Climate Resilience Program Fall 2024 Update
The Climate Resilience program has experienced a year of dynamic growth and impactful collaboration, driving forward efforts to foster adaptive and climate resilient communities through intercultural partnerships and actionable research. Below, we highlight key milestones from 2024.
Rising Voices 12th Annual Workshop
In July, Rising Voices released the 12th annual Rising Voices workshop report, Co-creating Research, Policy, Practice, and Action: The Rising Voices of Indigenous Peoples and Partners in Earth Systems Science,. The report emerged from the workshop held in May at NSF NCAR in Boulder, CO.
Building from the Rising Voices’ Declaration on Relationships and the Wise Use and Applications of Technologies for Climate Actions for Everyone, the workshop framing included: How can we work to better advance science, remove the boundaries between science and society, and create innovative partnerships among collaborators with diverse disciplinary and cultural backgrounds to support adaptive and resilient communities, and to achieve culturally relevant and scientifically robust climate and weather actions?
The workshop brought participants together to work on proposed pathways and guidelines for intercultural collaborations for co-created, place-based Earth systems science research, policy, practice, and action. As Rising Voices is working to pivot into a more place-based, actionable science initiative for intercultural climate collaborations, the goal of this convening was to build from long-standing engagement to collaboratively work together to move from a decade+ of Rising Voices’ recommendations into action and commitment.
Core Principles for Climate Adaptation and Justice
In September, several partners of The Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences’ community relocation & site expansion working group released a collaborative document, established over years in partnership, focused on Core Principles for Agency Engagement to Support Community Rights for Climate Adaptation. The purpose is to work with partners to move these recommendations into action and commitment to support community-led adaptation and climate actions. The document focuses on recommendations for grants and funding to Indigenous and overburdened communities, for Justice40 and IRA funds, staffing for systems change, in grant administration, within grant cycles, data sovereignty, and community-led resettlement and recognizing the right to remain in place.
The Land to Sea Network: Bridging Communities Across Watersheds
In June 2024, the Land to Sea Network (L2S) held a 5-day working group retreat in coastal Louisiana with partners from LiKEN, The First Peoples’ Conservation Council of Louisiana, The Lowlander Center, Kīpuka Kuleana, The Sierra Fund, and Stanford University to continue deeping our relationships and partnerships; learn more about each other’s work ( success stories, challenges, methods used, how the work is implemented); reflect on the project’s work and goals; and build towards next collaborative efforts to further community-driven actions. To date, L2S has focused on a collaborative knowledge sharing approach with seven community hubs of connected coastal communities to the Pacific Ocean (California, Hawai‘i), the Gulf of Mexico (Louisiana), and the Caribbean Sea (Puerto Rico), all planning for the future impacts of flooding and fire in the context of multiple stressors, including climate change. The process has been focused on building relationships, strengthening collaborations, and sharing a participatory process of co-learning to develop and share climate data indicators (e.g., loss of shoreline, erosion) and metrics that communities use and to enhance the usefulness of climate data for informing community adaptation responses. For more details, please visit https://www.likenknowledge.org/projects/land-to-sea-network
Sharing Knowledge at the National Tribal & Indigenous Climate Conference
In September, partners (including LiKEN) of the Rising Voices, Changing Coasts: The National Indigenous and Earth Sciences Convergence Hub, organized a working group session at the National Tribal & Indigenous Climate Conference in Anchorage, Alaska. The session – Co-created Knowledge and Actions: Moving from the Theory of Convergence Research to Practice – brought participants together for a sharing dialogue around convergence research and science, asking the question: What does weaving together different knowledges and understandings for climate actions look like for you or in your place? A summary is forthcoming, highlighting the key principles and vision that emerged from the session, which we offer as a way to think of what convergence science means, as an expression of radically affirming the deep relationality of life of the planet, of mother earth, of the affirmation that we are all related.
Looking Ahead
Through collaborative projects like Rising Voices, Land to Sea, and the RVCC Hub, the Climate Resilience program is charting new paths for community-centered adaptation and actionable science. By fostering deep intercultural partnerships, we’re building the tools, relationships, and frameworks needed to create thriving, climate resilient communities.
Stay connected for updates as we continue to grow these efforts into the future. Together, we are weaving a tapestry of resilience and action, grounded in shared values and collective imagination.
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