At What Point Managed Retreat with Radley Horton

October 4, 2020

Following up on the Managed Retreat conference at Columbia U

Peter and Tyler welcome Radley Horton to the show. Radley was the co-chair of the At What Point Managed Retreat? Resilience Building in the Coastal Zone Conference at Columbia University that took place in June and discusses how the conference was received and what some of the take-aways are.

Radley Horton is a Lamont Associate Research Professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. His research focuses on climate extremes, tail risks, climate impacts, and adaptation. Radley was a Convening Lead Author for the Third National Climate Assessment. He currently Co-Chairs Columbia’s Adaptation Initiative, and is Principal Investigator for the Columbia University-WWF ADVANCE partnership, and the NOAA-Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments-funded Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast. He is also the Columbia University lead for the Department of Interior-funded Northeast Climate Science Center, and is a PI on an NSF-funded Climate Change Education Partnership Project. Radley has been a Co-leader in the development of a global research agenda in support of the United Nations Environmental Program’s Programme on Vulnerability, Impacts, and Adaptation (PROVIA) initiative. He serves on numerous national and international task forces and committees, including the Climate Scenarios Task Force in support of the 2018 National Climate Assessment, and frequently appears on national and international television, radio, and in print. Radley teaches in Columbia University’s Sustainable Development department.

Show Transcription
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Peter Ravella & Tyler Buckingham

Peter and Tyler joined forces in 2015 and from the first meeting began discussing a project that would become Coastal News Today and the American Shoreline Podcast Network. At the time, Peter and Tyler were coastal consultants for Pete’s firm, PAR Consulting, LLC. In that role, they worked with coastal communities in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, engaged in grant writing, coastal project development, shoreline erosion and land use planning, permitting, and financial planning for communities undertaking big beach restoration projects. Between and among their consulting tasks, they kept talking and kept building the idea of CNT & ASPN. In almost every arena they worked, public engagement played a central role. They spent thousands of hours talking with coastal stakeholders, like business owners, hotel operators, condo managers, watermen, property owners, enviros, surfers, and fishermen. They dived deep into the value, meaning, and responsibility for the American shoreline, segment-by-segment. Common threads emerged, themes were revealed, differences uncovered. There was a big conversation going on along the American shoreline! But, no place to have it. That's where CNT and ASPN were born.