Evolving Coastal Management in Hawaii with Dr. Chip Fletcher

October 4, 2020

Taking on coastal erosion in Hawaii

On this episode, Peter Ravella and Tyler Buckingham talk with Dr. Chip Fletcher, the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Vice-Chair of the Honolulu Climate Change Commission, and the leader of the Coastal Geology Group, which recently published a study that found that Hawaii's beaches were at an even bigger threat to due to sea level rise and trends toward hardening the shoreline. While the science is familiar around the American Shoreline, Chip and his Group are not only studying the physical shoreline, but also considering new policies might help governments manage SLR and save the beaches for the next generation.  



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.