On April 22, 23rd, and 24th, the Town of Nantucket hosts a free 3-day virtual Earth Day event sharing the latest in climate science, resilient design, and cultural resource adaptation.
Holly Backus, Preservation Planner / Local Hazard Mitigation Plan Coordinator encourages Nantucketers to participate in this final 2021 Resilient Nantucket public forum, an international gathering of leaders in cultural and natural resource protection, climate science, tourism, economics, and resilience planning.
Nantucket is a National Historic Landmark community with an increasing vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, sea-level rise, and coastal erosion. This final virtual forum of the 2020 – 2021 Resilient Nantucket series brings together experts from around the world to address the impacts of the global climate crisis on coastal communities and work underway to address this natural disaster in the United States and in Nantucket.
Resilient Nantucket presentations will focus on lessons learned in climate adaptation and discuss how Nantucket can serve as a model for island-wide coastal resilience planning. The forum concludes with a moderated discussion between international and national NGOs and policymakers from the Commonwealth and the Town on the role of public policy in sustaining, adapting, and preserving historic and coastal communities endangered by climate change.
Featured Presenters include:
Katharine Burgess – Vice-President Urban Resilience – Urban Land Institute
Astrid Caldas – Senior Climate Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists
Brenda Ekwurzel – Director of Climate Science, Union of Concerned Scientists
John Englander – Oceanographer & Sea Level Rise Expert/Author (“High Tide on Main Street” & “Moving to Higher Ground”)
Dr. Sandra Fatoric – Marie Sktodowska-Curie Fellow with Delft University of Technology – Architecture and the Built Environment
Tony Flux- Coast and Marine Advisor, National Trust UK (as interviewed by Peter Brace – Nantucket Author & Environmental Journalist
Catherine Leonard – Secretary-General, International National Trusts Organization
Commonwealth Senator Julian Cyr
Commonwealth Representative Dylan Fernandes
Resilient Nantucket is possible by an MVP Action Grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The grant was awarded to the Town of Nantucket because of its potential to serve as a model for other small municipalities with significant cultural assets and strong tourism-based economies. This project addresses several priority implementation actions identified and documented in the Town’s recently completed documents: the MVP Community Resilience Workshop Report (2019) and the Hazard Mitigation Plan (2019.)
Forum Sponsors include the Town of Nantucket, Massachusetts MVP, Nantucket Preservation Trust, ACKlimate, Preservation Institute: Nantucket, Preservation Massachusetts, Nantucket Historical Association, and ReMain Nantucket.
Resilient Nantucket Forum schedule and registration can be found here: link or check out Resilient Nantucket Forum at: https://www.nantucket-ma.gov/2081/Events-Presentations