A Warming Arctic: Shared Futures from Alaska to Florida
May 2016 • Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Arctic ice is melting fast, transforming coastlines and multiplying risks around the world. Since the United States assumed Chairmanship of the eight-nation Arctic Council for the period 2015-2017, the U.S. State Department has highlighted how ice melting in the Arctic affects people, infrastructure and ecosystems worldwide, multiplying risks around the world. The meeting will convene leading researchers, decision-makers, and other interested stakeholders to discuss the state of sea-level rise science, and how public policy and private adaptation efforts can lessen the impacts everywhere.
Sea Level Rise Summit 2013: Resilience in the Face of Change
October 2013 • Ft. Lauderdale, FL
The 2013 Summit events included two days of exceptional speakers and panel sessions, keynotes, two screenings of the film Shored Up and a separate Sea Level Rise Adaptation Workshop. The Summit’s overall goal was to reach new sectors of society including the legal, health care, real estate, architectural, engineering, planning and business communities and to increase their awareness of the myriad of sea level rise adaptation activities currently underway locally, nationally and internationally.
The Summit provided an important venue to disseminate valuable sea level rise and climate change information to participants that included governmental officials, decision makers, planners, management and researchers. This resulted in raising their awareness of how these issues are impacting immediate plans for South Florida’s collective future. Experts discussed how local and regional actions can be implemented and then used as models to be translated to other regions of the US and abroad. The discussions and presentations successfully highlighted the need for sea level rise issues and adaptations to be addressed now, not in the distant future.
Risk and Response: Sea Level Rise Summit - The Future of Florida & the Coast
June 2012 • Boca Raton, FL
The Summit brought together over 300 attendees from public and private agencies and organizations and included seven panel sessions that focused on the complex sea level rise issues in Florida and provided examples from other coastal regions within the U.S. and internationally. The goal of the Summit was to focus on complex sea level rise issues in FL using examples from other coastal regions. Each session came together to form an interdisciplinary mosaic of useful adaptation and resilience plans to address sea level rise impacts on the economy, built environment, and vulnerable communities. Key messages that arose were the importance of education to increase awareness and creating partnerships to induce cost-effective best management practices that minimize risk. Compared to other parts of the world, Florida's projections of sea level rise present a complex challenge for municipalities, agencies and decision makers. Our unique location and geology require significant and innovative adaptations in infrastructure as sea level rises. Agencies, institutions, and government organizations have begun responding to the reality of sea level rise.
