Overview

Workshop Opportunity

U.S. cities and metropolitan areas are already experiencing the impacts of global climate change, increased climate variability and increasingly extreme weather events. City practitioners, who are called upon to deal with these impacts, are recognizing that a more robust system is needed for assessing, prioritizing and managing climate risks. Local governments across the country are pioneering a host of public sector responses to building climate resilience. These "promising practices" are informing state and federal agency efforts; the best among them can be widely replicated by local governments across the country.

The Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) invites teams of five senior officials and/or key decision-makers from up to 12 U.S. cities and metropolitan regions to participate in the second national convening of the Climate Leadership Academy (CLA) on Adaptation & Resilience – a unique training and peer-learning opportunity, focused on improving, expanding and accelerating cities' efforts to better assess, prioritize and manage the local risks of climate change.

This workshop is part of ISC's Sustainable Communities Leadership Academy (SCLA), a program that builds the capacity of communities – cities, towns, counties, metropolitan regions and rural areas – to advance, accelerate and scale-up local solutions to the global challenges of climate protection and sustainable development.

Who Should Apply?

Each city-led team should consist of:

1) A team leader, either the sustainability director or another senior city official with leadership responsibility for climate change adaptation and resilience; and

2) Up to four key stakeholders that are—or will need to be—deeply engaged in the local/regional climate adaptation strategy.

We strongly recommend teams be composed of individuals with decision-making authority in programs that are directly related to the climate adaptation challenges faced by your community. These may include managers with responsibilities for public works and infrastructure, water supply, utilities, public health, emergency response, ports, natural resource management or land use planning.

Additionally, as appropriate for the local context, teams may also wish to include a senior representative of a key regional partner, such as a county or regional planning agency, nonprofits, universities, private sectors organizations, foundations or advocacy groups.

The idea is for team leaders to assemble partners across agencies with whom they can both share this unique training and peer-learning opportunity, and continue collaboration for building climate resilience after they return home. Team composition choices should be driven by the nature of the adaptation challenges your community faces.

While this academy is geared towards serving community teams that have some experience in developing local adaptation strategies, it is also open to those communities who have yet to begin formalizing an adaptation strategy but have identified adaptation as a key city focus.

WHY PARTICIPATE?

The CLA will help you and your team advance and improve climate change adaptation and resilience efforts by exposing you to the best available information, expertise and thinking in the field, and by offering opportunities to learn from your peers across the country. Cities that take systematic approaches to adapt to a changed global climate will be best positioned to inform and benefit from federal efforts, and will ultimately be able to better protect their residents and local economies from climate disruption.

ISC will finalize the scope and design of this CLA over the next three months, by consulting with the selected cities. ISC staff will contact participants to learn about the specific challenges they are facing and to determine the types of training and peer-learning opportunities they most need and want. Highlights of this CLA workshop will include:

• Prioritizing risks and setting priorities for action;
• Making the case for climate adaptation and communicating climate risks (e.g. cost-benefit analysis, communications strategies, etc.)
• Developing and implementing climate adaptation plans, strategies and actions;
• Integrating climate mitigation and adaptation strategies and actions;
• Financing climate adaptation;
• Collaborating with key partners at the local/regional, state and federal levels; and
• Monitoring, evaluation, and adjustment of risk management strategies.

By leaving daily responsibilities behind and working with your team for three days, you will have the chance to cement new relationships and return home with shared understandings that can inform your future efforts. Unlike other events where individuals attend in isolation, the CLA creates powerful team learning opportunities, which resonate long after participants return home.

WHERE AND WHEN – AND WHO PAYS?

This CLA workshop will take place in Portland, OR (at a centrally-located space, TDB), beginning on October 3rd (following the conclusion of annual meeting of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network) and ending after noon on October 5th.

Registration is $300.

ISC will cover the flight costs and hotel stay of the five (5) team members for October 3rd and 4th only.

ABOUT ISC AND THE SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES LEADERSHIP ACADEMY

ISC has a 21 year history building the capacity of communities around the world to meet their sustainable development challenges and opportunities. For the past three years ISC's national and regional Sustainable Communities Leadership Academies have been providing high-caliber, affordable training and peer-learning services to cities and regions forging local solutions to global climate disruption and fostering sustainable communities. Previous SCLA workshops have focused on low carbon transportation, building energy efficiency and retrofitting; green job creation; climate adaptation and resilience; and sustainable community/regional development. Here are just a few participant testimonials from these workshops:

"My participation in the Climate Leadership Academy on Adaptation and Resilience created an inflection point for our work in this arena. The experience of bringing together a team from our City to work and learn collaboratively with other cities was remarkable. Our City's engagement and focus on this topic has increased dramatically and continues to build momentum. The experience truly created a call for action in our organization." - Kerrie Romanow, Acting Director, Environmental Services Department, City of San Jose, CA

"I left your event inspired both professionally and personally. I have since brought fresh energy to my utility's climate change preparedness planning process." - Ralph P. Marra, Water Resources Management Administrator, Tucson Water

"It was one of the best experiences I had as a planner. It was spectacular. The sessions just got better and better. It was invaluable in helping us figure out how to work together. We clicked." - Jennifer Rimmer, Director of Economic Development, Nassau County, New York/Connecticut.

In all, ISC has managed more than 80 projects in 24 countries. For more information, please visit www.iscvt.org.

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