TheReview_Nov_Dec_2021_FlipBook

We also need to prepare the mindset of our community members and leaders to receive new residents and a new vision for our future. Local leaders must be prepared to encourage community cohesion by welcoming the new community members into our lives and places. This includes promoting shared values and culture, and overcoming a fear of change, to embrace an opportunity of growth and community evolution. Municipalities and their elected and appointed leaders are facing a time of change, upheaval, and opportunity. Preparing for the impacts of climate change, be it severe floods, power disruption, high-capacity irrigation system installations, algae blooms—and the list goes on—cannot be separated from the obligations of standard responsibilities of protecting the safety, health, and wellbeing of a community. We need to guarantee that social, economic, and environmental benefits are equitably distributed, while ensuring that existing injustices are corrected, rather than exacerbated by climate in-migration. “Local institutions have both a heightened burden and opportunity to prepare for climate migration. Communities in the region may poise themselves to gain back population and economic growth while reinforcing larger climate resilience efforts and addressing historic, entrenched issues— like economic segregation—that harm growth. Partnerships with other cities or peer institutions, academic institutions, and philanthropic and for-profit organizations will be key.”

Climate and Demographic Change in the Great Lakes Region: A Narrative Literature Review of Opportunities and Opportunity Barriers, American Society of Adaptation Professionals, March 2021 To learn more about ASAP’s climate migration and opportunities work visit: https://adaptationprofessionals.org/ exploring-climate-migration-in-the-great-lakes. For more on in-migration to the Great Lakes Region and Michigan: https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-environ- ment-watch/water-could-make-great-lakes-climate-refuge- are-we-prepared. Beth Gibbons is the executive director of ASAP. She has a degree in urban planning from University of Michigan and has spent the past decade working on climate adaptation in the Great Lakes region and across North America. She serves on the National Advisory Committee of the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering Climate and Space Program and is a co-author on the 5th National Climate Assessment (due out in 2022). You may contact her at 734.219.3529 or bgibbons@adaptpros.org. Susan Ekoh is a PhD candidate at the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science & Forestry. Her research is focused on climate-induced mobilities within, and from cities. She is an Adaptation Fellow at ASAP. You may contact her at sekoh@adaptpros.org.

“They’re always available to provide advice on most planning or zoning issues and their advice is based on 35 years of experience in numerous communities throughout Michigan.” R. Brent Savidant, planning director, City of Troy 63 Michigan communities have a 22-person planning department. You can, too.

Carlisle | Wortman A S S O C I AT E S, I N C.

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NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2021