GoToMeeting Auto Voice >> This conference will now be recorded.

Heather Tabisola >> Officially, good morning everyone and welcome to the 2020 Fall EcoFOCI seminar series.

My name is Heather Tabisola. I am the co-lead of the seminar with Jens Nielsen and Jens will be monitoring the chat throughout the series.

This seminar is part of NOAA's EcoFOCI bi-annual seminar series that's focused on the ecosystems of the North Pacific Ocean, Bering Sea, and US Arctic to improve understanding of ecosystem dynamics and applications of that understanding to the management of living marine resources.

Since October 21st, 1986, the seminar has provided an opportunity for research scientists and practitioners to meet, present, and develop their ideas to provoke conversations on subjects pertaining to fisheries oceanography or regional issues in Alaska's marine ecosystems.

Today's talk is the first of our seminar series this season. And we sincerely thank you for joining us today as we begin, yet again, our all virtual series. Our speaker lineup can be found via the One NOAA seminar series and on the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Lab calendar of events.

Join us at 10 AM Pacific time on Wednesdays through December 16th.

Unless noted, there are, I think, two of the seminars that will be held on Mondays.

Please double-check that your microphones are muted and you are not using video.

And during the talk, please feel free to type your questions into the chat, and we'll address those at the end of the talk.

I am more than excited to introduce Dr. Victoria Herrmann, president and managing Director at the Arctic Institute in Washington, DC.

In addition to managing the Institute and sitting on the Board of Directors, her research and writing focuses on climate change, community adoption, resilient development, and migration.

She currently serves as the Principal Investigator of the National Science Foundation-funded Arctic Migration and Harmony, an interdisciplinary network on lateral species, settlements, and cultures on the move, a major international initiative to integrate discipline isolated research on changing Arctic migration patterns, and to advance knowledge on the movement of peoples, economies, cultures, and ecosystems.

Beyond the Arctic, she studies climate-induced displacement, migration, and relocation in North America and Fiji, as a National Geographic Explorer.

In her first National Geographic project, America's Eroding Edges.

Her project Rise Up to Rising Tides is creating an online matchmaking platform that connects pro bono experts with climate-affected communities.

And the project seeks to safeguard heritage by connecting national expertise to some of the 13 million Americans at risk of being displaced due to rising waters in coming years.

Dr. Herman has also testified before the US Senate. 

She contributes to the Guardian and Scientific American on climate policy and she was named one of the most 100 influential people in climate policy worldwide in 2019, by Apolitical.

She also serves on the Arctic Research Consortium, or ARCUS, of the United States Board of Directors, on the Steering Committee of the Climate Migration Network, and is an IF/THEN Ambassador for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Today, she will be discussing climate change adaption in coastal communities--finding courage, compassion, and commitment to act in the Arctic and South Pacific, using the lens of two current projects, Rise Up to Rising Tides and the Arctic Migration in Harmony Research Coordination Network.

And with that, thank you everybody, for joining us and I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Herrmann.

Victoria Herrmann >> Thank you so much, Heather, for that warm introduction.

Hi, everyone.

I hope you're off to a wonderful Wednesday in our virtual world.

I figure it's good to put a face to the name that you see.

So I will be keeping my camera on, though.

Unfortunately, I cannot share my PowerPoint, so we will have to leave it in this format. 

For my talk today, I want to take you all back in time and to the East Coast.

Growing up amongst the smog-filled highways and overcrowded shopping malls of my hometown, Paramus, New Jersey, I took comfort in knowing that the cathedrals America built to artists--the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art--were only a stone throw away.

And on rare weekends, I could escape the sorrows of suburbia to visit the altar-like galleries of our country's great cultural institutions.

Most of these museum trips were made from New Jersey to Manhattan by way of the Bronx.

It's there on a street of broken windows and forgotten histories that my family's factory has sat from generation to generation.

My father and his father, both Renaissance men of small business manufacturing, would bring me to work on Saturdays when the machines were asleep and the factory floor was settled into a calm cold.

My father and grandfather welded in a dimly lit corner in the immense space.

And I would sit at his desk with a sketchbook and colored pencils in hand, meticulously shading in my own version of Van Gogh's monochromatic Sunflowers.

When the work was done and the machines resumed their slumber, my father, grandfather, and I would pile into his van with animated eagerness, finally, ready to fulfill that early morning promise of a trip over the Harlem River to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

If I close my eyes, I can still touch the happiness that we felt as we ascended those grandiose marble stairs and got lost in the picturing of the past.

My most powerful childhood memory, however, was made in one of those ritual car rides from the Bronx to Manhattan.

It was one of those early morning trips when I was around nine years old when I first saw the numbers--176924--inked unforgivingly into my grandfather's forearm.

"Is that a tattoo?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied. "Do you know what it's from?"

I shook my head.

He smiled and took a deep breath.

It was on that morning ride to the museum that I first learned what the Holocaust was.

As the grandchild of Auschwitz Concentration Camp Survivors, I did not grow up hearing blissful stories of their youth.

My family's history is filled with cattle cars in Germany and refugee camps in France.

Of my relatives in this photo, my grandfather, the little boy in the bottom left, was the only one to survive in his immediate family. Only two cousins out of our entire family survived.

And yet in the face of genocide, of displacement and forced migration, my family's traditions have proven resilient.

A continent away from where my grandparents were born and two generations from the extermination of nearly every branch of my family tree, my life is still cradled by their cultural heritage.

I light handles each Friday night in gratitude of good times and can confidently fall back on the social safety net of my community in times of trouble.

I'm able to rely on this community because their heritage was preserved and empowered at every step of their exodus.

My grandparents' history was documented in the Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive--a repository of Holocaust testimonies. Their heritage of food, faith, and music was uplifted and used as a bridge to build relationships with other immigrant communities in New York City.

And the tangible infrastructure that synagogues offered across America created a physical space to retain and practice and foster our traditions that allowed me to learn traditional dances and songs at an early age.

That documentation of loss, dialog, and bridge building between and creation of physical space for cultural heritage, was key to my community's resilience to the local migrations we've experienced in our new home over the past 60 years.

From the dispersion of Jews across metropolitan suburbs, to hurricane Sandy's displacement, we've been able to move, build, and bounce back together as a community.

Climate change and the extreme weather events it intensifies, are today and will continue to be the largest catalyst for migration and the biggest threat to displacing communities.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center estimates that the number of new displacements associated with weather events will reach 22 million for 2019 making last year one of the worst years for weather-induced displacement since records began.

The US is not immune to climate-induced displacement, migration, and relocation.

96% of Americans live in counties that have been hit by a major weather disaster in the last five years.

In 2017, hurricane Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 near Rockport, Texas and dumped more than 30 inches of rain on 6.9 million people.

That rainfall displaced over 30,000 people and damaged over 200,000 homes.

In 2018, California experienced its costliest, deadliest, and largest wildfire, costing 24.5 billion dollars and thousands of displaced households.

And last year, in 2019, historic Midwest inland flooding inundated millions of acres of agriculture, cities and towns, and created displacement in rural communities.

If we look at the map from last year alone, the US experienced 14 one billion dollar disasters.

No matter what corner of this country, you call home, whether it be the coast, the mountains, the Great Lakes, or the Great Plains, climate change is already affecting your hometown.

Each of these disasters disrupt our connected national food systems, our transportation routes, our shared federal budget, and where people choose to live.

Those towns, communities, neighborhoods, and individuals displaced by these and other disasters. Each hold histories, traditions, landscapes, and cultural practices that are at risk of being lost or critically damaged from climate impacts.

I know because I've seen and heard America's climate change story firsthand.

In 2016 and 2017, my research partner, Eli Keene, and I traveled across the United States and US territories on a research project called America's Eroding Edges.

Our journey took us from Alaska to American Samoa, from Mississippi, to Miami, to hear, see, and experience America's climate story in diverse coastal communities.

Funded by National Geographic, and partnered with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, we interviewed over 350 local leaders to better understand the effects of sea level rise, erosion, and extreme storms on US and US territory coastal communities

and to identify what was needed to best support local leaders in need of adaptation and considering relocation today.

Now, to be honest, the results of that research surprised me.

Because, despite being seeped in a strong, resilient cultural community at home, when I began work on America's Eroding Edges, cultural heritage was not included in my career.

I have never heard the term "historic preservation" used as technical vocabulary.

I had no idea what a Main Street was or that the National Trust for Historic Preservation existed.

I was an academic researcher.

I worked with scientists and traditional knowledge holders.

I protested alongside activists and advocated alongside policymakers, but I had never met a preservationist at any climate negotiation event or rally that I had been to.

But, when I asked what climate impacts were affecting communities most, local leaders quickly moved past expected answers of financial loss and infrastructure damage to tell me stories of how a rapidly warming world was disrupting their histories, their culture, languages, traditions, very identities. 

In Aunu'u, American Samoa, community champion, Peter Taliva'a showed how higher tides are flooding taro fields, killing the central staple food of both everyday meals and ceremonies.

Without taro, there is limited traditional livelihoods and local food supply on the island, bringing the daunting question of abandoning their village and relocating to the main island of American Samoa.

In Miami, Florida, community advocate and biomedical scientist, Dr. Kilan Ashad-Bishop, explained how sea level rise threats to the city's multi-billion dollar waterfront were exacerbating gentrification and displacement in the high ground community of historic Little Haiti.

And in the native village of Teller, Alaska, Mayor Blanche Okbaok-Garnie, showed how thawing permafrost and eroding shorelines are endangering generations of her family and other neighbors family's graves

Teller is one of 31 villages at risk of immediate displacement from flooding and erosion across the state of Alaska.

From hundreds of interviews across America, the one unavoidable takeaway message is this-- climate change is, at its core, a story about the looming reality of losing the places and histories that make us who we are.

Now, let's stop for a moment and think about that, because I can continue on and share results from peer review articles, we can talk about your role as scientists, scholars, and educators engaged in climate research.

But sometimes, we disconnect our work of studying ecosystems in the North Pacific Ocean, or our research on the influences of biological and physical factors on marine ecosystems, with our identity beyond our work, us as humans, as community members, maybe as coastal residents ourselves.

So instead, I'm going to ask you to think about who you are, and specifically, I want you to think about a place that has shaped you as a person.

Maybe it's some contemplative path you like walking on with your kids or your spouse on the beach.

Maybe it's your favorite neighborhood spot to grab a bite to eat.

It could be in Alaska, or California, Washington state, or somewhere else across the world. 
But conjure up someplace important to you and think about the people you know there and the experiences that you've had.

For me, I'm thinking back to my father and grandfather.

And the place our close-knit community in northern New Jersey comes together.

It's a small social hall tucked back from the main road.

The building is hidden by a curtain of trees and it sits next to this babbling brook I used to play in as a child.

It's the place where the older women of my community taught me how to braid strands of dough to make challah.

It's where I met my best friend 25 years ago.

It's where my siblings and I recently celebrated my father's contributions to Tikkun Olam, repairing the world.

It's a place of friends and neighbors that have supported me my whole life.

OK.

So, does everyone have that place?

Yeah?

I can't see you, so I'm assuming you are nodding your heads at me.

Good.

Now, I want you to erase that place from your life.

Not only are you never going back, but you're not going to share it with friends, your family, your kids.

Everyone you knew there is scattered to different locations.

The connections you have had that were unique to that place, the words you use, the places that held emotional attachment.

Those are gone for good.

How's everyone feeling?

If you're like me, probably not so great, but maybe we're starting to think about these places in relation to who we are beyond our research.

Too often, we forget how the places in our lives define us and our communities.

We've become mobile.

Some of us move for college, others for jobs.

We lose ourselves in the melting pots of big cities.

That mobility is a good thing.

It exposes us to a wider world and it makes us more adaptive to change.

But, through all of that change, we know the places we hold dear remain intact.

This will not always be the case.

There will come a point in the not-too-distant future where those places who matter so much to people, will be affected by sea level rise, extreme storms, erosion, beyond the point of saving.

And this is true across America's coastlines, in island states and territories, and flood zones where communities are tasked with the impossible conversation of thinking about relocating to new cities, towns, counties, further inland in search of a safer home.

The loss and damage of cultural heritage that comes from severing a community's attachment to a place-based identity is both emotionally demoralizing in the short-term and hinders long-term community recovery and resilience. Severing social cohesion, dislocating local knowledge on how to absorb shock events, and weakening cultural practices like food, faith, and music, that play a vital role in building friendships in new hometowns all erode the adaptability of individuals and social safety nets of communities.

And climate change is not race, gender, or income neutral.

Its impacts disproportionately affect low-income communities, communities of color, indigenous communities, and women. Centuries of economic, social, and environmental injustices have made it difficult to secure the resources and ownership to prepare for and recover from disastrous events along our country's coastlines.

When I traveled across America back in 2016 and 2017 to learn what local leaders needed most for resilient climate migration and in-place adaptation, many already had a vision for a sustainable future.

But they lacked resources to document their historic sites and cultures that would be lost or severely damaged.

They lacked knowledge of where best to migrate to once a disaster hit, and pathways of dialog to their community, from their community, to those receiving cities, and counties, that would be the destinations of displaced residents.

And they lacked physical spaces to house their heritage assets and practice cultural traditions in their new hometowns. Documentation, dialog, and dwellings, the same three keystones to my family's resilience.

Today, I'm focused on these three action areas at the nexus of cultural heritage and climate change adaptation through programming partnered with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

With the support from the J. M. Kaplin Fund's Innovation Prize, we're creating a skills-based volunteering platform for climate heritage adaptation, including projects to facilitate dialog between displaced and receiving communities.

That platform called Rise Up to Rising Tides is a new matchmaking tool.

It's an interactive website that brings community needs in contact with pro bono experts.

Rising Tides is connecting dozens of communities today with volunteer professionals looking to donate their skills through one-hour advice, phone calls, or fully fledged long-term projects.

Pilot projects over the past year have included a series of dialog sessions around food, faith, and music between lowland community representatives in Louisiana at risk of displacement and inland receiving community leaders to build friendships and next steps for resilient migration.

And together with National Geographic's Photo Camp, we've worked with youth leaders in the Mississippi Delta to document cultural loss and adaptation.

Through a week long photography workshop, students take photos of their community's livelihoods, performing arts, social practices, and traditional craftsmanship that is tied spiritually to important landscapes, plants, animals, and ecosystems that cannot change as quickly as is required to keep up with the rate of change in the environment around them.

We're sharing these stories through their photography in Washington, DC, with a national audience of policymakers.

And in American Samoa with funding from the American Geophysical Union and a partnership with the Boys and Girls Club there, we are creating physical spaces, dwellings for other islanders that are moving to American Samoa from other islands in the South Pacific to have spaces to not only practice traditions like dance and song but to share that, with their newfound neighbors and friends.

Now these ad hoc projects through Rising Tides are important, but they are not enough.

I am just one climate advocate.

You, each of you in this webinar, are changemakers for the communities you work alongside and the ecosystems,you research that support them. Every individual in this webinar has a part to play in transforming our coastlines through supporting adaptation or communities' decision making around migration.

To support costal adaptation in place, and resilient migration for America's climate affected communities, you must both be a committed researcher and a courageous, compassionate, human being ready to understand the cultural loss climate change brings, and ready to work with local leaders to support adaptation and migration decisions.

Now, that also means that it's time to reach further and create new professional partnerships and personal relationships with those working in climate heritage.

We need you to partner with mayors and county officials to act boldly and commit to climate action in every hometown.

We need you to partner with preservation officers and Main Street managers who inspire us with stories of the ultimate recycling using historic buildings that save energy, land, and place.

We need you to partner with Indigenous knowledge holders and traditional architects who design for our future coastlines so that both migrants and receiving communities are safe.

We need you to partner with urban planners to help us re-imagine more equitable climate-resilient spaces.

And we need you to partner with public historians with museums and libraries who help document the unavoidable loss and damage of intangible traditions.

And we need you as researchers from every discipline to help us better understand threats and inform more sustainable management and policies.

The places we love and care for so desperately along our coastlines not only need preservation expertise, but they need pathways to work with scientists with researchers in big and small ways to support coastal communities.

Now, to do that, I have a bit of homework in this first seminar for you.

I want you to think about your own research, what you're up to, this year, and next.

And think about how climate-induced migration and cultural heritage intersect with your work.

I want you to commit to finding a pathway forward to connect with historic preservationists, with local leaders, with traditional knowledge holders to listen compassionately and act together.

If you don't know where to start, reach out and ask for help on the Rising Tides platform. Or if you're ready to volunteer with a community, sign up as a skills-based volunteer, and look through our science-based projects.

And finally, there are only 56 of us on this call.

We need many, many more climate champions than that.

Bring this message to five of your colleagues who aren't here today.

Now, I know that the drumbeat of depressing news is pretty hopeless and helpless, right?

We seem to have done too little too late. And most days I do have moments of feeling helpless, feeling hopeless in a climate-resilient future. But then I think about my own family's story of displacement, of migration and the strong cultural community that raised me, how we found hope, even in the darkest of times.

Each spring, communities around the world commemorate the people, communities, and cultures lost during the Holocaust.

I usually spend Holocaust Remembrance Day listening to stories of survivors at local events here in DC and watching my grandfather's personal testimony on YouTube.

This passing down of history from one generation to the next, the preservation of our heritage so that others can rely on its foundation is known in Hebrew as l'dor vador, in a word, it means resilience.

Sea level rise, erosion, and extreme weather events are already causing the displacement and resettlement of communities on every continent. 

Grounding climate policy in l'dor vador and resilience, including and safeguarding cultural heritage to build resilience to the climate catastrophes we can no longer avoid, is urgent.

We cannot afford climate silence from anyone.

Inaction can't be an option. The threat to our communities, and our country is far too high.

So, as I finish this talk and open it up for, hopefully, a robust question and answer, my one takeaway to you is this: Be a climate hero. Work collaboratively and compassionately and find the courage to act together.

Thank you.

Going to stop showing my screen and see if we have any Q&A.

Heather Tabisola >> I'll jump on with you.

Thank you so much!

I apologize for the light. I did not plan to go on video, but since Victoria is on video, I will join her this morning.

I always give them a round of applause for everybody on here, because they can't, but, thank you so much.

That-that's, it's really nice to hear, like your personal connection, and that story of like, where kind of your interest in this began.

Guys, if you have questions, please go ahead and put them in the chat, and Jens will help monitor that, and I can kinda move us around here.

My, my husband is actually--not that everybody needs to know this--my husband's from Oahu, from Hawaii, and grew up, his family's there so we go back pretty often.

And, you know, working in Alaska, growing up in New England, small fishing villages and having these kind of connections, and, know, and sometimes you have to actually, like, you say, step back and think about those places, and the things that make you who you are, and what you would feel like, if you actually, if they disappeared.

And what you can do to help them are kind of, know, I have two kids, teach the kids how to appreciate and be climate heroes as well, in their own right.

I mean, they're 4 and 2, so, we're getting there.

Victoria Herrmann >> Never too young to be a climate hero.

Heather Tabisola >> Correct.

They wore their RBG shirts yesterday, so, we were on a different hero board, but, yep.

Um, does anybody have questions that they want to put in the chat for Victoria here?

I'm interested...

Can you tell me more too about your visits to Alaska, maybe what villages you got to visit or people that you talked with, and tell us a little bit more about, maybe their Rising Tide contributions, and anything on that end.

Victoria Herrmann >> Sure, yeah.

So, I can talk a bit about communities that I visited and worked alongside.

And I can also talk about the Research Coordination Network that I am one of the PIs on now in case anyone wants to join that, which is also on Migrations.

So, for America's Eroding Edges, we interviewed local leaders in Teller, in Nome, in Shishmaref, Shaktoolik, Unalakleet.

And, then, from various places across Alaska.

But, based in Anchorage, so, people who were representing larger organizations that were based in Anchorage. and then, um, in addition to all that I talked about, in this presentation,

another project that I'm currently part of the leadership of is called, Migrations in Harmony, which is an NSF funded research coordination network, specifically on Arctic migrations.

And that network, which just started late spring of this year, brings together people from all sorts of disciplines.

So, ecologists and biologists, cultural heritage practitioners, traditional and Indigenous knowledge holders, educators, fishermen, public health practitioners, epidemiologists, together to jointly synthesize research that is happening on Arctic migration.

So, thinking about how there's a lot of movement in the Arctic and as someone who focuses on the human side, I don't talk very often to people who are thinking about reign shifts that exist maybe in other professional organizations or, you know, other labs and offices that don't reach my corner of academia.

And so this network is meant to bring everyone together to understand the research that is currently happening across all of these different disciplines, to synthesize all of that and prioritize what the gaps and opportunities are between these disciplines that we can collaboratively work on and apply to research grants together on.

And, that project, which, again, just got started, but we have just over 550 network members so far. We have folks all across the Arctic Nation states and all permanent participants of the Arctic Council, that are both in the network, but also in our steering committee.

So, we have been thinking about, hopefully, next year, having our first in-person kickoff event, probably in Anchorage, but definitely, in Alaska, that will focus on a scenario gameplay, through various migrations with people from across the state from the village to the state level on how to coordinate and cooperate through these various migrations from one catalyst event.

And so, that is an open invitation to anyone who is on this call to please join us in that.

I am biased because I'm one of the PIs, but we are a pretty cool network and do some, some fun things.

So, we will hopefully have that in-person meeting kickoff next year, but until then, we have a great set of webinars.

We just had one on permafrost degradation last week. In two weeks we have one on Arctic architecture and preparing the built environment for migrations.

We have another one coming up on the shared experiences of biodiversity conservation in Mexico and the Canadian Arctic.

So, lots of cool things for you to join us on, and I can drop the link to join the network in the chat.

Heather Tabisola >> Yes, please do, and then I can share that across the seminar, too.

When you were talking about bringing everybody together, I remember last year at Arctic Futures, there was a part of the session where they brought folks from all different industries and backgrounds, put everyone on stage, and also went through a whole play.

But basically, we're probably like 20, 25 people on stage, and they're like, this is what it takes to solve today's problems.

And even greater than that, it really does take more people.

But that just totally took me back to that.

And it's very true, like combining all the background information.

All right, so we have some questions.

Jens is probably telling me here, but Eric, Eric White, I see your question.

So his says, "Part of my work with NOAA is in American Samoa.
 
Can you tell me more about how the impacts, how the impacts of rising sea levels there, more about the impacts of rising sea level?"

Victoria Herrmann >> Sure.

So, as a disclaimer, I am a social scientist, right?

I am not a natural scientist, so I can only talk about the human impacts of sea level rise in American Samoa.

And they are similar to, you know, what you see in Alaska, right?

There is increased erosion along coastlines that have degraded or cut down mangroves or mangroves that were decimated in the last large tsunami that then lead to more coastal flooding with high tides.

And, particularly in villages like Leone that are, have more built infrastructure closer to where tides come in and higher tides. Community members are thinking about what happens if they have to move back. 

But in American Samoa, like in Alaska, it is a really complicated decision to move back because of the land tenure system and what happens if you leave your plot of land and are thinking about moving further inland. 

And then with taro fields, it's mostly a challenge of saltwater intrusion.

And there has been some there has been some work to start bringing those taro fields further inland.

Which works in some areas.

But as you probably know, American Samoa is pretty mountainous, the further inland you get.

And it's a bit difficult to, you know, plant and harvest taro the further inland you get.

And there are, you know, I think there are other challenges that get more to the cultural heritage and identity issue in American Samoa.

As people are thinking about like what comes next, and as people think about the shoreline and the potential for having to move which almost all of the infrastructure and land tenure is along the coastlines.

You know, one of the, one of the things that really sticks in my mind from a conversation there with a scholar who works at the community college in American Samoa, on land is blood in American Samoa, and can you move from being an ocean people to a mountain people?

And even though I had that conversation in American Samoa, that sentiment is echoed, no matter where you are, right?

How can you no longer be a fishing community in the northeast in Maine and move further inland and suddenly be a dairy farm community?

And it's a really impossible dialog to have of thinking about a new identity that you won't share with your children or your grandchildren.

Heather Tabisola >> Eric, I hope that answered your question.

Colleen.

Hi, Colleen.

Colleen says, "Wow, thank you, Victoria, for such an amazing talk.

What is one small, doable action we could do today that would help?"

Victoria Herrmann >> So from a climate adaptation side, I have two things that you can do other than vote, seeing as we are less than a week from the election, if you have not voted, make a plan to vote.

It is probably too late to apply for an absentee ballot.

Get your votes in.

That is the number one thing.

It's a small step that everyone can do for climate action. For climate adaptation, thinking of yourself, one as a person, and then a second as a professional.

So, as a person, you live in some municipality, in a city, in a town. 

Does your county, your town, your city have a climate adaptation plan? 

Go on their website and see. They likely have a greenhouse gas reduction target.

Maybe they are talking about sustainability in transportation.

But do they have a plan for climate change impacts?

If they do, see how you can get involved in making sure that that plan is equitable, is inclusive, and it's science-based, right?

There are not a lot of people that reach out to local governments and offer some help with climate adaptation. So see what is happening in your hometown.

Professionally, if you have not yet had a conversation with a cultural heritage practitioner, with a historic preservationist, with a public historian at your local library on how to partner science with historic preservation around climate impacts, a first easy step is to have a conversation.

Think about who you can reach out to.

And if you are having trouble go to riseuptorisingtides.org and we can set up that conversation. 

That is a good first step that will hopefully lead to other steps.

Whether that's a one hour conversation with a community leader who is struggling to figure out a scientific report or where to look on NOAA's website for something. Or a larger project that they might be interested in and you might have time for sometime in 2021.

Heather Tabisola >> Thank you.

All right.

Let's see a question from Marysia Szymkowiak..., Marysia, I'm sorry if I mispronounced that.

She says, "Very powerful presentation, Victoria.

Thank you.

I work in Alaska as a social scientist and many communities here are constantly bombarded by researchers.

We apologize.

How do you approach research fatigue in the communities that you visit?"

Victoria Herrmann >> Yeah, a really good question.

So I approach research fatigue, I should say that I have not done primary research since the Eroding Edges in Alaska.

So now, my work is much more on the network building on the practitioner and providing pro bono assistance to projects.

But, when I did primary research there, I approached the fatigue with what do you need, right?

So, I am here as an extractive white woman, who is not from Alaska.

I am asking you these questions.

What should I do with this?

And that is how the Rising Tides, the skills-based volunteer platform, came into existence.

That wasn't really my idea, right?

It was the idea of interviewees, saying that we don't need another report that's going to sit on a shelf in a tribal office.

We need to get on the phone with somebody.

When we have a question for how to fill out a funding form. We need someone to help us kick-off grant writing.

We need someone to help us with a cost benefit analysis that we can integrate into an assessment.

We can't afford consultants to do these tasks.

We need help doing these.

And so, that is how Rising Tides came into existence.

And I don't know that that addresses the fatigue. I think that that continually exists.

But, asking the, what can I do once I've extracted this information, that will directly serve the answers that you have given me that is not going into a report to that may or may not help you?

At least, started to build a relationship beyond a single visit.

And that, you know, continues in the other work that I'm doing with the Research Coordination Network, right?

So, that program is doing things like building out best practice, how-to manuals for connecting educators in Alaskan high schools with universities that want to do meaningful outreach that can provide funding resources and mentorship resources to students, but don't know the first step to create those relationships with educators, right?

So, a lot of my work now looks more like that of, like, you know, making connections and things.

The only primary research that I am currently doing which is happening virtually now and hopefully in person next year, is in Fiji.

And that is partnered with the Fujian government and is hopefully tied to funding decisions.

So I think the how you get around research fatigue is like find the thing that is tangible, and that is useful, which is likely not a peer-reviewed paper, or a report that doesn't have some funding or technical assistance program that's connected to it.

Heather Tabisola >> All right, let's see, we do have...

Oh! Hi, Sean.

[Laughter]

Uh.

All right, so we got some more questions from Melanie.

Hi, Melanie!

"How often does changes and fishing opportunity come up as a concern in the villages, like Nome, et cetera?

Victoria Herrmann >> Um, so, I...

I'm hesitant to say, to like speak on behalf of villages.

So I might punt this question to say that I have not had direct conversations that aren't about concrete projects that we are working on.

So I'm, yeah, I might not answer that because I don't think that I can speak for them.

Heather Tabisola >> Melanie, we can probably tag up with Gay Sheffield if you have more questions on Nome, and we can address that as well directly with her, or some of the other folks that live there.

Hongjie, it's nice to see you too!

So she says, "Hi, Victoria, very nice talk.

Thank you very much.

Can you tell me what kind of questions you asked the local leaders?"

And, I think you kind of addressed this a little bit. So, I'm just tagging up the questions.

"I'm very interested to know your interaction and communication experience, and hope to communicate with the local leaders in my hometown too."

And Hongjie, we can always provide answers with this as well, but Victoria, I will let you take this away.

Victoria Herrmann >> Sure.

So, questions that I asked were, "What impacts of environmental change are you experiencing?"

"What environmental impact, environmental changes, have impacted your local economy?"

Your, we have a list of different aspects of community activities that it might impact.

And so, we went through those.

And then, the questions that related more to policy were, "What is your relationship with the federal government in adaptation, and supporting resilience and environmental change?"

And that varied considerably across states and tribal communities, but also territories.

And then, "What support do you need from a federal government to be resilient?"

So, you know, what do you need, and then, those were, you know, they're semi-structured interviews, so it went from a 5 to 7 set of questions we asked everyone, so we had consistent answers.

But the benefit of semi-structured interviews is there is likely issues that you cannot predict to be part of the conversation that you want to still capture.

And one of our entry point questions to that bigger conversation, before we started talking about environmental changes in climate change, we asked "what is the biggest issue facing your community?"

And sometimes it was climate change, but other times it was we are down to one washing machine, because the other ones broke, and it's a public health issue now for kids who need their stuff being washed, right?

So, that is, that type of question allows for an entry point into a much wider conversation about, you know, a both community needs and community vision for the resilience and sustainability that they already have the capacity but maybe not the resources to achieve.

Heather Tabisola >> And I think ARCUS too have some things on their website as well about engaging.

So Hongjie, we can hook you up with some of that, too.

You know, engage early and often, that's what I say.

Let's see.

Shawn says, "Great talk.

Obviously, the community needs to move.

The more of those people can remain neighbors and move to similar ecosystem, the better.

The flip side is everyone should get to make their own choice in different families, and the small community will make different choices.

How do we reconcile these two competing ideas?"

Victoria Herrmann >> Yeah, so it is a tough one. 

Right?

The conversation of climate, migration, displacement, and relocation looks really different across the United States and US territories.

Having a wholesale community relocation that we see in places like Newtok in Alaska, or an Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana, look, really different from a community buyout in Staten Island, New York.

Both of those are displacements, and relocations but they look different, because communities are, have different contexts, right?

You have different connections to the landscape.

You have different connections to your neighbors, and you have different relationships to the federal government, whether you are a federally-recognized tribe, or you were just a state-recognized tribe.

Whether you are a neighborhood in major city, or you are a municipality in Nebraska that is looking for a wholesale community buyout.

How we reconcile that is for the United States to have a federal government that acknowledges that climate displacement and migration is a major issue, and the national framework for that has to exist.

Right now, all of these buyouts, all of these relocation conversations, are happening in an ad hoc manner, right?

You see this, in Alaska, with the incredible number of years it takes to accumulate resources and technical assistance to move. You see it in Staten Island where one side of the street gets a buyout and the other side that is also at risk does not and cannot afford to leave that place because their mortgage is stuck there and they can't sell, right?

And all of this comes back to a whole lot of uncertainty.

No one knows where to go, what funding is available to them and what to expect from FEMA or elsewhere in the federal government when they get to the point of having a conversation about displacement and migration.

So, how do we get around all of these diverse conversations about relocation that we are seeing in Alaska, in New York, in Washington State, in Louisiana, in Puerto Rico, in American Samoa?

You do that through a national vision and some type of acknowledgement that once you get to that point, there is a little more certainty than let me go online and see if I qualify for a buyout or let me attempt to apply for funding that I may or may not get for an emergency relocation.

So, I don't think there is a current, you know, framework available today that accounts for all of that diversity.

But I hope that in a future iteration of our federal government, they create that framework, so that people can account for that.

And I think you're on mute, Heather.

Heather Tabisola >> Thank you.

And so, for the last, I think we only have time for one more question.

So, this is from Morgan Corey, "I appreciated your personal narratives, personal narrative storytelling to ground climate impacts in reality, already happening now, rather than talking about an abstract concept.

Can you share any other effective techniques for communicating about climate change?"

Victoria Herrmann >> Um, yeah, so, you know, there are a lot of best practices on climate change communication.

I think one of them is, what I just did today, is to center yourself, as a human being, who is also a scientist, who is also a researcher.

Right?

We all have multiple identities.

Acknowledging that means that you have potentially one more point of connection with your audience.

The more possibilities of connection you can build between yourself and your audience means that you have more potential points for trust building, because the main thing that you want in climate communication is for your audience to trust you as a science communicator as someone who they can take your words and look them up later to see what comes next.

They can share them with a friend confidently.

If you're just presenting as one of your identities, they either trust that identity, or they don't, right?

You will never know all the things about your audience, right, the person that you meet at the bus stop, that you start up a conversation on climate change.

The person that you are testifying in front of in Congress, your Mayor, or a councilwoman or man, who asks you to brief them on climate change, right?

You know their one, their one identity, but there are a whole bunch of others.

So if you can build up who you are as a communicator, and share a bit more about your relationship to climate change, that includes you being a researcher, a scientist, a scholar, but also maybe something else.

You're giving, you're inviting your audience to get to know you, and to have a conversation that they hopefully move away from with more ambition to act.

And then the other thing that I would say is, you know, no matter who you were talking to about climate change, always have a call to action.

Like, I gave everyone homework here today.

That is a good communication tool.

One thing that that person can take away, whether that is learning more, telling their family member about what they learned, visiting some, visiting NOAA's website, right, some type of next step gives people agency, and everyone likes feeling like they can do something, because, if not, then you're inviting that helplessness of not knowing what to do in climate change.

Heather Tabisola >> That's a good answer.

I love the call to action.

It's like, one of my favorites.

So should we all report our homework back to you, is that...

[Laughter]

Victoria Herrmann >> Yes, please.

If you could, because, you know, my students midterms coming in are not enough, so, please, send me, send me this homework.
 
Heather Tabisola >> Yeah, yeah.

Please send your EcoFOCI homework to me, I'll collate, and I'll send it to Victoria.

No problem.

So, I just want to say thank you so much yet again for joining us today and taking time out of your immensely busy schedule to talk with us.

And folks, if you guys have more questions, please reach out to Victoria directly or feel free if you miss her e-mail, you can message me and I will forward it on.

And then next week, join us back here again for our Lightning talk.

We have three different talks next week that we'll go through and I'm looking forward to virtually seeing all of you again.

Dr. Herrmann, thank you, yet again.

Thank you.

Thank you, everybody, for joining us, and have a wonderful rest of your day!

Victoria Herrmann >> Thank you all.