Climate Resilience > Climate Resilience Roundtables
Climate Resilience Roundtables
CEC organized a series of roundtables in 2019-2021 to address issues related to climate resilience and adaptation for Santa Barbara County. Through this roundtable series, CEC and our partners are framing an intersectional, interdisciplinary community vision for climate resilience and adaptation for Santa Barbara County by identifying potential actions and strategies.
How You Can Take Action
Spearhead solutions
Read Community Solutions to Climate Resilience, our report synthesizing the top community priorities, project ideas, and other input over the 15 months of CEC’s Climate Resilience Roundtable work. Consider how you can help put these ideas into action in your community (and email CEC’s Climate Resilience Program Director Em Johnson at ejohnson@cecmail.org to share what you’re thinking and doing).
Get educated and active
See below to learn more about the Big, Bold Ideas from each of CEC’s Climate Resilience Roundtables.
Get involved with local government
Follow and engage in local climate action plans and vulnerability assessments.
Build your personal resilience
Consider your own resilience and well-being during climate-related disasters such as fires, floods, and debris flows that close roads, schools and businesses and disrupt the power grid and food supply chains. What do you need to be better prepared and what can you do to ensure less disruption for you and your family in the future?
Build personal resilience in your networks
Consider the needs of your friends, neighbors, and the entire community. How can you be of assistance to others by volunteering, donating, or showing up in support?
WHAT CEC IS DOING
After 15 months of community listening and generative conversations through the CEC Climate Resilience Roundtable series, we now have a roadmap to achieve climate resilience in Santa Barbara County. This collective vision centers equity and justice, empowers all people, and expands leadership. It is intersectional, interdisciplinary, and builds collective capacity to get the necessary work done to protect us against climate impacts.
CEC held this series because we know we can’t apply simple solutions to a problem as complex as climate change – we need to be able to think across threats and across time frames and build capacity to operationalize a whole community approach. Through this roundtable series, CEC and our partners helped frame a community vision for climate resilience and adaptation for Santa Barbara County by identifying potential actions and strategies.
The roundtables were organized around the identified threats from the Fourth California Climate Change Assessment: sea level rise, heavy precipitation events, temperature increase, increased wildfire, drought, and decreasing snowpack and water supply. Together with community leaders and partners, we examined these threats through the lens of public and mental health, social justice, economic impacts, infrastructure vulnerabilities, and natural systems and working landscapes.
Our latest report – Community Solutions to Climate Resilience: Building an Equitable Future in Santa Barbara County – synthesizes the top 50 ideas we can pursue now (out of 700 big, bold ideas generated at the roundtables). Many others identified during the roundtable are already underway by local government agencies and community based organizations.
Roundtable Recordings & Big, Bold Ideas
CLIMATE RESILIENCE ROUNDTABLE
STEERING COMMITTEE
Steering committee members have included:
Mimi Audelo
City of Carpinteria Emergency Services
Rachel Couch
California Coastal Conservancy
Genevieve Flores-Haro
Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP)
Aeron Arlin Genet
Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District
Jennifer Hernández
Community Environmental Council
Iris Kelly
Community Environmental Council
Sharyn Main
Community Environmental Council
Lucia Marquez
Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE)
Monique Myers
California Sea Grant
Abe Powell
Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade
Christopher Ragland
Healing Justice: Black Lives Matter Santa Barbara
Theresa Romero
Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians
Michelle Sevilla
Office of Assemblymember Steve Bennett
Ashley Watkins
Santa Barbara County Sustainability Division
Garrett Wong
Santa Barbara County Sustainability Division
Sigrid Wright
Community Environmental Council
Lucas Zucker
Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE)
FUNDING SUPPORT
IN-KIND SUPPORT
Dune Coffee Roasters
Joe Mahany
Mercury Press International