Keene, New Hampshire – The Center for Climate Preparedness and Community Resilience at Antioch University New England (AUNE) has launched its inaugural year with a major Northeast regional conference, a topical webinar series, and a funded doctoral fellowship. Its programming is focused on building the capacity of communities to identify and strengthen the connected public health, economic, environmental and social aspects that contribute to community preparedness and resilience.
“A healthy community is one that is able to withstand and bounce back from unexpected stresses and shocks,” said Abigail Abrash Walton, the co-director of the program and faculty member at AUNE. “We focus on local-level solutions for climate change preparedness and resilience, because the effects of climate change are felt most directly and keenly at the local level. Municipal, county, and regional decision makers and local community members are on the front lines of building resilience.”
The Center’s first doctoral fellow, Christa Daniels (Koehler), AICPm manages the programs and graduate assistants who help advance that mission. Daniels, a city planner and climate adaption professional, specializes in resiliency and sustainability planning, having facilitated strategies in Pittsburg, Penn., Portland, Ore., New Hampshire’s Monadnock region, New York state, New Jersey and Bridgeport, Conn. Herpast experience also includes working for the United Nations, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services and as a city planner for Keene, New Hampshire.
Daniels was also instrumental in coordinating the conference from which AUNE’s Center for Climate Preparedness and Community Resilience was launched.
AUNE’s Center for Climate Preparedness and Community Resilience was launched at the Local Solutions: Northeast Climate Preparedness Conference in partnership with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier this year. The Center is again partnering with EPA to deliver a webinar series, based on the conference workshop sessions, and designed to make this capacity-building programming more widely accessible.
The next webinar, “Green Infrastructure and Flood Resiliency-Land Use Management as an Adaptation Strategy in the Built Environment,” is on Thursday, January 29 at 12 pm. The webinar will focus on assessment, planning, and adaptation not only to better prepare for the next emergency, but to sustainably manage flooding, and storm water to maintain human health and a vibrant local economy. The following months’ webinar topic is “Collaborating for Resilience: Reaching the Most Vulnerable Populations and Getting the Message Out.” To register or learn more about these webinars please visit the Center’s website: .
The mission of AUNE’s Center for Climate Preparedness and Community Resilience is to prepare, respond and recover in the face of climate impacts and other disruptions through collaborative, innovative solutions. The center delivers applied research, consulting, and education and training. Its focus is on building capacity for preparedness locally, with a view to resilience globally and with an explicit awareness of social and climate justice.
About Antioch University. AUNE offers the first-in-the-U.S. master’s program for climate adaptation professionals and is home to the first-in-the-country Environmental Studies and Educating for Sustainability graduate programs and Conservation Psychology Institute, and offers an MBA in Sustainability as well as Clinical and Applied Psychology. Learn more at www.antiochne.edu.
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