Eastern Shore Land Conservancy

Mainstreaming Sea Level Rise Preparedness in Local Planning and Policy on Maryland’s Eastern Shore ($123,245)


Recipient: Eastern Shore Land Conservancy – Coastal Resilience Program

The Eastern Shore of Maryland is one of the nation’s most vulnerable regions to sea-level rise impacts (only a handful of regions, including south Florida and coastal Louisiana are considered more at-risk). Maryland’s coastal region has fewer resources available to address these vulnerabilities. Led by the climate resilience team at the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy (ESLC), The Eastern Shore Climate Adaptation Partnership has been established as a multi-jurisdictional collaborative workgroup to build local capacity for shared resilience priorities across the region.

Support from the Climate Resilience Fund will help the ESLC provide vulnerability analyses, planning tools, coordination, and collaborative learning opportunities to help communities prepare for climate impacts through science-driven resilience planning and nature-based adaptation solutions like open space plans, hazard mitigation plans, stormwater ordinances, and green infrastructure improvements. Over the next two years, ESLC will host facilitated “Game of Floods” simulations and participatory workshops to help planners and decision-makers to: 1) translate the sea-level rise science and modeling scenarios so that they can assess the impacts to their communities; 2) understand the range of possible flood mitigation and sea-level rise adaptation strategies available to them; and 3) identify effective strategies and policy changes for adoption in their communities.