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Recent Honor’s Tutorial College environmental studies graduate Rachel Martin, ’20, co-authored a paper with Derek Kauneckis, former associate professor at 51����’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs, about how vulnerable coastal communities adapt to climate risks.

The paper, “Patterns of cooperation among coastal communities responding to climate risks,” was published in Coastal Management. In their research, Kauneckis and Martin examined differences between coastal and noncoastal communities’ approach to climate adaptation. In addition to the presence of adaptation, the researchers evaluated the relative effects of political partisanship, population, perception of climate risk, and awareness of state-level climate planning on adaption. They also analyzed the data to see if participation in climate policy networks affected the likelihood that a community would undertake climate adaptation.

“Concern about severe storms, awareness of state plans, and having a network partner focused either on climate mitigation or the environment were found to be statistically significant indicators of climate adaptation action,” Kauneckis and Martin write. “The paper discusses the importance of understanding the localized context of adaptation within nested governance structures, and how informal policy networks can facilitate learning and innovation across coastal communities.”

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