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Coastal resilience: more than just a hot topic

By Henry Bell

Washington’s coast is vulnerable to coastal flooding and storm surge, particularly during winter months.

If you had to choose the biggest buzzword for people working in coastal management and climate-related fields over the past ten years, it might very well be ‘resilience.’ In recent years, the Biden-Harris administration has invested more than $50 billion in climate resilience—and nearly half is explicitly targeted toward coastal ecosystems and infrastructure. But what do we really mean when we talk about coastal and climate resilience? And what does it look like to work in this field?

First of all, it’s important to note that resilience is a very popular term across many different fields. A quick Google search will turn up many different definitions and perspectives on what it means. Historically, resilience has been discussed in the context of disaster response and recovery as a community or individual’s ability to prepare for and bounce back from adversity. Interpretations of the word have shifted over time, and we now typically consider resilience to include a community’s capability to evolve, adapt to, and thrive amidst changing conditions. Public health, social and economic well-being, traditional and cultural practices, and the integrity of ecological systems and physical infrastructure are all generally considered important attributes of community resilience.

The use of the word ‘resilience’ also has its shortcomings. Resilience is not a permanent state, and asking people to be resilient who are disproportionately burdened by systemic inequities can potentially be dismissive of lived experiences, and even further perpetuate those inequities. For those who work in resilience-related fields, recognizing that ‘resilience’ means different things to different people is a fundamental first step. Nonetheless, the William D. Ruckelshaus Center provided a helpful perspective on community resilience in 2017, based on over a hundred interviews with community members and resilience practitioners in Washington State: “A resilient community is able to thrive in the present, adapt to challenges, and even transform as necessary to meet future threats or opportunities.”

Recent legislation such as Washington’s Climate Commitment Act and the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act significantly increased the funding available to help communities plan and prepare for coastal hazards and climate change while also creating additional benefits for community members, local economies, and the environment. Importantly, a large portion of these funds are dedicated toward supporting Tribes and underserved communities with their resilience efforts. Many SMEA alumni and faculty are working in the growing fields of coastal and climate resilience, and collaborative, community-centered efforts that advance equity and environmental justice are core elements of their work.

Alumni:

SMEA graduates Mike Chang, Diana Pietri, Charlotte Dohrn, Olivia Zimmerman, and Henry Bell met up at the National Adaptation Forum conference in May 2024. Sascha Petersen and Jimmy Kralj also attended but are not pictured.

Mike Chang (’15) is the Director of Equity at Cascadia Consulting Group. He primarily works on projects in the Pacific Northwest that focus on climate risk analysis, environmental equity and justice, and climate adaptation and resilience planning. He has helped support projects such as the City of Seattle’s Climate Vulnerability Assessment, a multi-jurisdictional climate resilience planning process in the North Olympic Peninsula, a climate change and health assessment with the Tulalip Tribes, and Washington Department of Commerce’s guidance for local jurisdictions to integrate climate change preparedness in their comprehensive plans. Mike also served as the lead author for the Northwest chapter of the 5th National Climate Assessment, a congressionally-mandated report on climate change risks and responses to support informed decision-making. He also served as the co-chair for the Equity & Justice working group of the National Adaptation Forum.

Kate Litle (‘08) is the deputy director of Washington Sea Grant, which has an entire team dedicated toward coastal resilience. As deputy director, Kate has been working with the coastal resilience and fellowship teams to develop a new coastal resilience fellowship program, scheduled to launch in 2025.  The coastal resilience fellowship program will place fellows for two years in Tribal and coastal communities to support coastal resilience planning and implementation. In addition to directly supporting community coastal resilience actions, the new fellowship program will provide critical workforce development to tackle current and emerging challenges facing coastal communities due to climate change. In addition, Bridget Trosin (‘11) leads the Washington Sea Grant fisheries and boating team. Bridget works with fishermen and boaters to create resilient coastal communities by providing safety trainings for fishermen, increasing knowledge and access to local seafood and keeping our waterways clean from marina based pollutants. Bridget also works with the resilience team on the Coastal Storm Modeling System in partnership with USGS and runs the Washington King Tides program.

Sascha Petersen (’07) is the Director of Adaptation International where he leads collaborative community driven resilience work in partnership with Tribes, municipalities, and states across the country. His coastal resilience work has included partnerships with Washington Sea Grant to assess sea level rise risk and impacts in the North Olympic Peninsula and with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe. He has also worked to develop a comprehensive suite of coastal resilience strategy options for towns like Corte Madera in California. He has been active in the resilience field since graduating from SMEA and supports sharing of promising coastal resilience strategies through field building efforts such as the Tribal Resilience Action Database.

Washington’s Coastal Hazards Resilience Network annually convenes over 100 resilience practitioners to share information and discuss actions and strategies for addressing coastal hazards and building community resilience across the state.

Many alumni have landed at the Washington State Department of Ecology. Henry Bell (’20) carries out a variety of resilience partnership initiatives and coordinates an interagency coastal hazards assistance team that provides hands-on support to underserved communities and Tribes to increase their capacity for resilience efforts. Olivia Zimmerman (’22) connects communities and Tribes with federal funding for restoration and resilience efforts while leading many of the team’s equity and justice initiatives. Charlotte Dohrn (’20) leads Ecology’s current effort to develop new state rules outlining sea level rise guidelines for shoreline management. Noah Linck (’23) co-manages the Washington Coastal Hazards Resilience Network and also serves on Ecology’s sea level rise rulemaking team. Recently, these four alumni worked together with over thirty different local, Tribal, and agency partners to secure a $73.6 million federal grant to protect Washington’s coastal communities from climate-related hazards.

Bobbak Talebi (’15) is the director of Ecology’s Southwest Region Office and is responsible for laying the groundwork for most of the abovementioned efforts in his previous role as Ecology’s shorelands and coastal section manager. Jimmy Kralj (’17) spent the past year at Ecology developing the Washington State Climate Resilience Strategy, which was published in September. Jimmy coordinated efforts with partners from ten agencies across state government to identify new actions the state can take to improve the resilience of communities, infrastructure, and natural and working lands against the impacts of climate change. This work involved extensive outreach with Tribes, local governments, and other partners across the state. Meanwhile, Sara Brostrom (’17) is the Coastal Training Program Coordinator for Ecology’s Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, where she develops and oversees trainings for shoreline and wetland management professionals. A recently created course focuses on “soft” alternatives to bulkheads and includes key considerations for sea level rise in shoreline stabilization projects.

Diana Pietri, Ph.D. (’08) is a Senior Social Scientist at ERG. Diana leads projects that focus on the intersection of coastal resilience and equity. She has collaborated with a wide array of organizations—including NOAA, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Vibrant Oceans Initiative, and others—to evaluate the effectiveness of coastal resilience grants, projects, and programs and determine strategies to equitably strengthen community resilience to climate threats. She has also helped many federal, state, and local government partners design effective programs and organizational structures to address coastal resilience holistically. For example, she is currently working with SMEA alums Henry Bell and Olivia Zimmerman to help the Washington State Department of Ecology and its partners identify strategies to center equity and environmental justice in the state’s coastal resilience efforts. Katie Graziano (’11) works closely with Diana Pietra at ERG as a Climate Resilience and Environmental Management Specialist. She leads climate vulnerability assessments, program evaluation, and adaptation planning projects. Before ERG, Katie managed coastal adaptation and resilience projects across U.S., from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands where she implemented nature-based solutions for watershed and coral reef health, to New York City where she led community science-based efforts to build resilience to coastal flooding.

Faculty:

Kivalina Search and Rescue and UW “Polar Science at a Human Scale” team on the sea ice for marine rescue training in June 2023. (Photo credit Chase Puentes, ’22)

Joshua Griffin is leading a long-term collaboration between the Alaska Native community of Kivalina and an interdisciplinary team of UW students and faculty. Polar Science at a Human Scale works with Kivalina’s municipal government and Volunteer Search and Rescue organization to co-produce knowledge about climate impacts to food sovereignty and hunter safety, with an initial focus on sea ice. The project supports coastal resilience through strategic planning and direct capacity building, including a wilderness first aid and marine rescue training for first responders in June 2023. It has received funding from the UW Earthlab, UW Program on Climate Change, and UW Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies.

Terrie Klinger is collaborating with a large group of colleagues from UW and Oregon State University on the NSF-funded Cascadia Coastlines and Peoples Hazards Research Hub that seeks to help coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest prepare and adapt to coastal hazards such as sea level rise and inundation. Klinger’s role in this very large project is to help understand how biological assemblages in the sedimentary ecosystems of Willapa Bay, WA are likely to change as sea levels rise. Using empirical data and modeling, the group will create scenarios for use in adaptation planning and decision-making.

Please reach out! If you are a current student or alum of SMEA, the alumni in this article encourage you to reach out and connect with them. Their email addresses are listed here: