, the Center evaluated the legal barriers and opportunities for local jurisdictions to adapt to rising sea levels in Virginia and helped provide recommendations for California’s greenhouse gas reduction program. more ↓
Vicki Arroyo, the Center's executive director, served on California's Economic and Allocations Advisory Committee, where she worked to ensure that adaptation is considered as a potential recipient of future cap-and-trade revenues.
