With 95,000 miles of shoreline, U.S. coastal areas were home to 128 million people in 2018, or 40 percent of the country’s population. If our coastal areas were a country, they would rank third globally in gross domestic product, behind only the U.S. and China.

But climate change is making it increasingly precarious to live on the coasts. Sea level rise, as well as more frequent and powerful storms, are now inescapable threats to coastal communities, infrastructure, and economies. Between 2000 and 2017, for example, 13 major storms on the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts each caused more than $10 billion in damage. Faced with dramatic changes to their environment, coastal communities are grappling with difficult questions of whether to stay and invest billions of dollars in fortification, or move away through a process called managed retreat.

Today FLH Fellow Dona Stewart releases a report, titled Coastal Risk is Rising: How Will We Respond?, examining the costs of staying in at-risk coastal communities and the options of moving away.

Please join the Future of Land and Housing program at New America and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting as we present Dr. Stewart's research and discuss how coastal communities and local and federal decision-makers are adapting to climate change, with a focus on managed retreat.

Agenda:

Coastal Risk is Rising: An Overview of Report Findings

Dona Stewart

Fellow, Future of Land and Housing program at New America

Discussion: How are Coastal Communities Responding to Sea Rise?

Dona Stewart

FLH Fellow

Halle Parker

Environment Reporter, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate and 2021 Pulitzer Center Connected Coastlines grantee

Jeff Goodell

Author, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World

Yuliya Panfil (moderator)

Director, Future of Land and Housing program