Planning Forward for Stronger Coastal Communities
Tidings | Sep 7, 2022
Our Municipal Climate Action Program launches a new climate strategy workshop called Planning Forward.
In July, Municipal Climate Action Program Manager Gayle Bowness launched a new climate strategy workshop called Planning Forward. The card-based learning activity at the center of the workshop facilitates a discussion that surfaces community values and identities as participants build social, environmental, and economic resilience to climate impacts.
As the activity progresses, participants confront the difficult realities of our changing climate and consider possible futures. This activity helps community members move from knowledge to action — shepherding them beyond climate-awareness to incorporate climate data into local decision making.
Planning Forward, which is one component of a larger community-based climate action effort called Community Resilience Training, supports Maine’s rural coastal communities as they plan and prepare for coastal climate impacts by developing the knowledge, skills, and relationships necessary to create data- and community-informed climate resilience plans. These trainings are developed and implemented by GMRI staff, with facilitation support from partners at the Island Institute and funding support from NOAA.
“Developing Planning Forward has been an exciting collaboration. The result is a flexible workshop that can meet the needs of communities at various stages in the climate planning process. Planning Forward will amplify community member voices in this often-complicated process by providing a safe space for participants to identify community values and desires, and to practice difficult conversations around inevitable community-wide changes climate impacts will bring.”
Gayle Bowness Municipal Climate Action Program Manager
