In 2021 the ClimateWise team began working with the Maui County Office of Climate Change, Resiliency, and Sustainability (CCRS) to develop a countywide climate change vulnerability assessment. This assessment will build off of a variety of existing documents, including:
County department vulnerability assessments,
County multi-hazard mitigation plan,
Other community plans and vulnerability assessments that are complete or are currently underway.
California is again taking the lead in funding needed climate resilience work. Geos Institute has joined with other climate resilience organizations to offer guidance to the state about how to invest in services to help communities build climate resilience.
After 12 years leading the ClimateWise team at the Geos Institute, Ashland City Councilor Tonya Graham was recently awarded the Four Generations Gen X Award for her work in climate resilience by Leaders in Energy, a global community action network focused on clean energy and sustainability solutions.
Graham’s contributions to community planning frameworks and “ecologically sound and socially equitable” strategies bolstered her selection, according to Leaders in Energy. She serves as council liaison to the Ashland Climate Policy Commission.
We are a team of scientists, facilitators, and process innovators who believe that effective climate change solutions incorporate the needs of ecological systems, diverse community sectors, and disadvantaged populations. Our Whole Community framework uses an integrated and collaborative approach based on the best climate change science to develop solutions that align with the values shared by the community.
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ClimateWise is an intiative of the Geos Institute.
A message from Tonya Graham, Geos Institute Executive Director
Cornel West, author of Race Matters, reminds us to “never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”
Here at the Geos Institute, we talk often about the larger forces at work in the climate crisis and the need to bank hard toward collaboration, courage, and trust – and away from isolation, fear, and violence – as we face increasing disruptions that harm our communities, economies, and ecosystems.
It can be all too easy in this work to imagine that we are starting from a place where people feel safe and experience climate disruptions from a foundation of trust – that is, it can be easy for those of us who are white.
Many of us working on climate change have drawn comparisons between the global COVID-19 crisis and the climate crisis, calling COVID-19 a “dry run” for the climate crisis. If that is the case, and there is good reason to believe it is, this moment is instructive and we must do our part to ensure that it is actually a turning point.
The “Resilience Ecosystem” is made up of the organizations and individuals who are collectively working to create a climate resilient future in the U.S. The inaugural gathering of leaders in climate resilience happened two years ago in Washington DC and was hosted by NOAA, the Climate Resilience Fund, and EcoAdapt.
The purpose of these gatherings is to determine what is needed at the field level to propel the resilience field forward, making it stronger and more capable of delivering the services required by communities and natural resource managers as we respond to the changes already underway because of the climate crisis.
In 2019 the Geos Institute worked with the Office of Sustainability to develop a Vulnerability Assessment and Climate Adaptation Plan for the Louisville Metro Region. This important and exciting work completed in April 2020 with a report available for public comment.
In 2021 the ClimateWise team began working with the Maui County Office of Climate Change, Resiliency, and Sustainability (CCRS) to develop a countywide climate change vulnerability assessment. This assessment will build off of a variety of existing documents, including:
