Building Capacity to Adapt to Climate Change through Local Conservation Efforts: A South Kingstown Land Trust Pilot Project
Posted by
CAKE TeamAbstract
The pilot project developed in 2010-2012 and presented in this report is a contribution towards fostering climate change adaptation at the community level. The report’s emphasis is on the role and perspective of local landtrusts, acknowledging recent guidance on the need to incorporate a climate lens into local conservation planning (such as the Land Trust Alliance’s Climate Change Toolkit). Both the experience of engaging in this process and the resulting analyses, maps and recommendations offer lessons and materials that we believe are relevant for other land trusts and conservation groups as well as for municipal conservation and planning commissions.
As a part of a larger program of climate change adaptation activities the University of Rhode Island Coastal Resources Center (URI-CRC) working with the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), and various stakeholder groups in the state, we undertook an initiative to accomplish three primary goals:
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Initiate a discussion of climate change with local land trusts and their partners;
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Build the capacity of local land trusts to understand the implications of climate change for Rhode Island’s coastal land and water habitats;
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Identify ways to implement adaptation strategies through conservation, management and investment.