Coastal Resilience in the Great Lakes Region

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The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) held a briefing on the actions being taken to manage increasing temperatures, flooding, and other coastal hazards impacting communities and ecosystems in the Great Lakes region. This briefing showcased nature-based solutions for climate adaptation in rural and urban settings, and showed how cutting-edge technology and traditional practices can be used to create resilient communities.

The panelists described the collaborative process between federal, state, and local stakeholders in collecting, sharing, and acting on scientific data to inform policy decisions around adaptation and help communities define and achieve their resilience goals. These projects can serve as a model for other regions experiencing similar issues.

 

HIGHLIGHTS

 

Beth Gibbons, Executive Director, American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP)

• Climate change poses a significant threat to the Great Lakes, but is also an opportunity for growth in the region.
• The region is at a crossroads—there is a future of opportunity, but a history of injustice.
  • Racist zoning policies, state-sanctioned violence, and subprime mortgage targeting have led to disproportionate climate impacts on minority and low-income communities, such as intensified urban heat island effects.
• The region is experiencing rising temperatures, increased precipitation, and more frequent severe storms.
• Cities and community groups across the region have already taken action to implement resilience projects that couple nature-based solutions with hard infrastructure.
  • The Detroit Climate Action Collaborative works with the Detroit city council to help the city develop climate action policies and strategies.
  • Public-private partnerships in Milwaukee established a project to capture 50 million gallons of stormwater through green infrastructure.
  • After major storms hit between 2017 and 2019, Duluth, MN, invested $25 million into a waterway infrastructure project that combines hard infrastructure with natural systems.
• ASAP’s recommendations to the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis encourage the Committee to focus on six cross-cutting themes: mainstream climate, be proactive, develop lasting authority, elevate social equity, support nature-based solutions, and facilitate local and regional action.
• ASAP specifically recommends the following policy actions:
  • Modernize the Stafford Act, which currently calls for “replacement-in-kind” after disasters, rather than rebuilding better.
  • Renew the National Flood Insurance Program
  • Update Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster funding
  • Accelerate Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) relief
  • Increase and expand Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) funding
  • Maintain soil health priorities in the Farm Bill
  • Pass federally-mandated resilient building codes and standards
  • Establish a Resilience Revolving Loan Fund
  • Support critical climate programs
• Investments in resilience return $11 for every dollar spent.
• ASAP is active in all 50 states, and is available to provide expertise advice.

 

Scudder Mackey, Chief, Office of Coastal Management, Ohio Department of Natural Resources

• The Great Lakes Coastal Assembly works toward resilient and healthy coastal landscapes by facilitating collaboration and communication, serving as a resource, and promoting science and tool development.
• The Coastal Assembly is a bi-national association that represents actors in the public, private, tribal, and academic spheres. The Assembly’s federal partners are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Geological Survey, along with Environment & Climate Change Canada. Other partners include the natural resources departments of six Great Lakes states, the University of Michigan, The Nature Conservancy, and National Audubon.
• Successful Coastal Assembly projects include a Great Lakes Coastal Wetland Symposium, development of a shared vision and goals for wetlands based on landscape conservation design principles, and a method to track restoration progress and successes.
• All Great Lakes states are involved in the Coastal Assembly, and investments are directed toward the best location for restoration, based on scientific data, regardless of state.Wetlands and water systems are interconnected and projects work better when the states work together.
• Approximately 50 percent of Great Lakes wetlands have been lost, but many wetlands that have been lost have the potential to be restored.
• Wetlands improve coastal resilience by providing ecosystem services such as diversity, fish and wildlife habitat, water quality, water retention, reduction of harmful algal blooms, and shore protection.

 

Rob Croll, Policy Analyst/Climate Change Program Coordinator, Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC)

• The GLIFWC assists 11 Ojibwe tribes in managing, restoring, and protecting natural resources in their ceded territory and in securing their treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather.
• GLIFWC’s climate change projects incorporate the traditional ecological knowledge of the Ojibwe tribes it serves. Traditional ecological knowledge typically comes in the form of oral histories of the land and its wildlife and the experiential knowledge of community members.
• GLIFWC’s Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment brought together scientific and traditional ecological knowledge to assess the vulnerability of 60 culturally important beings (animals and plants) to climate change.
  • Wild rice was determined to be most vulnerable to climate change. This finding poses an existential threat to Ojibwe culture, since the presence of wild rice in the Great Lakes region is the reason why the tribes live in the region.
• Culturally important beings are shifting their ranges or disappearing due to climate change, and tribes cannot move to follow them because their tribal homelands, reservations, and treaty-ceded territories are fixed in place.
• The Tribal Climate Adaptation Menu, Dibaginjigaadeg Anishinaabe Ezhitwaad, was designed to ensure that adaptation actions are culturally-appropriate and community-supported.
• Recommendations for working with tribal communities include considering cultural practices and seeking spiritual guidance, learning through careful and respectful observation, and supporting tribal engagement in the environment by maintaining traditional land uses, wildlife monitoring programs, and cultural, environmental education, and youth programs.
• Congress should support tribal adaptation and input by directing funding within the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative to tribes and by increasing funding to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

 

Brody Stapel, President, Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative, Co-owner, Double Dutch Dairy

• Agriculture is a $2.8 trillion industry that has significant untapped potential to contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation.
• The agricultural industry is experiencing challenges, including climate change impacts and land loss from urban expansion.
• Agriculture can contribute to climate change solutions by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in soil.
• Planting cover crops increases resilience because it helps reduce soil erosion, manage nutrients, increase water-holding capacity, protect water quality, sequester carbon, control weeds, and increase yields.
• Dairy Strong Sustainability Alliance works with farmers, researchers, milk processors, and NGOs such as The Nature Conservancy to develop improvements in land use, soil health, nutrient management, water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy use.
• Policymakers should integrate farmers into climate considerations and solutions.

 

 

Question and Answer Session

 

What are your organizations’ relationships like with other groups and government actors in Canada?

• Gibbons: The Canadian side has much to teach groups in the United States, both about understanding how to keep momentum under administrations where the environment is not a high priority and about ways to drive the agenda under administrations where it is a priority.
• Mackey: Provinces in Canada are dealing with the same issues as groups in the United States. The Coastal Assembly is bi-national, maintains close communication with Canada, and works closely with Canadian groups on many projects.
• Croll: The Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission has met with the Canadian government to help them develop plans for working with tribes. The Adaptation Menu can also serve as a resource for Canadian authorities as they work with the First Nations.
• Stapel: Farmers often share information on best practices, and agricultural solutions have to be implemented around the world, not just in the United States.

 

How will the Trump Administration’s change to the Waters of the United States rule affect your work?

• Mackey: The loss of protections will directly impact wetland functions and the Coastal Assembly’s ability to restore and protect them. The rule change is not a positive move for wetland protections.

 

Are you doing anything in terms of methane mitigation on your farm?

• Stapel: We are not currently doing anything, because anaerobic digestion technology is currently too expensive for a small farm. If the technology becomes affordable, we would use it.

 

If you could look ahead to the next three years, what would you want to accomplish? What would success look like for you?

• Gibbons: A more resilient country overall, including a revolving fund for resilience and adequate funding for resilience projects at all levels.
• Mackey: Completing existing wetland restoration projects, a measurable decrease in phosphorus going into the lakes, a decrease in algal bloom size and frequency, and for state and federal governments to fully implement conservation design principles so restoration projects work together.
• Croll: Adaptation planning in Ojibwe communities following the vulnerability assessment.
• Stapel: Healthy soil, fewer pesticides and inputs, development and deployment of new technology to transform farming.

 

The Great Lakes region faces a unique set of challenges, yet solutions developed here can be borrowed, adapted, and used by districts and states around the country to increase ecosystem, community, and sectoral resilience to the impacts of climate change.