The 2023 Public Interest Communications Summer Institute will be held June 14-16 at the University of Houston. The institute is organized by the Public Interest Communications Educators Network, whose goal is to build the academic discipline of public interest communications.

At this year’s institute, we’ll explore the connection between public interest communications and activism (our theme), work collectively to bridge the researcher-practitioner divide, dive into community engaged scholarship and more. Plus, we’re developing a panel on public interest technology and will offer “speed dating” to foster collaborations. We’re also planning an environmental justice-related event off campus!

We have a phenomenal lineup of speakers, and we’ll hear from Houston-area public interest communicators, including Cesar Espinosa, executive director and co-founder of the immigrant rights organization FIEL (Familias Inmigrantes y Estudiantes en la Lucha, and Jaime González, community and equitable conservation programs director (Texas chapter) with the Nature Conservancy.

The event is pay-what-you-can, with a suggested registration fee of $60 for students, $100 for non-students and $50 for those joining us online. 

See program details and speakers, and get your ticket here.

The Columbia Climate School is pleased to announce this call for paper abstracts for the 2023 Managed Retreat conference, which will be held from 20-23 June at Columbia University in New York City. This year’s theme is “Habitability and Mobility in an Era of Climate Change.” We are inviting session proposals for traditional academic paper sessions, roundtable panels, and workshops, as well as paper and poster presentation abstracts.

Abstract submissions deadline: 20 January 2023 [submit here]

The topics of this year’s conference reflect most of the same themes, including a strong emphasis on equity concerns, as in past years, with the addition of some new topics specifically related to this year’s theme:

• Built environment (design and architecture; land use planning; infrastructure; urban planning)
• Buyouts and property acquisition
• Climate and social science for managed retreat (vulnerability; risk; opportunity)
• Communication strategies (storytelling; teaching about managed retreat; arts)
• Community resilience (community organizing; vulnerable populations; social psychology; mental health; crowding out; residents’ perspectives)
• Ecosystem conservation and migration
• Environmental justice and equity
• Finance and economics(market signals; real estate; insurance; capital markets)
• Governance, policy and planning (decision-making; international frameworks; federal management; state programs; local planning; multi-level policy coordination)
• Habitability (defining habitability; degrees of habitability; habitability for what and for whom?)
• Infrastructure Interdependencies
• Legal issues and tools (property rights; zoning & land use; immigration)
• Migration as adaptation/maladaptation (assisted relocation; voluntary movement) 
• Receiving areas (growth management and sustainable regional development)
• Sending areas (impacts on those left behind, involuntary immobility / trapped populations)
• Migrants and displaced persons (costs and benefits)
• Non-coastal changes in habitability and mobility (flood and riverine areas; drought and dryland expansion; temperature extremes; wildfire in the urban-wildland interface)
• Private sector perspectives (economic development strategies; corporate relocations; labor market dynamics) 
• Receiving community considerations

More conference details here

The Climate Leader is an online training in systems thinking to help fuel the global response to climate change. These materials will help you to be more effective at addressing climate change by enabling you to see the interconnections and big picture in your work. Behind the Climate Leader are decades of experience from the team at Climate Interactive and powerful ideas developed at MIT.

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In this webinar series, practitioners will share information, results and lessons learned through recent work by FHWA/US DOT and State and MPO partners to make the transportation system more resilient to climate change and extreme weather events. The first track focuses on the processes used in the Gulf Coast Study, Phase 2 (Mobile) and transferable methods developed for other agencies to assess the vulnerability of transportation infrastructure. The second track focuses on FHWA's recently completed Climate Resilience Pilot program, which supported 19 pilot projects around the country to assess vulnerabilities and develop strategies to make transportation infrastructure and operations more resilient to climate change and extreme weather events.

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