With support from California Climate Investments, the Adapting to Rising Tides (ART) program at the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) is providing research, guidance, tools, and staff support to help Bay Area agencies and organizations understand, communicate, and begin to resolve complex climate change issues.
The resources ART has developed are enabling shoreline adaptation action that is faster, more equitable, and coordinated. This includes BCDC’s Community Vulnerability and Community-Based Organization Directory Map. This resource includes local information about income, race, language spoken, age, displacement/gentrification, and pollution burden. In Spring 2022, BCDC re-launched the map with new information about community based organizations that are active in the Bay Area, gathered via community survey of groups active around the Bay. This information can be used to help identify partnerships for meaningful community engagement during project planning and development.
ART also recently published the Adaptation Roadmap, which is a practitioner’s guide to planning and implementing a collaborative, equitable, integrative, and flexible approach to sea level rise adaptation. The guide provides a practical resource to guide users through the steps for moving beyond sea level rise vulnerability to develop collaboratively built and equitable outcomes to reduce flood risks and prepare communities to make long-term decisions about shoreline adaptation.
The ART program is also making inroads demystifying the magnitude of adaptation costs in the Bay Area. Through the publication of the white paper Bridging the Gap: Funding Sea Level Rise Adaptation in the Bay Area and an ongoing partnership with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Association of Bay Area Governments to identify the costs, funding sources, and funding gaps, ART is laying the foundation for long-term investment in adaptation.
Next up is the Shoreline Adaptation Project Map (SAPMAP). This new resource under development with spatially tracking San Francisco Bay shoreline projects to adapt to rising sea level and regional progress on shoreline resilience goals. The map of projects will be publicly available on a web-based platform and will track progress and gaps in sea level rise adaptation projects planned along the San Francisco Bay shoreline.
“Doing adaptation right in the Bay Area means that practitioners and communities have the guidance, data, and support network they need at their fingertips. The ART program helps build capacity for adaptation plans and projects while moving the region forward together,” explains Jessica Fain, BCDC’s Planning Director.