Randall Abate, Assistant Dean for Environmental Law Studies, and Ira Feldman, the founder and chair of the not-for-profit Adaptation Leader, have scheduled a pair of events related to the topic of “receiving communities.” The sequence contemplates a webinar on Tuesday, November 12, 2024 and then a multi-stakeholder convening at GW in early February 2025. Sea-level rise, extreme weather events, and other climate impacts will force communities to be displaced in the coming years. But where will the displaced populations go? This webinar explores governance options and policy frameworks for “receiving communities.” The webinar will introduce the initial draft of the Research & Policy Agenda on Receiving Communities in North America (R&PA). The R&PA is the centerpiece of the Adaptation Leader Receiving Communities initiative and has been under preparation for the last 18 months. The first version of the R&PA will include a section on the state of play for receiving communities in the US and another section detailing an eclectic mix of approaches and frameworks that might be applied to the implementation of receiving communities. Over 30 individuals have come together on a volunteer basis to lay the groundwork for the initial draft through research and topic specific policy briefs. The webinar panel will include Dean Abate and Mr. Feldman, as well as leading scholars who have expressed interest in the topic, including James May, now of Washburn School of Law, Keith Hirokawa of Albany Law School, and Jaclyn Lopez of Stetson University College of Law. The presenters will comment on the initial draft R&PA and will also present relevant material from their latest works. The webinar will conclude with a call for comments on the draft R&PA. The comments elicited on the initial draft of the R&PA will be placed on an online curated workspace dedicated to the initiative. The core team of the initiative will review the incoming comments between November and January to produce a revised draft, which will then become the focus of the multi-stakeholder convening in January. The webinar can be viewed here.
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Ira Feldman attended THE SHIFT conference in Berlin on November 6, 2024. The event was styled by the organizers as the first corporate climate adaptation conference. The keynote speakers included Jem Bendell of “Deep Adaptation” fame and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Climate Institute, an IPCC lead author.