Community Climate Action Plan

The debate is over: we know that human actions are causing the earth to warm. But it is less clear what climate change means for us and our communities. Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences designed the Community Climate Action Plan (CCAP) as a mechanism to help you and your community sort out what climate change will mean for your economy and way of life – and what you want to do about it.

We need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to minimize the extent of warming. But we also need to cope with the warming we know is coming, even if we stopped all emissions tomorrow. There will be more rain and less snow, a longer mud season, longer droughts, sea level rise, northward shifts in the ranges of plants and animals, insect outbreaks, and an increase in the frequency and intensity of weather events such as nor’easters. What this means for your own community will be a function of the local environment, and what your community cares most about sustaining.

The CCAP will help you decide how to deal with climate change in your community. What businesses are vulnerable to global warming? What businesses might even thrive? We conduct an assessment of climate change vulnerability in your community, and then help you figure out what actions will make your community stronger and more resilient to expected changes.

This how Manomet can help your community:

1. We help begin the climate change conversation in your community: We form a local Climate Change Action Committee comprised of citizens to lead the community conversation.
2. We build the community's understanding of climate change: We arrange evening forums where current information about climate change can be discussed and evaluated by community members, and where your questions about climate change can be asked and answered. How will climate change affect the economic, social, and environmental values of your community?
3. We help the community draft an action plan for mitigating and adapting to climate change: The Committee generates, with our assistance, a set of actions that the community can take to help sustain, or even improve, quality of life with climate change.

For more information about this project please contact:

John Hagan, Ph.D.
Phone: 207-721-9040
Email
Web: www.manometmaine.org

These fishermen enjoy fly-fishing from a canoe. Lakes like this, and the fish that inhabit them, will feel the effects of a changing climate that's slowly raising temperatures around the globe.

Manomet's Community Climate Action Plan can help communities like the one pictured here decide how to deal with Climate Change.

Examples of industries that may, over time, be adversely impacted by global climate change include maple syrup/sugar productions, tourism, forestry, skiing, and game fishing.