CAW Newsletter: Spring 2024 

Closing Today!

Call for Speakers and Call for Art for the 2024 CAW Climate Summit

Share your work, knowledge, and art at the 2024 Coastal Adaptation Workgroup (CAW) Climate Summit. This biennial event will feature stories about local climate impacts and how communities are adapting to those changes in the region and beyond. Youth, students, people with lived or learned experience of climate impacts, people working on connected challenges in the region (e.g., housing security, racial and social justice, public health, etc.), researchers, changemakers, and artists are all encouraged to submit an idea.  

Seeking short presentation ideas (8-minute presentation followed by a 5-minute discussion) with a preference for the following themes:

• Recent Learnings in Adaptation Research and Practice
• Community Partnerships and Collaboration
• The Stories We Don’t Tell: What Can We Learn from Mistakes?
• Looking Out: Resilience Efforts Beyond the NH Seacoast

Seeking art ideas whether written and visual art (e.g., writers, painters, photographers, etc.) and/or audio-based art (e.g., poetry, music, etc.) related to climate change impacts and human resilience.  

Submit your presentation or artwork idea here by the end of the day Monday, May 13, 2024. The form should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. You will be notified by May 31, 2024. 

Contact Lucy.L.Perkins@des.nh.gov with questions about the event or for more information visitCAW’s website. 

Funding Opportunity:
NH Coastal Resilience Grant proposals due 5/31

The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (NHDES) Coastal Program is requesting 2024 Coastal Resilience Grant (CRG) applications for projects. For the purposes of the CRG funding opportunity, coastal resilience is the capacity of a coastal community or coastal system to adapt in a changing climate—not only measured by the capacity to “bounce back” quickly from shocks and stresses like storms, but also, and perhaps more importantly, measured by the capacity to “leap forward” by fostering sustained and equitable achievement of community goals and ensuring the social, economic, environmental, and cultural wellbeing of all peoples and habitats over the long-term.

The CRG funding opportunity supports projects that build capacity, advance planning, and develop designs to increase coastal resilience, with specific focus on community and/or habitat resilience. Projects must take place in one or more of New Hampshire’s Coastal Zone communities which include Dover, Durham, Exeter, Greenland, Hampton, Hampton Falls, Madbury, New Castle, Newfields, Newington, Newmarket, North Hampton, Portsmouth, Rollinsford, Rye, Seabrook, and Stratham. Eligible applicants include coastal municipalities, quasi-governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, academic institutions, and state agencies. Approximately $100,000 in CRG funding is available. Applicants must request a minimum of $9,000 and no more than $30,000 per project. Funds are made available to the NHDES Coastal Program through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office for Coastal Management, under the Coastal Zone Management Act.

NEW: Climate Resilience Funding Database for NH & ME

Funding is one of the largest barriers to implementing climate resilience projects. To assist communities with awareness of current funding opportunities, the Climate Ready Coast – Southern Maine project team and NH Coastal Adaptation Workgroup assembled a database of federal, state, and private grant and funding programs that could be used to support all stages of coastal resilience projects, including planning, site assessment, engineering and design, implementation, land acquisition, and monitoring. For each funding opportunity, there is information about eligible applicants, goals, eligible uses, funding limits, match requirements, previously funded projects, and links to more information.

Photo credit: Elise Sullivan

Join an Upcoming “Adapting Together” Workshop

The first Adapting Together Workshop was held on Friday in Portsmouth. There are three more events planned around the watershed – don’t miss it!

New Hampshire is changing. Increased flooding, drought, heat waves, damaged road networks, and extreme storms are more commonplace. In this time of change, you can inform Adapting Together, a community-guided funding program intended to help all residents of the Great Bay Watershed adapt and thrive. Attend an Adapting Together Workshop this spring and put your experience and knowledge to work in ways that will benefit your community. Your input will help shape a community-guided program that funds high impact projects that support natural resources and people. This program will begin in 2025.

Audience: Municipal officials (staff and volunteer), Natural Resource Providers, Social Service Providers, Recreation Use Providers, Cultural Service Providers, or anyone whose work will be touched by climate impacts in the Great Bay Watershed of New Hampshire.

Workshop Dates and Locations (Choose 1)
Lunch or supper provided. Visa gift cards available to thank you for your participation.

• May 22, 9:00 am to 1:30 pm Rochester Public Works
• May 29, 2:00 to 6:30 pm Wakefield Gafney Library
• June 13, 2:30 to 7:30 pm Kingston Community Library

At the workshop, you will…

• Share your community needs with regard to the impacts of climate change;
• Identify projects that would help your community address those needs;
• Network with other communities and technical assistance providers;
• Share what would make participating in this funding program easy for you;
• Walk away with ideas to collaborate on climate resilience projects.

More information can be found at https://prepestuaries.org/adapting-together/

This project is supported by the Great Bay 2030 partnership, which is funded by the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.

5/23: NHPR By Degrees Climate Summit

On May 23rd, NHPR is hosting the annual By Degrees Climate Summit in collaboration with NHPBS. You can register for this free event here. Opening remarks will be presented by Mary Stampone, who serves as New Hampshire State Climatologist and as an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of New Hampshire. The event will also feature two panels: The first on what’s being done regionally to mitigate destructive flooding, from the Seacoast to rural agricultural communities inland; and the second on the role journalism can play in affecting community action and accountability.

NH Climate-related News

• Rising Tides Pictures Both Striking and Stark – Picturing Rising Tides coverage in the Union Leader
• Federal Funds Approved to Repair Seacoast Storm Damage and Improve Climate Resilience [Ian Lenahan, Portsmouth Herald]

What are CAW members reading and listening to?

Here’s a roundup of what some CAW members are reading and listening to lately. Have more recommendations for us? Please send them our way!

• Insuring the Future of Our Communities, article by Matt Horton and Anne Bovaird Nevins
• Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, by Erik Larson
• The Women, by Kristin Hannah
• There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, by Hanif Abdurraqib
• Bookshops & Bonedust, by Travis Baldree
• The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride
• Seek Higher Ground: The Natural Solution to Our Urgent Flooding Crisis, by Tim Palmer
• Small Town, Big Oil: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the Richest Man in the World―And Won, by David W. Moore
• Say the Quiet Part Out Loud, by Bina Patel
• Nice is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness, by C.J. Pascoe

This newsletter is brought to you by the NH Coastal Adaptation Workgroup, a collaboration of organizations working to assist communities in NH’s coastal watershed to prepare for the impacts of extreme weather and long-term climate change by providing resources, facilitation, and guidance that enhances readiness and resilience.

www.nhcaw.org