Being Prepared for Climate Change

Climate change will bring additional challenges to places and ecosystems that are already under environmental stress. The expected climate changes will worsen existing problems as well as bring new problems. The process described in this Workbook leads you to take a broad look at how climate change will affect your environmental system and your organization. The creation of a planning-level risk-based vulnerability assessment will help you develop an action plan with effective solutions that your stakeholders and partners can help implement. Identifying risks associated with climate change and managing them to reduce their impacts is essential. This Workbook presents a guide to climate change adaptation planning based on EPA's experience with watershed management, the National Estuary Program and the Climate Ready Estuaries program. The Workbook will assist organizations that manage environmental resources to prepare a broad, risk-based adaptation plan. This Workbook helps meet the need for guidance on conducting climate change vulnerability assessments at a watershed scale, provides decision-support tools, helps people plan climate change adaptation strategies, and builds the capacity of local environmental managers. The Workbook helps EPA to fulfill the commitments that it has made to assist local and regional organizations to effectively plan for climate change impacts.