At the 2022 National Adaptation Forum organized by EcoAdapt, CO2 Foundation supported an extreme weather track, which included 22 sessions: eight symposia, seven posters, two trainings, two solutions rooms, two working groups, and one tool. Building out the track included recruiting additional working group and solutions room speakers to ensure the topic was adequately covered within the program. For the recorded National Adaptation Forum sessions, online access continues to draw attention.
Initially, the plan was to use recorded NAF sessions as content for a spring virtual series, but ultimately the team pivoted to make this an entirely live event. The new content attracted a large audience: the Responding to Climate-Amplified Extreme Weather Events Spring Series brought in 864 attendees, 550 of whom were “unique” attendees. One participant followed up after the second session of the series and said, “This was the best talk I’ve been to in YEARS – and I’m usually in one per day.”
Here is the list of sessions, which are available online:
- Session One: Stop Asking Us to be Resilient: Community Perspectives on the “Resilience” Myth
- Session Two: Facilitating Housing Recovery to Extreme Weather Events
- Session Three: Resilience Hubs: A Collaborative Approach to Support Neighborhood-Based Resilience
- Session Four: Assessing and Addressing Vulnerabilities to Extreme Heat
The 6th National Adaptation Forum will be held in Saint Paul, Minnesota from May 14-16, 2024. With its second grant to support EcoAdapt’s programming at the intersection of extreme weather and adaptation, the CO2 Foundation aims to help practitioners to find and share solutions that are actually helping communities prepare for and respond to the impacts of extreme weather.
The current grant will support organizers to develop an extreme weather-focused track at the National Adaptation Forum, and place a greater emphasis on network-building for professionals within the emergency management/disaster response/extreme weather space at the conference. There will also be a second extreme weather-themed virtual series in the fall, as these reach an audience beyond the in-person National Adaptation Forum and expand conversations started at the in-person event.