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The Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies and the Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve will partner with tribal organizations in southcentral Alaska to foster and support community-driven educational and monitoring programs that will safeguard healthy marine resources and abundant freshwater resources against rapid, ongoing climatic changes affecting Alaska Native communities. The goal is to increase environmental literacy and resiliency within southcentral Alaska’s most vulnerable communities through workshops that enhance community-based monitoring programs and engage tribal Environmental Coordinators, local educators, and high school students in culturally responsive hazards education. Through the Southcentral Alaska Collaborative for Resilience through Education and Decision-making (SACRED) project, communities will establish sustainable long-term environmental monitoring programs and educational opportunities that involve youth in reducing risks from marine toxins and ensuring continued access to traditional foods and safe drinking water.

The Academy of Natural Sciences (ANS) of Drexel University is integrating multi-modal environmental education into a participatory research program with the goal of enhancing local resilience to climate change in Philadelphia neighborhoods impacted by environmental racism. Established in the Netherlands in the 1970s, the “Science Shop” is a model for community-based participatory research now found widely throughout the European Union. Science Shops are not “shops” in the traditional sense of the word; they represent the institutionalization—typically within universities—of spaces to help create novel applied knowledge in equal partnership with organizations that lack the capacity, resources, or expertise to carry out such research independently. SS4CR will adopt this model to connect community leaders and residents in Philadelphia with the educational, scientific, technical, and legal resources of NOAA, ANS, Drexel, City of Philadelphia, and other regional, state, and federal experts, as needed, in order build capacity among communities in carrying out impactful climate education, research, and policy advocacy. SS4CR will initiate collaboration with three Philadelphia-based community organizations (CBO) to undertake a deep exploration of local climate and environmental quality issues through co-designed, year-long programming that focuses on the exchange of local and “expert” knowledges and the creation of trusting relationships. Facilitated knowledge sharing activities may include, among others: “serious games,” asset mapping, deliberative forums, and hand-on, kit-based workshops. Over the 2nd and 3rd program year, SS4CR will build on this foundation to frame and articulate a unique research request with each CBO that includes methods, timeline, distribution plan, and expected outcomes, to be undertaken in partnership with community leaders and residents. SS4CR is focused on locally tailored, community driven climate solutions and building community capacity to enact those solutions. Through SS4CR, all parties should increase their knowledge of local climate hazards and their impacts on Philadelphia’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods; improve their ability to reason about and conduct research into the ways that human and natural systems interact; increase their awareness of the effectiveness and potential trade-offs of different resilience interventions for Philadelphia communities; and build capacity in effectively translating knowledge into action.

Climate change disproportionately impacts low-income and otherwise marginalized communities that typically have the fewest resources to adapt. Furthermore, the very communities that feel the effects of climate change most acutely have been historically underrepresented in the fields of sustainability and green building. The Building a Green Texas (BGT) project helps address these concerns by giving high school students opportunities to develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence to tackle challenges posed by climate change. In the process, students gain valuable green career skills and credentials and become part of a green building school-to-job pipeline that will help contribute to a more diverse workforce. Texas-based nonprofit EcoRise, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Texas Marine Science Institute/National Estuarine Reserve System of NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management will lead this robust, three-year project beginning in Central Texas in Year 1 and expanding into Houston and Texas Gulf Coast communities in Year 2. Through school-year field experiences and paid summer internships, students in the program will use established scientific evidence, citizen science, and an understanding of location-specific socioeconomic and ecological factors to explore current and future extreme weather phenomena and other environmental hazards facing their communities. They will gain real-world learning experiences and career exposure by directly engaging with scientists, civic leaders, green building professionals, and NOAA data and staff. As students help design community-based green building projects, they will consider scientific uncertainty, cultural knowledge, and social equity, in the real-world context of improving community resilience.