“Maybe no city is a climate refuge,” Park Pride Education Director Eli Dickerson said.
The nonprofit leader opened his remarks at the 25th annual Parks & Greenspace Conference on March 23, hosted by Park Pride, with an explainer on the year’s theme: Resilient Parks, Resilient Communities.
It was the topic on everyone’s mind as they gathered for Southeast’s largest annual parks and greenspace conference. Hundreds of attendees from Massachusetts, Minnesota Metro Atlanta and more packed into the Atlanta Botanical Gardens for a day of workshops and sessions.
All were focused on a key problem: How do you build resiliency in the face of a changing climate? It’s a long-standing question. Back in 2018, Parks & Greenspace focused on urban resilience in a changing world.
“But my, how the world has changed since 2018,” Dickerson said. “Some of those changes we expected, but a lot of those we had no idea were in store.”
“Being resilient today is arguably very, very different from what it was in 2019,” he continued. “One topic you’ll hear about today is the face of stress from climate change.”
Dickerson pointed to extreme weather with staggering effects. 2024’s Hurricane Helen obliterated mountainous towns in North Carolina, once considered so-called “climate havens.” As Dickerson said, it made climatologists realize no city was invulnerable.
“Our designs need to be ready for that today,” Dickerson said.
The dozens of session leaders were up to the task. Different groups tackled resilience through tactical urbanism, flood resilience through park design and even training programs to put marginalized groups into conservation careers.
At “Building Climate Resilient ATL,” the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience talked through the city’s first community-led, data-driven Climate Resilience Action Plan. It painted a picture of the city’s climate future.
By 2050, the city estimates Atlanta will see 40 to 60 additional days per year above 95 degrees. Those temperatures will be amplified in low-income neighborhoods, due to the “urban heat island effect.”
Atlanta isn’t just facing heat. Flooding is a major concern, too. There will likely be a nearly 30% increase in heavy rainfall events by 2050 – it could contribute to the city’s ongoing flood issues. In the lowest-income neighborhoods lacking flood measures, retention ponds and lush tree canopies, heat and flooding will be even worse.
The “Climate Vulnerability Index” laid out the city’s weak spots. But the plan also laid out some ambitious goals for Atlanta. Chief Sustainability Officer Chandra Farley said the independent office wants 100 percent clean energy for all Atlantans by 2035, a 59 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (and net zero by 2050,) and fresh, affordable food within a half-mile of everyone by 2030.
The plan also called for reduced energy burdens and power bills among the most impacted households, as well as expanded multimodal options to reduce car reliance. The recommendations are part of the Climate Adaptation Plan, which compiled almost 2,000 climate action recommendations from roughly 2,100 Atlantans over two years.
Among those responses, the sustainability office settled on some key themes: resilience, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving public health, mobility, economic opportunity and housing affordability.
But achieving those goals is a different issue. The sustainability office has a lengthy list of next steps, including a “Climate Resilient ATL Roadshow,” policy development, ambassador programs and a public dashboard.
It’s a daunting task. For some, climate change on the whole is an intimidating subject. Consulting Meteorologist Mark Papier said in his Climate Change 101 session the science is “simple, serious and also solvable.”
He joked that the topic could “get a little dark,” especially given how rapidly the climate has shifted. “The climate has always changed, that’s true, but never at the rate or the degree that we’re seeing right now,” he explained.
“We as humanity have not seen temperatures and carbon dioxide amounts the way they are now,” Papier continued.
But the issues are matched with many solutions on local and global scales. While park conservancies and nonprofits can’t do big picture actions like spend $28 trillion on climate or convert the world to solar power, the work begins by building resilient communities.
“It’s a ‘yes, and’ scenario,” Papier said. “It is both daunting because there’s so much that has to get done, and amazing because there are so many ways into this story that you can find something and work towards that solution and move the needle, because it has to happen.”
