Infrastructure, residences, and businesses on Tybee Island are vulnerable to sea level rise and have already experienced its adverse effects in the forms of erosion and flooding. These impacts will only become more frequent and intense as the climate continues to change. Although Tybee Island is a national leader in climate adaptation planning and coastal resilience, and their 2016 Sea Level Rise Adaptation Plan sought public input to identify problems and potential solutions, there has not been a study that specifically assesses how Tybee residents perceive the risk of sea level rise or what types of adaptation strategies they prefer. This information is important for adaptation planning because it 1) facilitates the development of politically palatable policy and 2) identifies obstacles to widespread adoption of adaptation strategies. This pilot study used Rogers’ Protection Motivation Theory as a theoretical framework to assess Tybee residents’ perceptions of risks posed by sea level rise, and their receptivity to a variety of sea level rise adaptation strategies in the categories of protect, accommodate, or retreat.

Results showed that residents perceived a very high risk from sea level rise but did not feel confident in their ability to implement adaptation strategies. Despite this lack of confidence, many respondents had already attempted household-level flood-mitigation strategies and indicated their willingness to work together with their community to implement more. Results also indicated a belief that the government was better able to implement adaptation strategies than individuals, suggesting that the political atmosphere would be receptive to climate-related planning policies. This suggests a need for Tybee’s government to engage residents with more information about sea level rise adaptations, building people’s confidence in the effectiveness of the strategies and in the community’s ability to undertake them. Recommendations include tying local adaptation-planning goals to FEMA’s Community Rating System certification process, holding community outreach and awareness events, and following the solar model of cooperatively paying for and installing household-level adaptations.

By the end of the century, sea levels are projected to rise along the coast of the southeastern United States by over a meter. While coastal counties in both North and South Carolina face massive changes by 2100, some locations along the coast already see the effects. One of the most vulnerable areas is Hyde County, North Carolina where the average land is less than a meter above current sea level. With agriculture covering 30 percent of the county, farmers depend on fertile soil to maintain their way of life. This research used a combination of remote sensing and in-depth interviews to identify at-risk soil salinization locations and current adaptation practices and barriers. Infrastructure projects, crop varieties, conservation easements, and stakeholder awareness are all critical components of protecting coastal agricultural lands. As the century progresses, more coastal working lands will need to implement similar adaptation strategies to address rising sea levels. This talk will focus on the lessons from agricultural fields on the trials and tribulations of adapting in a rapidly changing environment.

Resilience policies have the potential to create win-win-wins, offering benefits in areas such as climate and health, while also improving equity. Along with reducing the greenhouse gas pollution that contributes to the need for resilience in the first place, such multisolving policies can benefit other sectors with a single budget and align constituencies that might not otherwise see their common interests. However, barriers including disciplinary boundaries, budgetary silos, and fears of slowing down progress on urgent topics have often prevented our social, economic, and political systems from seizing these opportunities for synergistic wins.

Our recent report, Multisolving at the Intersection of Health and Climate, explores cases like a walk to school program in the UK, where these opportunities were realized in the health, resilience, and climate sectors. Using FLOWER, our Framework for Long-Term, Whole-System, Equity-Based Reflection, we evaluated the policies for each sector of benefits and whether they were targeted toward marginalized populations or those already well off.

Building on the health and climate report, we are now researching case studies in the Carolinas and other areas of the US where resilience, climate, equity, and other benefits were created with a single investment of resources. We are looking at the challenges that were addressed, the inspiration for their multisectoral view, and how project teams overcame obstacles to ensure success. These will be used to produce a series of case studies showing that working toward better resilience can be leveraged to improve our climate and our communities.

Along with sharing lessons from our global health case studies as they relate to the Carolinas, this presentation will share our resilience case study findings, FLOWER, and the themes that emerge from our comparisons. Our goal is to support and encourage collaboration to bring about multiple benefits as more policies to address resilience are brought into our communities.