 Hello, and happy Friday to all. Thank you for joining us today for our briefing, Climate Adaptation Programs Across Agencies. I'm Dan Bresset, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science-based information about environmental energy and climate change topics to policymakers. More recently, we've also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-vill financing programs to their customers. EESI provides informative, objective, non-partisan coverage of climate change topics in briefings, written materials, and on social media. All of our educational resources, including briefing recordings, fact sheets, issue briefs, articles, newsletters, and podcasts are always available for free online at www.eesi.org. The best way to stay informed about our latest resources is to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions, and you can do that online at www.eesi.org forward slash subscribe. Our briefing today is the third in a four-part series about existing federal programs that deliver multiple climate benefits. On February 8th, we examined the Rural Energy Savings Program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We followed that with a look at energy efficiency programs at the U.S. Department of Energy. Next up on March 29th, we'll be a briefing about efforts to build a national framework for large landscape conservation. We agree that we need next-generational climate policies and investments that go bigger and bolder, but it also really helps to take stock of what is already working. We're nearing the end of our briefing series, but you can watch the recordings of the briefings and view the highlight notes online by visiting us at www.eesi.org forward slash briefings. And today is all about climate adaptation programs. Climate change is affecting communities and ecosystems across the country more frequently and with greater severity than ever before. Congress has established and funded over many years a number of federal adaptation programs, including those administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers to help communities understand the science, identify solutions, and implement the necessary adaptations. Climate adaptation and resilience is a major area of emphasis in our work at ESI. Less than a month ago, the latest report released as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's sixth assessment report provided a grave assessment of climate change impacts and the feasibility of different adaptation strategies. Even if we had enacted new policies and investments yesterday, it would put us on a path to limit global warming by 1.5 degrees Celsius. We would still be dealing with climate change for years and decades because of the greenhouse gas emissions already in the atmosphere. So we will need to advance a comprehensive set of climate adaptation and resilience solutions to withstand these effects, especially where those impacts disproportionately affect vulnerable, frontline, and environmental justice communities. And speaking of environmental justice, on April 8th, we will convene a terrific panel to take stock of the Justice 40 Initiative. So that is something you won't want to miss, so I encourage everyone to RSVP today. Over the course of 2019 and 2020, we organized a 16-part congressional briefing series about coastal resilience issues that featured success stories and innovative approaches from U.S. coastal communities from Hawaii to Maine and from Alaska to Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. From those briefings, we organized the various findings presented by more than 40 panelists into a major report released last in November 2020 that featured 30 specific policy recommendations for Congress to consider. This report, A Resilient Future for Coastal Communities, is built around six guiding principles that generally inform our approach to climate adaptation and resilience. Of those, two principles are worth mentioning today. First, that the federal government should take a leadership role to ensure that intra and interagency coordination helps states, local governments, and tribes access available coastal resilience resources. And second, that climate adaptation and resilience work should complement and contribute to a decarbonized clean energy economy. These principles still motivate us, and our panel today will help us understand what is already underway. You can access our report by visiting us online, of course. To help us get off of the best possible start, we are joined today by Representative Scott Peters. Representative Peters serves the 52nd District of California and sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee, the Budget Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee. Representative Peters is a civic leader who has made improving the life and quality of life in San Diego his life's work. He's ranked the fourth-most independent Democrat in Congress, and he understands that business problems have bipartisan solutions and is never afraid to work across party lines to build consensus and get things done. Welcome, Representative Peters, to our briefing today. Thanks so much. Thanks, Dan, and thanks the entire ESI team for putting this briefing together and for inviting me to participate. As many of you already know, regardless of how successful we are at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades, we're still going to face more extreme weather events. In 2021 alone, damages from extreme weather in the United States exceeded $145 billion, compared to just $28.6 billion during my first year in Congress in 2013. In my home state of California, we're battling more intense and frequent wildfires, extreme heat, and devastating droughts. And wildfires are particularly worrisome because they not only are becoming more extreme due to climate change, they're also contributing to climate change through the release of carbon dioxide and super polluting black carbon. Last year, we passed the Historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and that bill included much needed investments to modernize the nation's roads, bridges, railways, transit, energy systems, broadband, and other critical infrastructure projects. And notably for this conversation, the bill will invest nearly $50 billion in climate resilience, making it the largest climate resilience legislation in history. To build on our successes in that bill, I introduced the Bipartisan National Climate Adaptation and Resilience Strategy Act earlier this year with Representative Maria Salazar from Florida and US Senators Chris Coons and Lisa Murkowski. This bill is the federal government's climate resilience efforts and help us better deliver the newly unlocked funds in a targeted, effective, and efficient manner. Specifically, the bill will require the development of a national climate adaptation and resilience strategy, which will ensure a unified vision for the United States government's response to climate hazards. And the US is the only member of the G20 without such a strategy. The bill also authorizes a chief resilience officer in the White House to direct national resilience efforts and to lead the development of the US resilience strategy. Many US states have chief resilience officers. This is modeled after those successes. We're fortunate to have support from a diverse range of groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the American Society of Adaptation Professionals, among others. And I hope I can work with many of you to push this legislation across the finish line in the coming months. Climate resilience is an issue that can bring Republicans and Democrats together. So please feel free to reach out to my offices with any questions or comments and thank you for your time and your good work here today. Great, well, thank you Representative Peters for your leadership on these and other climate clean energy and environmental issues. And congratulations on the introduction of that bipartisan legislation. It's really important. We're really, really excited to see it. And I think we, and here at ESI, we think it has a bright future. So thank you so much. And thanks of course to your staff for helping making your participation possible today. Before we turn to our panel, I just have one last logistical thing to go over and that is we will have some time for questions at the end of our panel. And we will do our best to incorporate questions from our online audience. If you have a question, you can send it to us two ways. One, you can follow us on Twitter at EESI online and ask it that way. Can also send us an email. The email address to use is ask, A-S-K, ask at EESI.org. And we'll do our best to incorporate your questions into our discussion. It is my pleasure to introduce our first panelist of the day, Laura Pettish serves as the White House Office of Science Technology Policy at the Chief of Staff for Climate and Environment and the Assistant Director for Climate Resilience. In this role, Laura works with other White House offices and federal agencies to advance the climate and environmental priorities of the Biden-Harris administration. Laura, welcome to our briefing today. I will turn it over to you. Thanks so much for the warm welcome, Dan. Today is my pleasure to share some of the many exciting things that we are working on at the White House and across the federal family to advance science and action on climate adaptation and resilience. It's especially exciting because we're actively using good science and knowledge to inform decisions and actions. And these demonstrate leadership on adaptation and align with some of the pillars that Representative Peters has outlined as being key to a national resilience strategy. Next slide, please. So it was mentioned in the introduction, the IPCC report. There's been a couple of reports released over the past year. The recently released report from Working Group One on physical science basis of IPCC Six Assessment Report indicated that our world is changing rapidly and radically due to climate change. Climate change due to the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and other human activities. This report summarizes what we know about the physical science changes underway. It's a report of superlatives, superlatives that are not good news. Highest, fastest, lowest unprecedented. It's really quite sobering. In an unprecedented amount of time, human influence has transformed the climate system across the atmosphere, the ocean and freshwater systems, the frozen parts of our planet, the land surface and the biosphere. And to me, the IPCC report reinforces the existential nature of the climate crisis and it radiates a deep sense of urgency for immediate and decisive action. We have no time to lose and the longer we wait, the more we must adapt to. Next slide please. A change in climate affects us all. The impacts of climate change are being felt across the United States. Here's an image from the National Climate Assessment showing the rate of temperature change in the US over the past 120 years. You can see that the warming has occurred over the vast majority of the US with some regions experiencing very, very rapid rates of temperature change and temperatures will continue to rise in the future. Next slide. The choices that we make matter, the choices that we make now really, really matter. Mitigation actions are those that reduce emissions of greenhouse gases or remove them from the atmosphere, whereas adaptation actions are those that reduce risks from today's changed climate and help us prepare for future climate impacts. This is not an either or sort of situation. We really need to both mitigate and adapt as aggressively as possible. And our climate future is directly tied to the decisions that we make in the present. Next slide. Today I'm going to set the stage for the panel by describing the actions that we are taking across the federal assembly to enhance adaptation and resilience. These include integrating resilience into our federal agency programs and policies, providing funding and incentives for advancing resilience, addressing current and emerging climate related hazards and advancing usable science to inform and support adaptation decisions. Next slide. On day one, President Biden directed bold action to tackle the climate crisis. President Biden issued executive order 14-008, which set in motion a number of ambitious actions across the federal government to reduce emissions and enhance resilience to current and future changes. The administration has been moving at work speed to implement this and related executive orders. And you can find out more information on progress to date at the website, wayhouse.gov slash climate. Next slide. I mentioned at the outset that agencies are working hard to try to walk the talk on resilience and adaptation. All federal agencies were required under executive order 14-008 to develop climate adaptation plans. Those plans were released in October and they're available on sustainability.gov slash adaptation. I'd highly recommend perusing them. You'll be able to see how agencies as diverse as the Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, and Health and Human Services plan to integrate climate resilience into their infrastructure, missions, and operations. The administration and Congress have been working hard to increase funding for resilience, as you heard from Representative Peters. These include, for example, increases to FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities or BRIC program to support pre-disaster hazard mitigation projects that enhance community resilience. There's growing recognition that investments in resilience and adaptation upfront can save money on damages avoided later. And now with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that the Congressman mentioned, we have a historic opportunity with tens of billions of dollars being directed towards resilience projects. In addition to these direct investments in resilience projects, we are working to ensure that agencies integrate climate considerations across multiple programs and projects in that legislation to ensure that the infrastructure we build today with this funding will be resilient to the climate of tomorrow. Importantly, the administration is centering equity in these efforts by ensuring that funding flows to disadvantaged communities, recognizing that they are often the most impacted by climate change and may also lack capacity to plan and adapt. Resilience has been a focus of the White House's environmental justice efforts. And the administration is advancing Justice 40, which it sounds like you all will have a webinar opportunity coming up soon here. This is a whole of government effort to ensure that federal agencies work with states and communities to make good on President Biden's promise to deliver at least 40% of the overall benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy to disadvantaged communities. Agencies are currently undertaking pilots to determine the best ways to implement this in practice. Next slide. President Biden created a national climate task force and that task force includes a number of federal agencies and White House offices. This is one of the ways that we are organizing as a federal family right now around climate resilience and adaptation. There are currently five resilience-focused working groups tackling challenges, including wildfire resilience, coastal resilience, extreme heat, drought, and flood, both in the near term and longer term. Next slide, please. Advancing actionable climate information is a huge priority. There have been decades and decades of really excellent climate science and yet action is still lacking. One of those reasons is that there are a lot of ways in which that government information has not been accessible or useful to communities. So we are working really hard to try to unlock those data and tools and make information more useful, more tailored for communities to be able to apply that information to their decision-making. In October, OSCP, NOAA, and FEMA released a report called for under-executive order 14008 on ways to improve and expand on climate information and services to the public. In parallel, the Federal Geographic Data Committee released a report identifying ways to enhance geospatial data and mapping tools. These complementary reports are informing federal government coordination and action to develop and share climate services that can be tailored for local use. Communities, states, tribes, and territories have an important role to play here in connecting, translating, and tailoring federal climate information to support their decision-making. And this is also an important opportunity for universities, NGOs, and the private sector to tailor this information for youth and build partnerships. Next slide. We are also working through the 13-agency US Global Change Research Program, or USGCRP. This was created by Congress in 1990 under the Global Change Research Act to organize climate science and global change information across the federal family. USGCRP is working to address science gaps that are key to societal decision-making. They are identifying opportunities both to enhance the usability of existing climate information and to address key knowledge gaps that will better enable society to prepare and respond. One of USGCRP's cornerstone activities is the National Climate Assessment. Next slide. The National Climate Assessment is the authoritative source of information on climate impacts on the United States. The Fifth National Climate Assessment is now well underway, and the team has outlined five priorities. One, advance the conversation, particularly around what science is new and since the previous assessment, NCA4. Two, make it accessible to a broad audience so that those who need information have information to support their decision-making about climate risks. Three, be creative in communication. So not just be some report on a shelf, but leverage the power of art and storytelling to better communicate the climate science people need to act and create memorable methods of conveying science that allow our audience to put themselves into their own climate story. Number four, make it about people. NCA5 will gather diverse voices and perspectives to improve the relevance of information delivered and show how Americans are affected by climate change now, as well as highlighting some valuable actions that communities are taking to mitigate and adapt. And finally, ensure it is useful and usable. NCA5 will not just better describe the climate crisis, but will provide the valuable context people need to make risk management choices. Next slide. NCA5 started last year. We've had a very broad and inclusive engagement process to date. So there's been a federal register notice. We've taken public comment on the draft perspectives. We assembled author teams. NCA5 has the largest author team with over 450 authors. It is also the most diverse author team in history reflecting America and actually other countries as well. And the teams have developed zero order drafts and public engagement has taken place early in the process. There've been over, I think it's 34 workshops that have been held to date with thousands of participants. It's been really wonderful to see. There is an ongoing call for technical inputs on the NCA5 website if you're interested. And later this year we will have a public call for review editors and public comment on third order draft. Next slide. Looking ahead, there are a number of efforts that agencies will continue to advance related to adaptation and resilience as they implement their climate adaptation plan, make US government climate science more actionable and enhance the resilience of federally managed infrastructure and natural resources. And importantly, as I mentioned, efforts to reduce emissions today will limit what we need to adapt to now and into the future. Next slide please. And with that, I thank you for your time and look forward to hearing from the other speakers. Thank you, Laura, for your great presentation. Really appreciate a great update on everything the administration is working on. I am going to introduce our second panelist. Mark Osler is the senior advisor for coastal inundation and resilience for the US National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. Mark's leadership advances coastal science and the ability of decision makers to prepare for and respond to changes affecting the nation's coastlines. He serves as senior advisor to NOAA leadership on defining research, applied science and policy priorities related to understanding and reducing impacts of coastal risk to the public, our national security and our nation's economy. Mark, I hope you're having a great Friday so far. I really look forward to your presentation. Dan, thanks very much. Good afternoon or good morning to those that are following along. I'm really pleased to be part of this discussion about NOAA's role within the federal government's ecosystem supporting adaptation and resilience. I want to share a thought off the top before I get into the NOAA specifics, which is that it's a realization all of us working in this space come to sooner or later, which is that resilience in all senses is local in its essence. It is a condition with individuals or organizations or systems to work towards achieving and enhancing. And from a federal government and agency perspective, what that means is that it is an outcome achieved by others. It is not a product which can be created and then delivered directly by the federal government. And so we recognize at the outset that our charge is not to solve these challenges on behalf of our communities, but rather for the federal government to bring its human, fiscal, legal and policy resources to bear in a manner designed to lift up and support our state, local, tribal and territorial governments in understanding and engaging with these challenges on their own terms within the context of their geography, their history, their priorities and their own self-defined aspirations for the future. And in this space, we understand that no single program or agency has all of the relevant science, no agency has all of the relevant grant programs, no agency alone creates and supports the networks and relationships with all relevant decision makers across the nation. And so then our challenge in this space is one of coordination and cooperation and it is a challenge that requires a deep personal and organizational humility with respect to how we contribute and help others contribute along the way. So with that context, I am pleased to share some highlights of NOAA's role in this space specifically. Next slide, please. And so NOAA's priorities are listed on this slide. They are to continue to communicate NOAA's role as a climate clearinghouse, more than just the science and the research underpinning our understanding of climate change, but a home for authoritative climate data that is designed to and delivered in a way that supports decision making on the ground. Second is advancing equity in all aspects of NOAA's mission. And third is understanding that our climate challenge also presents a tremendous economic opportunity to drive economic growth, climate smart innovation and tech and enhance partnerships of public, private and across the academic and NGO sector. Next slide, please. And these priorities for NOAA, of course, aligned with the administration's priorities, which Laura just reviewed for us, the two executive orders that are particularly relevant, which Laura noted are here on the left. And then the report, which was also noted is NOAA was proud to co-author alongside of OSTP and FEMA this guide in terms of climate information and services for the public and current best thinking on how the government can advance and help support equitable outcomes on the ground. Next slide. For me, there are two hallmarks of equitable climate adaptation. And there's a lot of words. I'll let you read them, but the first one here is really about equitable access to information and making sure that Shaktulik, Alaska has all of the same rich data sets and understanding of how their climate is changing as Boston or San Francisco or Miami have. And so there are clearly disparities today in terms of data access and ability simply to have measurements and predictions of change across the nation. And so a very early identifier in terms of enabling equitable adaptation is equitable access to environmental information. And then the second is really around action at that community, organizational or even individual level. And this is about the equitable ability to implement to have agency over one's own future in a way that is informed by science and supported by federal policy. And critical in my thinking here is that there are key moments where decision makers need to be able to calculate and communicate the idea of trade-offs of a do nothing action versus a take action A or the difference between action A or action B. The ability to make those trade-off analyses are central to equitable adaptation on the ground and must be underpinned by science. And the next slide. So how does NOAA think about all of this? And here is a very colorful graph. I wanna invite you to simply look at the column headings first across the top before the text on the bottom. What this graphic is seeking to indicate is that there is a whole spectrum of information that goes into understanding and preparing for sound adaptation and sustainable resilient growth on the ground. On the left-hand side and the blue colors are kind of the raw materials, if you will, the observations of our earth system, the predictions and simulations of our earth system, the curation of those data and the actual what are called product lines here in terms of digestion and conveyance of authoritative best state of the science understanding of any part, particularly of our earth system. And those are important foundational pieces, but there are also further steps on that spectrum, which critically focus on that process whereby the science and the data for experts is transformed in a way such that it becomes knowledge for someone else. And by virtue of that knowledge, that someone else is empowered to make a climate smart decision about any choice near or long-term. And so these are also federal activities that are shown in the green, which are technical expertise and funding and performing training and outreach and place-based engagement and iterative co-development on the ground. And so there are parts of the federal government that work across this whole space. NOAA's mission is unique in my view in that it touches by authority and statute for over 50 years, it touches the entirety of this spectrum. And so NOAA is responsible and does produce cutting-edge world-class science and also is responsible for the local place-based engagement and capacity building on the ground and that NOAA has mission to do both and to connect those from soup to nuts. And the last column here is evaluation centered on the fact that user needs, realities on the ground and stated desire for new or different types of information or types of portrayal of information should by definition be centered back at the beginning in terms of defining where are our research priorities centered on in terms of meeting needs out for the public. So just a few examples of this to share with the group starting on the next slide. So in the blue section of that spectrum, which are just the data and the products, there are a couple of resources that I wanna highlight for this community for those that are not aware of them yet, but there's of course the climate.gov. This is authoritative clearinghouse of what we know about how our earth system is changing divided in many cases by component of the earth system as depicted by the different graphics on the slide. And so this is a great place to browse and understand the way in which our climate is changing and how it may be changing in the future. There are also connected to this application guides and climate resilience toolkits and sort of insight on how to apply this information once it's known to exist and understood. Next slide is highlighting an interagency, public private sector partnership that is a hallmark of federal success in terms of drought.gov and which is run by and shepherded by the NIDIS program in the top right, which is a national integrated drought information system. So this is Noah in concert with a host of federal agencies including EPA, the Army Corps, but also Health and Human Services, CDC, agriculture and also partnerships with the Western Governors Association and private sector, which is a co-creation in order to track and monitor, forecast and communicate drought conditions across the United States. Next slide, please. Another example that folks working in the civil infrastructure space may recognize is Noah's Atlas 14, which is an authoritative climatology of precipitation. We know by anecdotal evidence and also scientifically that there are changes afoot with respect to the intensity and frequency of rainfall across the United States, both associated with hurricanes and tropical storms, but also just in terms of regular non-cyclonic storms. And so Noah's Atlas 14 is a nationally significant resource and has been identified within the infrastructure bill for advancement and funding in terms of directly continuing to modernize and make sure that Atlas 14 is up to date for the entire nation at the same time. The last resource I wanted to share is on the next slide and it's part of a community of resources that are near and dear to me. Being a coastal guy is Noah's Digital Coast, which is a whole host of coastal related data. Can be land cover, can be in this case, sea level rise where there is a viewer that helps you map out and visualize the extent of sea level impacts under different scenarios. And this is another type of tool. This is applied science in terms of helping make sea level information be understandable and accessible and relevant to place-based discussions. So I wanna pivot here. So that's a quick dashboard tour of some of the jewels in Noah's crown in terms of authoritative data, which are kind of in that blue section of the value spectrum. I wanna highlight very quickly two case studies that illustrate Noah's work kind of in the green section, which is the capacity building and communication. And the first is in relation to the recently released interagency technical report on sea level rise. On February 15th, the federal government updated its projections of sea level rise for all US states and territories for the first time since 2017, which was, that's a big deal. It represents an important scientific contribution, both to this broader resilience and adaptation discussion nationally, but also it will serve as a key input into the fifth national climate assessment that Laura mentioned. The part I wanna highlight that I am particularly excited about this is that from the beginning, that very technical report, which is authored by some of our nation's very best sea level rise scientists, it's a science report, but from early on in the process, we have no able to convene a group of non-science practitioners, folks whose real world job is to guide local communities through adaptation and resilience planning discussions. And we embedded those folks in with the technical authors in a way that really had never been done before. And so they didn't get a say on what the science was, but they got a say in terms of how the science was described or portrayed in a chart in terms of advancing the ability of the technical report to be digestible and understood by folks who will need to use it. And in a complementary fashion, not quite finished, but pending soon, that same group of practitioners is non-federal practitioners. They are writing their own application guide for practitioners by practitioners of how to digest and implement the science from the sea level rise report. And again, we have the lead authors from the science report team in partnership with the practitioners. Again, the scientists don't have a say in this, but they are there to answer questions and make sure the description of the science in the application guide is exactly accurate in this. So this is a tremendously inspiring example of co-production and co-communication in terms of really making an effort to ensure that there is no daylight between the science, the application of that science on the ground and those that need to live in that space that connects the two. Next slide highlights a second example. Again, this is from the NIDIS and the drought work. This is a good example of a long-standing discussion with a particular river basin. In this case, the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint river basin drought and water dashboard. And so users, federal, tribal, state and local users along with multi-agency equities within this region of the country have got together to understand what more do we need to know about drought and forecasting drought and communicating. And based on that input, the drought.gov team essentially created a custom dashboard to meet that needs as defined by the users of the information. So another really inspiring example of co-creation and something I'm very proud of of NOAA connecting the dots across that entire spectrum from science to service. And then the last slide, I just wanna end with a couple of highlights in terms of improving and opportunities for where we might go next. For those of you that may be aware, one of the carry-on effects of the executive orders from early in this administration is the re-implementation of the federal flood risk management standard, which is a requirement that governs the ways in which federal money are spent in a floodplain and seeks to raise the standard of care in terms of ensuring that we're not putting federal money and investing it in areas that are at high risk. And there is a component of the federal flood risk management standard that invites federal agencies to ensure that there is a climate-informed science analysis in relation to the federal expenditure. And that is a tremendously salient and time-sensitive example of bringing climate science to bear in service of the incredible amount of money that is queued up within a host of federal grant programs, including FEMA and HUD, inclusive of the Army Corps of Engineers mission and their civil works excellence. And so we will in real time have a very exciting opportunity for the government to succeed with its internal coordination on the implementation of the federal flood risk management standard. The last two are perhaps more editorial in nature. One of the things I see from my role at NOAA and across the interagency space is that there is often a focus on advancing science and research and measurements of our earth system, which of course, I'm a modeler at heart. I understand and I'm strongly compelled to speak to the importance of advancing that science. However, that is probably not where we are lagging as a nation right now. Where we are lagging is building that local capacity to understand and take informed action. And so one of the challenges with that is that it can be hard to measure the success of that. It can also take a long time. That building capacity on the ground can be non-linear. It can be difficult to have a sharp narrative how this investment today resulted in that exact positive outcome tomorrow. And therefore it can be hard to gain consensus and action against that need. But it is a foundational need that is underpinning our national growth in this space. And then the last point I'd like to offer for the group's consideration is that there is increasingly pressure on those parts of our federal and non-federal science ecosystem. There is pressure on them to prove why their research is relevant to the problems of the day. And those that live in the science space know that the pace of scientific advancement is not often commensurate with the pace of needing that sharp narrative. It takes place over many years, many decades. And so it is sometimes seen as being out of step with the urgency of the scope and intensity of the climate challenge on the ground. And as a result, we are seeing folks that work in the pure science space more on the blue part of that spectrum feeling compelled to work in or find partnerships for a way to connect their work into the green part of that spectrum which is the service delivery and public facing decision support. And one of the things with Laura's support and many folks that always see P and across the federal space we are working on is to try to streamline the dialogue so that these are comfortable to be excellent at what they are excellent at and have line of sight and receive proper credit for supporting and enabling those activities that happen in the public facing service delivery component of this process. And so with that, I'll be happy to conclude. I look forward to the discussion which follows and thanks for the opportunity to participate in the discussion today. Thank you, Mark. And Mark, you were just talking about your spectrum, your continuum, the green, the blue. Well, good news audience. If you'd like to go back and look at Mark's slides or Laura's slides or the slides of the panelists to come everything is posted online at www.eside.org. So you can go back and study Mark's slides which were quite good. Thank you, Mark for presenting this and remind yourself of what the different colors mean on that very cool chart. I'd also like to share a quick reminder with our audience about questions. We're getting lots of questions in from our audience. So thank you for that. If you have a question and you would like to ask it to the group, you have two options. You can send us an email and the email address to use is askask.org or you can also follow us on Twitter at ESI online. And if we get in a bit of a crunch and we have to start picking questions I usually go with the ones from Twitter just to encourage people to follow us online. So just keep that in mind as you're thinking about how to ask them. Our third panelist today is Kathleen Berthelot. Kathleen serves as EDF senior policy manager for federal affairs focusing on coastal and flood resilience. She is based in New Orleans and serves on the executive committee for restore the Mississippi River Delta a coalition of national and regional nonprofit organizations working to ensure an equitable, safer and flourishing coast for Louisiana's communities, ecosystems and economy. Kathleen also chairs their federal policy committee where she coordinates the work before Congress and the administration. Among other priorities, the federal policy team explores opportunities to secure and expand funding for Louisiana to dedicate to its coastal master plan. Kathleen, welcome to our briefing today. I'm looking forward to your presentation. I think you are still muted. Kathleen, sorry. There we go. Can you hear me now? Yes, loud and clear. Okay. Thank you. At the outset, I want to thank ESI for putting this briefing together and Congressman Peters for his leadership on the issue. As he mentioned in his remarks, the Congressman is a lead sponsor of the National Climate Adaptation and Resilience Strategy Act, which would provide a clear national vision for climate adaptation and help vulnerable communities build resilience to climate change. And as he stated, EDF is fully supportive of this legislation. For the purposes of this briefing, I thought I'd share what we're working on in Louisiana specifically, as our work here is all about adaptation and resilience. Next slide, please. For some quick background, EDF is one of five organizations that make up the Restore the Mississippi River Delta Coalition. We work with two national partners, National Wildlife Federation and National Audit and Society, and two local partners, the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana and Pontchartrain Conservancy. For well over a decade now, our five organizations have worked together in the local, state and federal officials and agencies on the restoration of the Mississippi River Delta. And our goal is to secure a just climate resilient coast where people and nature thrive. That work is sadly not just forward looking. For nearly a century, our coastal resources and communities have been dealing with pronounced resilience challenges, all increasingly acute due to the impacts of a changing climate. Next slide, please. As many of you know, Louisiana is facing a long-standing existential land loss crisis. A football field of the state's coastal wetlands vanishes into open water every 100 minutes. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost over 2,000 square miles of land, an area roughly the size of Delaware. Next slide, please. And projections show that without action, we could lose another 2,250 square miles within the next 50 years. Next slide, please. So it goes without saying that reversing land loss in Louisiana is a coordinated and major priority at the federal, state and local level to support endangered coastal communities, economic activity and vital natural systems and wildlife populations. Next slide, please. To confront this crisis, Louisiana has a coastal master plan. First released 15 years ago, this comprehensive science-based plan is a 50-year blueprint that combines projects to restore, build or maintain coastal wetlands with projects to provide enhanced risk reduction for coastal communities from storms and flooding and provides a guide for federal and non-federal investments. The master plan has undergone rigorous scientific review, is periodically updated, the next one will be released in 2023 and receives unanimous bipartisan support from both houses of the state legislature. Next slide, please. This slide just shows some of the tools we have in our toolbox, including sediment diversions. Regarding today's theme, federal programs are vital to the survival of rock coast, but they are not the only resources in play. Next slide, please. The lion's share funding for the coastal master plan so far has actually come from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlement. Private penalty monies paid into the treasury and made available for restoration and protection via the Restore Act, which passed Congress in 2012. This slide shows how the settlements and legislation variously source our funding. For instance, the NERDA settlement was over $6 billion and Louisiana got $5 billion for ecosystem restoration. Our hope, of course, is that you all will not ever see the kind of oil spill devastation that opened the door for that kind of penalty-funded response. But when disasters do happen, more routine disaster funding often follows. And additional funding from recent disaster supplementals can increase coastal resilience by supporting more ecosystem restoration projects. We are also looking to the IIJA, also known as a bipartisan infrastructure law, to advance coastal restoration and protection. This legislation is the largest investment ever in the resilience of natural and physical systems. And our hope is that billions will go to natural infrastructure projects. Next slide, please. Regarding specific programs funded here and elsewhere, progress is being made towards restoring the Mississippi River for Delta via long-term programs within the EPA, their geographic programs like the Gulf of Mexico Program and the Lake Ponta Train Basin Restoration Program, NOAA's CZMA Grants and NIFWIFS National Coastal Resilience Fund and DOI's NACA Grants. We also will be relying on the Corps of Engineers, whose many Louisiana Coastal Area Restoration Project authorizations from the 2008 worda remain largely unfunded, but we do expect some of these projects at long last to start advancing. In terms of opportunities ahead, we think FEMA's BRIC program and DOT's Protect Grants should look to natural infrastructure projects as worthwhile and critical investments. A recent report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development shows that natural infrastructure can save hundreds of billions of dollars annually in climate adaptation costs while delivering the same or better outcomes as traditional hardened infrastructure. And natural infrastructure delivers additional benefits, including improved water quality, wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration, eco-tourism opportunities, as well as jobs and economic growth at the state and local levels. Investing in coastal resilience is a win-win. It protects people, wildlife, and jobs while growing the local economy and avoiding significant future cost to taxpayers. As we've seen on our coast, the cost of inaction is clearly unaffordable in terms of ever-mounting extreme weather damage and the lost lives and livelihoods it causes every single year. For us, it's not about reliance on any single program, but about bringing all these approaches and more to bear on our own existential crisis. Thank you again for the opportunity to share our work with you. We look forward to the question and answer. Thank you, Kathleen. That was a great presentation. And that work is so fascinating. I wanted to take a quick moment, just very briefly to pause and say that we covered coastal master plan, the coastal master plan process in episode two of our most recent podcast season. We spoke with Dr. Denise Reed from the University of New Orleans. And it was a really excellent episode and she was nice enough to go into all sorts of really incredible detail about how that process is working and where it came from, how it's evolved and where it's going. So thank you so much for that work. We, really incredible stuff happening on the coastal areas of Louisiana. We shall now turn to our fourth speaker. Cecilia Clavitt is a senior policy advisor on forest restoration and fire for the Nature Conservancy's North America Policy and Government Relations Department. CC supports forest work across the US and for the past few years, her work has been focused on forest and wildfire issues, including forest restoration, wildfire suppression, budgeting climate and appropriations. She is now shifting into a lead role as part of a wildfire resilience initiative and currently serves on the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Federal Advisory Committee. CC, welcome to our briefing today and congratulations on the most greenery in our backgrounds today. I appreciate that. I'm selling carbon credits. Thanks for having me, Dan, and thanks for the introduction. All right, I'm gonna share my screen. All right, well, greetings, everyone. First, I wanna talk a little bit about the Nature Conservancy where global conservation organization were dedicated to conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends. We are guided by science and on-the-ground solutions so that nature and people can thrive together. We work across 72 countries and we use a collaborative approach that engages local communities, governments, the private sector and other partners. TNC has a long history of working with fire from federal and state policy development to practice on the ground. And this year, we are celebrating our 60th anniversary of our first prescribed fire coming this spring. And today, I'm going to talk about wildfire resilience and the associated challenges and opportunities to adapt our landscapes and our culture. First, it's important to understand that much of the North American landscape has been shaped by wildfire and continues to need fire at regular intervals to be healthy and resilient. However, we're experiencing more frequent and intense wildfires because of a century of fire suppression policies, inadequate forest management, and more people living in the wildland-urban interface which in turn increases the amount of wildland-urban interface. And all this is exacerbated by climate change. 2020 was a particularly bad fire season with some record-breaking statistics. California, Washington and Colorado had some of their largest wildfires on record. Over 10 million acres burned and they claimed 47 human lives. It resulted in $20 billion in damages but even that doesn't include the full costs of wildfire, the direct and the indirect costs. Those likely amounted to a total in the hundreds of billions. And smoke impacted vast geographic areas that year, that summer. This is the era of mega fires. And these mega fires cause significant damages including health and ecosystem damages which too often impact disadvantaged communities. And while these wildfires are exacerbated by climate change, the wildfires conversely contribute to climate change by releasing carbon and other particular matter into the atmosphere. This is a complex challenge and it requires complex solutions. Wildfires impact a broad range of people, communities, geographies and land ownerships especially across the West. And stakeholders include federal, state, local governments, tribes, utilities, private landowners, non-profit and community based organizations. And they all overlap with other critical land management challenges related to water, fish, wildfire, carbon and public health. The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy was designed to collaboratively work among stakeholders and across all landscapes using the best science to meaningfully progress towards these three goals. One is the restoration and maintenance of landscapes. The second is fire adapted communities and the third is response to fire or suppression. As a society we've invested significantly in response to fire but have not begun to invest in the other two goals of the cohesive strategy at the same levels. Investments in wildfire resilience which include both landscape restoration and fire adapted communities has remained relatively stagnant regardless of the trends. And as we continue in this era of modern wildfire the costs of addressing wildfires are huge but we need a paradigm shift in how we approach wildfires in this country that includes a whole of society approach. There are so many different solutions and opportunities all of which are interconnected in how we address wildfire resilience to include community fire adaptation. The shift needed is increased investments, resources and focus on the landscape and community resilience at the same level as I mentioned the suppression. Too often on the federal side the cost of suppression came at the expense of other forest management activities including those that would help in wildfire resilience and risk reduction. The Forest Service has identified 50 million acres of the highest priority landscapes in need of wildfire resilience. This is across all landownerships. In a report last year, TNC estimated that five to six billion a year, five to six billion dollars a year are needed to meet the needs of those high priority landscapes and support community adaptation. Our report last year looked at federal policy budget options to scale resilience investments. And we focused on three main areas. The first was expanding existing wildfire resilience investments. This is looking at significant increases to programs like the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program and the hazardous fuels programs within the Forest Service and Department of the Interior. The second category was redirecting other existing funding sources across the federal budget. So looking at programs outside of Forest Service and DOI programs like the EPA Air Quality Programs, Defense, Labor and Rural Development Programs. And then the last category, we looked at expanding public-private partnerships and private investments and other innovative strategies. So in other words, how do we bring private funding to this much needed work? One example is through direct partnerships between agencies, federal agencies and utilities that directly benefit from healthy, resilient forests. Another is exploring how to increase environmental impact bonds that can be targeted across more high-priority landscapes. Each of these funding opportunities would have the potential for supporting many of the objectives for increased prescribed fire, place-based knowledge and climate smart land use planning among others. Improved forest management can get ahead of disastrous wildfire, but it must be done at a massive scale and we need to manage at that scale now. To be effective, wildfire resilience must be based in science, ecologically focused that includes a combination of prescribed fire, mechanical thinning and reforestation. So why now challenge has existed for decades? One, the opportunity is just greater now and it is more urgent than ever. That's a big driver. While we face massive wildfire challenges, forests can have incredible climate potential. Forest plays a role in climate through protection, maintenance and reduction of emissions. Forest protect existing stocks of carbon, particularly large stocks in public forests. Maintenance or enhancement allows the ability of the forest to continue to increase storage through improved forest management, reforestation, avoided conversion, resilience and resilience through restoration. And then the reduction of emissions. This is from major catastrophic wildfires by increasing the use of prescribed fire, resilience forestry to reduce fire risk and increasing community engagement and collaboration. So another enabling condition is that we stabilize the forest services and DOI's budget. So back in 2018, as suppression dollars were going up, all the other programs were going down. So the wildfire cap adjustment that was enacted in 2018 has stabilized those budgets. And this means that agencies, federal agencies are now better able to assess their long-term needs. Another enabling condition is Congress is investing in wildfire resilience now more than ever before. We've seen this through the infrastructure package and the fiscal year 22 appropriations. These are significant down payments and meeting the scale of the challenge. The administration is motivated to address climate. We've heard already from my other panelists that wildfire is part of addressing climate. The Forest Service has also developed a 10-year strategy to address wildfire resilience. It is a priority right now. We also have better data that allows us to look at the problem with higher level of confidence and economic efficiency. So sophisticated analytical tools can help prioritize work by directing funding to the projects on acres with the highest needs. And that will have the highest resilience impacts. And then finally, we have no shortage of motivated partners at the national, regional, and local levels. So collaborating across boundaries and amongst interested partners create enabling conditions to reduce fire risk. We agree with Representative Peters and his desire to develop a whole of government strategy, in fact, a whole of society strategy through partnerships to increase climate adaptation and resilience. This all makes it a great time to be working on wildfire resilience. There's so much timely potential to not only work on wildfire and climate resilience, but the same work if it incentivize and implemented properly would have those important co-benefits for communities and their economies and overall forest conservation. With that, I'll pass it back to Dan. Thank you. And thank you. You caught me just as my cat decided to hop up. So hello, Rocky. And welcome to the briefing today. Well, thank you so much for that excellent presentation. Let me invite, hey, watch it. Let me invite our panelists to turn their videos back on while I dispose of my, or I shouldn't dispose of him. I'll move him, relocate him. Some managed retreat right there. Turn your videos back on and we'll get started on the Q&A. Our audience Q&A feed has been very, very busy. So I'm gonna do my best to incorporate some of the questions into our discussion as we go. But I'd like to kick off our Q&A today with something that I think all of you have mentioned in different ways. And that is the idea of ensuring that the climate adaptation work we're talking about is done in an equitable and just way. And Laura, I'd love to start with you and then we'll go through the panel sort of in the order of your presentations, but I know there are a lot of good intentions across government and advocacy in the nonprofit organization, the nonprofit community. But how can we really ensure that this adaptation work has done the right way? And by the right way, I mean done in an equitable and just way. Yeah, thanks for the question, Dan. A few thoughts. I think one is that we really need to meet communities where they are and connect with them and build relationships and understand the challenges that they're facing, not just those focused on climate change or adaptation into vacuum, but holistically understanding what communities are facing so that there can be partnership to work together to address climate in the context of the other challenges the community is facing. So that's one thought. I mean, I think also it's not always like, I think oftentimes that those relationships are best built through, for example, community-based organizations and other local trusted leaders working with intermediaries, not necessarily having people fly from DC to try to help communities, right, adapt. I think, again, place-based trusted relationships that are built on sustained interactions and are just one-off are really super important, especially when it comes to a topic as overwhelming as climate change, because it's a journey to understand your risk, to work to address them, to try to find support to do so. I think there's a real need, for example, for grant writing capacity for communities that are small communities or lack capacity or are under-resourced. I think there's a need for technical assistance, project management assistance. Communities are facing a lot of different challenges and those are some of the barriers that I think we see on the federal side when we're receiving grant applications and it would be great to have just more of that front-end capacity provided to enhance the likelihood of success, which would then make them more resilient and more competitive in the future versus continuing to sort of find the communities that have the capacity and therefore are good at writing grants and that just kind of exacerbates the challenge. So those are a few thoughts. Thanks, Mark, we'll move to you next. Sure, thanks, Dan. Yeah, a couple of thoughts on this. One is that I think I find it helpful personally to recognize the reality that adaptation and risk reduction while being a necessity in many cases is also a luxury, that if you have individuals or communities that are beset by other social challenges, if there's insecure housing or any number of myriad things that are really having folks just having challenges of meeting the work of the day and caring for themselves and their families, the things that we're talking about here become kind of luxuries. And so I do think to the earlier mentioned to kind of all of society, I do think we need to understand the role of each of us in that ecosystem in some way. I think that reality has been important for me to wrestle with in terms of understanding Noah's place in this. And then I'll just share one of many thoughts before we move forward to the other panelists. I do think we are undergoing and need to accelerate and formalize the way in which we measure return on investment and what we value in terms of where our investments are going and what they are achieving. We are very good at the federal government level of dispersing monies and being compliant and doing our best to ensure that they are sound disbursements of taxpayer money. All of that involves literally not theoretically, it involves calculations of what is the return on investment. And I think the spectrum of things that we measure are very much more narrow than they should be. We need to continue to advance the ability to measure and track and predict the return on investment with respect to ecosystem service function and social and public health outcomes. Those are really challenging questions, but I do think it sits at the heart of understanding how we advance this effort on the federal government side. I'll happy to pass it forward. I can chime in. I agree with so much of what's already been said. And to Laura's earlier point, I think we saw much of this with the FEMA's BRIC program with the first round of grants that were awarded. It was largely well-to-do communities on the coast. And so trying to really get that really critical funding to the communities that are most in need, I think is hugely important. But just kind of bigger picture, I think the sad reality is that flooding, as we know, doesn't always impact every community equally. And there's the flood risk gap that we often talk about at EDF that puts the low wealth in communities of color at greater risk of flooding. And it really makes it harder for those communities to recover after a flood or other climate disaster. So we really believe that the policies must address the systemic inequities and work to increase equity with resilience. So some examples would be, you know, community dedicating funding to low income communities to address the disproportionate impacts they are facing. And then echoing Mark's earlier comments in his presentation, really increasing capacity within the communities so that they can design solutions that would reduce our flood risks rather than having, as others have said, solutions come from DC. So I think just the focus here would be like, the commitment should not just be about the results, which are of course important, but the process and community engagements. So it's obviously who benefits from the projects, but more so who gets to help design their own destiny. I think it's equally important. That can weigh in just on the fireside, very much similar to Kathleen, what you just said and everyone else. It applies in the same way. One of the programs in the infrastructure package is a community wildfire defense grant. It's a billion dollar grant program and the agency is working to, the Forest Service is working to develop a process for it. And in several meetings that I've had in the last couple of months with partners on the ground and, you know, at different levels, county level, local, state, and other partner groups, is exactly what we've heard here, which is there are communities that don't have the capacity or the technical support to be able to apply for those types of grants. So there's fear ahead of even the program existing to be able to access those programs. So in developing the program, it'll be very important to figure out how to make sure we access those communities and provide that support so that they can apply for these grants. I feel like in many cases, federal programs have a bit of a reputation for being inaccessible. And I think the opportunity we have here might help change that a little bit, encourage more communities to look at it instead of something to, you know, instead of something to look to avoid or to be fearful of, you know, really see it as an opportunity. There is so much great stuff coming through the pipeline. Mark, you talked about return on investment and evaluating benefits and costs. A question came in from our audience that I think would be interesting to ask the panel to comment on. And that is how agencies measure their performance when it comes to climate adaptation and specifically the climate adaptation plans that are being developed. Mark, we can start with you, but I very much like to hear from the rest of the panel as well. Are there some examples of performance measurement that some agencies are considering for climate adaptation plans? And if there are, do you know how their effectiveness is being sort of prejudged as sort of the right measures of performance? Thanks, Dan. Yeah, I'm probably not in a position to speak to that outside and across the federal space. I will say that internal to NOAA, this piece of this kind of internally involves taking a serious look, using our own information often in terms of understanding how our changing environment is gonna impact our ability to care for our people and facilities as well as deliver our mission across the US. NOAA's got 12,000 employees spread across the United States and territories. And so it's kind of centered on a concept of an internal vulnerability analysis in that regard. To the extent that it is part of NOAA's mission also to track and enable others to make sound ability to navigate adaptation and rephrases, which are kind of local personal high trust and longstanding relationships, which is, it's a whole different skill set. It's a whole different mission space, frankly, to have folks that live and work. Literally it's their job to show up at the junior high gym at 7pm and talk with the community. There are not every aspect of the federal mission that touches on that. And so those are the most, I think clear to understand efforts in terms of leadership through convening and communicating and how we measure that perhaps is the feedback we get from the communities and stakeholders themselves. And the continued trust and engagement would suggest that where we have succeeded in that. Laura and Kathleen and CeCe, if you have sort of comments on the programs that you cover or that you are most familiar with about performance management, please feel free to chime in. Sure, thanks, Dan. A couple thoughts. One is that the climate adaptation plans, they are doing progress reporting. Within the next couple of months to sort of share some of the highlights and progress, including how do you know that that is progress, there are active dialogues happening around resilience metrics. As you can imagine, it's very complicated, especially given the diversity of missions of the federal agencies. And so it's super hard and maybe not even particularly smart to try to develop a one-size-fits-all set of resilience metrics when you have such a huge range of programs and investments. But as a person who has a question, I'm sure noted that it's important to measure progress. I think that with adaptation, it's also often useful to measure co-benefits. So say you do a big marsh restoration project, well, it's not just a benefit to protect the road, it's also a benefit for efficient wildlife and a benefit for recreation and tourism. And so I think holistically capturing the benefits of projects is both challenging and really important because I think we're undervaluing the benefits of a lot of these investments when we only look at, for example, the climate resilience benefit and not the other benefits that that project provides. And I might just add on to what Laura was mentioning. So we're doing a lot of work with FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers regarding the BCA, their benefit cost analysis, because we think as kind of Laura alluded to, both with natural infrastructure, making sure that you're getting those co-benefits and those are part of the equation. So that's something that we're working with those, specifically with those two agencies because we feel like as of yet, they have not fully been incorporated into the calculus. So we think that they very much need to be. And just to add, I mean, Laura, you said it is very complex to account for these, the forest side, you also have different types of forest landscapes, different ownerships and the performance measures are different for around the community versus out in the landscape. And yeah, cannot stress enough the co-benefits of wildfire resilience projects. It's not just about reducing the fire risk, but also water quality upstream for communities downstream, just as an example. Well, thanks. Those are really interesting responses and I'm sure the person who asked that question is very grateful for your answers on that. I thought that question kind of teed up another one that sort of just looking ahead, as we look across these adaptation programs, what are some things that policymakers are thinking about or should be thinking about as they seek to improve the climate adaptation benefits of the programs sort of we've discovered or we've discussed today. Laura, maybe we'll start back with you and then we'll go back through the roster again. Sure, I think one thing that's important it's wonderful to see so many investments in kind of shovel ready projects. I think it's just as important as we've been noting to fund that capacity building. And so that just continues to be a need and project design and things. So like backing up the shovel ready pipeline and helping communities get to shovel ready and maybe addressing some of the barriers that it takes to get them there. I think thinking about, like I said, the fact that we can't just focus on adaptation we have got to focus on mitigation. So we really need to think holistically about the climate crisis because it's basically mitigate, adapt or separate the consequences and I think we all really want like as little of the stuff or the consequences as possible. And some of these strategies provide both adaptation and mitigation benefits, which is win-win. They're really great like coastal blue carbon benefits from some habitat restoration projects, for example. So anyway, I think those are some things. And then how do we not handle adaptation as a standalone thing, especially since all adaptation actions really happen at the local level, but find ways to weave that in to our healthcare delivery systems into our forest management, into our flood risk management, into stormwater. There's so many different ways that we can and should be infusing climate adaptation approaches into just the way that we are as a country. And I think some communities are doing more of that than others. And there's a lot of opportunity for sharing across communities as well. Mark, we'll turn to you now. Thanks, Dan. Yeah, I do want to reiterate, I appreciate it's coming up so much. I don't think we can say it often enough that local capacity of peace is something that is central to us succeeding at this as a nation. And as Laura said, kind of filling the top of the funnel to create a more diverse array of shovel ready projects to make sure that we're feeding the pipeline of what are now very substantial inspiring investment numbers in terms of grant programs that as they diversify, we don't want to run out of locally sourced, sustainable, sustainably defined activity on the ground. So that is one, I'll reiterate one of the points from my final slide, which is I would encourage policy makers to understand that there are certain parts of the science enterprise where the outcome on the ground is not their mission. And we need to find ways to support them in excellence in what they do and ensure that they are encouraging partnership and connectivity so that their work is coming out and benefiting the public, but not asking them to stand up a whole apparatus that is public facing and sustainable and all the rest. And then maybe I'll close with one of the, to me, one of the pieces of the lowest hanging fruit that policy makers can advance with respect to equitable adaptation is trying to fill in some of these data deserts, right? We're used to food deserts or healthcare deserts. There are places in the US where communities simply do not have the environmental insight to even start to understand risk and vulnerability, let alone what to do about it. And so that's another place where we could make advancements on the policy side. Kathleen? Yep, agree with much of what's already been said again. I think another area that we've been working with Congress and folks at the administration is looking again at the cost sharing requirements, oftentimes many of the communities that are in dire need of lots of these federal funding opportunities are not able to come up with the match, the local match. So I think in some scenarios we're looking at for underserved communities if those matches can be waived, I think would do a lot to advance our national adaptation resilience priorities. We have a couple of suggestions. One is to incentivize private financing. So helping to bring some of those private dollars to the table to leverage the federal dollars we could result in significant amounts of way more than what the federal can provide to get a lot of the work done, not just the wildfire resilience, but the other types of work that mentioned on the panel here today. Support capacity absolutely cannot agree with that more. A lot of federal agencies, the land management agencies have suffered declines in their management capacity. And so we need to build that up at a time when we're asking them to do significantly more. And then finally allow for some flexibility to these agencies in terms of timing. And what I mean by that is this is a 100 year, 100 plus year problem that we're dealing with in wildfire and it can't be solved in one to five years. So we need to think really longterm of what that means. That doesn't mean we don't act now. We absolutely need to act now and do these restoration and resilience projects right now. But part of it is also thoughtful planning into the future. Well, CC, you gave me a good segue into another question that also is informed by a question from our audience. So maybe what we'll do is we'll start with you and then go backwards through the list. And that is specific examples of how these programs in action help communities prepare for climate impacts. And the question from the audiences, are there examples of where the private sector has participated that have enhanced the effectiveness or the reach or the capacity of a particular project? And CC, I'll start with you and then we'll go backwards to Kathleen and Mark and go with Laura. Yeah, I think we have several examples of that. The program I mentioned earlier, the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program also known as CFLR at the Forest Service. That is a way of bringing in, it's a collaborative. So you bring in different partners including the private sector into developing projects and you're coming to agreement on a landscape where that's very complex and you are required to bring match, not as a partner but there has to be a match to the federal CFLR dollars. So that's one way. And there are a couple dozen of those projects right now on the ground. The infrastructure bill allows for additional funding and the appropriations bill builds upon that in doubling the amounts of projects that could be accepted from year to year. And I'll just mention, one specific project is the North Yuba Water Project in California where they're doing the utilities or working with NGOs and the state and the federal partners to reduce wildfire risk. And with the purpose of keeping the water source safe for the communities. And I have an example of, I think I have that example in the slides if you can share that link at the bottom. Two thoughts come to mind. One is, I think I mentioned in my remarks as well, NIFWIF. They obviously leverage federal dollars with private as well. And in Louisiana, I know that they have a great success record of getting really important projects, getting dollars at the door and getting projects going and some really worthwhile projects here in Louisiana. And then unrelated, I know that EDF, we have a bunch of great economists on our staff and looking at various ways. So again, in Louisiana, we have this $50 billion coastal master plan. We don't have all the funds for that. And so kind of looking to again leverage that the funding we do have. And so looking at new and novel mechanisms for raising the additional funds. So we're looking at EIBs. We're looking at, you know, green banks, kind of what would work here in Louisiana? And obviously throughout the rest of the country as well. So I think that the private component of this is critical, right? The federal government cannot fund everything. And so I think that this is a very interesting space that lots of work is being done in, so. Mark. Maybe two examples to share with the audience. One is, as was, as Kathleen was just looking to, was a connection between NOAA and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation with respect to, we co-administered the National Coastal Resilience Fund, which is co-administered by us, but in partnership with EPA and DOD. But very critically also with partnership through Shell Oil and Trans-Re, AT&T and other private sector partners. The focus of the National Coastal Resilience Fund for those that are not familiar is to restore natural systems, create, expand and restore in ways that both increase protection for communities from coastal storms and water level changes, but also to improve value habitat and enhance flourishing official wildlife. And so those are interesting connections in terms of sector-based engagements on these topics. The other example I might give in terms of partnerships and private sector connection is I'm pleased personally to be leading dialogue between NOAA and certain parts of the insurance and reinsurance ecosystem to help them develop business cases for investing in green infrastructure and all, so both on the sort of green climate bond front, but also to underpin sort of shared industry understanding of the insurance components and the ability to use insurance as a risk transfer mechanism. That hey, instead of developing this, you might preserve or enhance this ecological system in order to ultimately reduce risk and reduce the sort of capital risk on the table for the organization. So that's, you know, along the lines of what I was saying before about expanding what we mean by cost benefit, ensuring that that is science-based and helping industry. Make sure that they're comfortable with the best in class of what the earth science is so they can do the financial math on top of that. Yeah, and I'll take a slightly different spin because those are some of the examples I would have used too, which is great. I'm a big fan of the National Coastal Resilience Fund, but I think that also just, I briefly mentioned this, but the role of the private sector in this like emerging climate services enterprise is huge. So I think that, you know, it's untapped potential. And I think that there's really important government information and data that could be customized like weather services are, right? For others. I think the challenge is not having everything become like a pay for service model because the beauty of the government information is that it's free. And so I think in any move to do that, it should, you know, ideally, we're not just making climate services cost money, especially for communities who really need it and can't normally access that information. So we wouldn't want to exacerbate those inequities, but I do think that because the government can't possibly tailor information for every single stakeholder that wants to use it, there's a real opportunity there for universities, NGOs and the private sector to all kind of band together and help communities get the information they need. That was very interesting. And Laura, I think that means you get the last word today because we were just about at time. So a good place to end on. I would like to say thank you very, very much to our four fabulous panelists, Laura, Mark, Kathleen and CeCe. Thank you so very much for joining us today and helping our audience understand all about climate adaptation programs across the federal government. There's tremendous work going on every day across these agencies. And I hope today was an important way to get that information out there so that as we're thinking about what comes next, we properly take stock of what's already underway. So thank you so much for joining us today and for your presentations. Also like to say special thanks to Representative Scott Peters for helping us kick off our briefing today and his wonderful staff for helping to make his participation possible. Thank you to him and for his leadership on his recent legislation as well. Like to close with a quick reminder that our final briefing in this series will be March 29th. It's gonna be about large landscape conservation. And if you read our latest issue of climate change solutions which was all about land management, you know or already know there's just a ton to talk about on that topic. So we're really, really looking forward to that. Please sign up if you haven't already. And if you've missed any of the previous briefings in this series about agencies and action, no worries, you can go back and watch archived webcasts of the entire series. We've covered some really great topics. Beyond the topics today, energy efficiency, equitable investments in rural America. So lots of great stuff across the government that we've decided to highlight at this very important moment. Also like to plug our upcoming briefing on April 8th. As I mentioned earlier, we will hold a briefing about the transformative potential of Justice 40 as well as the current status of the initiative. Very pleased, it will be the briefing debut of one of our members of our board of directors, Raya Salter. So I'm really, really looking forward to that briefing for her participation as well as our amazing panelists. So please RSVP for that. Of course you can do everything including subscribe to our newsletters, RSVP for our briefings. If you visit us online at www.esi.org. I'd also like to say one final thank you to Team ESI for helping pull today off with notwithstanding Rocky's interruption. The rest of the briefing went off without a hitch. So thanks very much to my colleagues, Dan O'Brien as well as Omri, Emma, Allison, Anna, Amber and Savannah, as well as our two really great spring interns, Emily and Grace. They're busy keeping track of Twitter and live tweets and questions and all of that. We couldn't do it without them. We also couldn't do this without you, our audience. So if you have two minutes, there's a link on the screen. If you have two minutes to take our survey, we'd really appreciate it. We read every response. And if you had any issues with the technical quality, the audio quality, if you have ideas for future topics, if you wanted to ask additional questions, and I know we didn't get to all the questions that came in today, but we got to a fair number of them. But if you have any comments or feedback about our briefing, please let us know. It means a lot when people take time out of their day to share with us how we could do better. We will go ahead and wrap there. We are just a few hours away from the end of this Friday and I am, for one, I'm really looking forward to this weekend. It's gonna be gorgeous spring weather here in the nation's capital. Thank you so much for everyone joining us today. Happy weekend to everybody and to our panelists, TGIF. Thanks so much.