Climate Ready Communities: A Strategy for Adapting to Impacts of Climate Change on the Oregon Coast

Developed by the Oregon Coastal Management Program, this report is designed to help Oregon's local decision-makers prepare adaptation plans and state agencies to coordinate their infrastructure plans with local adaptation initiatives. Key objectives of this strategy are: 1) to enable coastal local governments to prepare adaptation plans by 2015 to account for the effects of climate change on property, infrastructure, habitats, and resources; and 2) to ensure that public infrastructure and investment decisions made by the State of Oregon are coordinated with local government climate change adaptation plans.

At a high level, the report discusses how climate change will likely affect Oregon's coast and how particular coastal sectors will be impacted, such as community infrastructure (e.g. transportation, municipal services), natural systems (e.g. rivers, estuaries), and economic systems (e.g. fisheries, agriculture). In a three-step process, this strategy proposes that localities identify potential sources of vulnerability, assess climate change risks, and adopt response measures. In support of this process, the report concludes that the state and localities need to gather topographical and modeling data. Additionally, the state and localities will need to improve their technical and planning capacity to make coastal resources decisions.

A background report accompanies this strategy that contains a more detailed discussion of the available information about the science of climate change and its likely effects, and the report also provides many references for further information.

The starting point for this coastal adaptation strategy was the 2008 report from the Governor’s Climate Change Integration Group (CCIG), "A Framework for Addressing Rapid Climate Change" (see separate entry).

Publication Date: January 2009

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