How would you respond to the question, “how is climate change personally impacting your life?”
For many, the answer is no longer abstract or distant. It is felt in the relentless heat advisories that stretch summers longer each year. It is found in flooded basements after storms once described as rare. It shows up in rising utility bills during extreme cold snaps and heat waves, and in the growing strain of housing affordability in communities reshaped by climate risks.
The data confirm what our communities already know. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that between 1980 and 2024, the United States experienced 403 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, with total costs exceeding $2.9 trillion.”
What is missing from these national tallies are the foundational frameworks communities are prioritizing and investing in at the local level. These efforts are intended to ensure community members have access to resources and communication to better prepare, withstand and flourish in the face of these increasingly impactful weather events.
This work cannot be successfully implemented in silos.
For more than ten years, Agnes Scott College and the City of Decatur have chosen to confront the realities of climate change together. Through the implementation of a joint Climate Resilience Plan, this partnership leverages the strengths of local government and higher education into purposeful alignment. The leadership of Agnes Scott and Decatur through the implementation of the Climate Resilience Plan envisions and delivers on solutions that can be reproduced by peer institutions and local municipalities. These partnerships will develop their own mutually beneficial partnerships to create effective climate solutions and foster the next generation of climate action professionals.
The Climate Resilience Plan is sustained and strengthened by a broad coalition of partners, including Columbia Theological Seminary, Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, City Schools of Decatur, DeKalb Emergency Management Agency, MLK Jr. Service Project, Wylde Center and the Atlanta Regional Commission. Together, these organizations bring diverse expertise and perspectives, reinforcing the idea that climate resilience is not a single outcome, but an ongoing commitment.
Students are central to this work as well. At Agnes Scott, they are at the forefront of conversations and implementation of place-based initiatives, like establishing a network of heat sensors in partnership with the Atlanta Regional Commission and City Schools of Decatur to build a digital twin of the city. The digital twin pilot will provide quantitative data paired with community input to city leaders to prioritize heat mitigation strategies. With Agnes Scott’s curricular emphasis on fostering global leaders, our students are encouraged to analyze global challenges, like heat mitigation, and apply their skills to help create global solutions.
The Climate Resilience Plan will be nationally recognized at the 2026 Higher Education Climate Leadership Summit. Agnes Scott will be receiving the second annual Climate Luminary Honor for the climate resilience category. The award is given by Second Nature, a leading national nonprofit organization committed to accelerating climate action in and through higher education.
Agnes Scott is serving as a role model and encouraging higher education institutions nationally to take inspired action from Second Nature’s challenge to forge partnerships with their local municipalities, communities and partner organizations to continue building place-based climate resilience. In the times of many external pressures, we must ask ourselves the question, “if not now, when?”
