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September 10, 2024
Welcome to Season 8 of The Climate Conversation podcast! Many of us are returning from trips to the coast, where breezy beaches provided a respite from the brutal summer heat. But these coastal areas are important for more than just the occasional vacation. Wetlands and estuaries, which connect inland rivers to the open ocean, are critical ecosystems for climate adaptation and carbon sequestration. In this episode, co-hosts Dan and Alison—alongside EESI Policy Director Anna McGinn—talk about coastal restoration with Daniel Hayden, president and CEO of Restore America’s Estuaries.
Show notes:
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Episode Transcript:
Dan Bresette: Hello and welcome to Season Eight of The Climate Conversation podcast. I'm Dan Bresette, president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.
Alison Davis: And I'm his co-host, Alison Davis. It's so great to be back behind the mic with you, Dan, after a few months off. How are you doing today?
Dan B: I'm doing fine. We're recording this on a very steamy day towards the end of the summer. And yeah, I can't complain too much. We're a month out from our big EXPO that was at the end of July. We have a bunch of briefings starting up in a couple weeks after Labor Day. And I'm really, really looking forward to this topic, because it's always interesting for me to learn about natural climate solutions and nature-based solutions, and coastal restoration in particular. And to that end, we've invited a very special guest from the nonprofit alliance Restore America's Estuaries, or RAE as it's pronounced.
Alison: “Estuary” isn't a term you hear every day, but a lot of us live near one or travel to them frequently, just without calling them estuaries. So for a quick definition, estuaries are bodies of water that connect rivers to the ocean. They're like the arteries of coastal wetlands and contain a mixture of fresh to progressively salt water. Some of our listeners in the DC area may know that the Chesapeake Bay is actually the largest estuary in the United States. If you missed our episode last season about the Environmental Protection Agency's conservation efforts in and around the Chesapeake Bay, I highly recommend you give that a listen at the link in the show notes.
Dan B: Yes, good plug. We talked to Adam Ortiz, who's the Region Three administrator for EPA. Really great episode. So definitely, if you missed that, go back and check it out. But for today, we're going to be talking about estuaries, particularly, and our good friends at the nonprofit U.S. Nature4Climate conducted a recent survey, and they found that 92% of respondents on both sides of the aisle said they strongly support coastal wetland restoration, and with that level of support, Congress should have no trouble, or at least you would think Congress should have no trouble passing legislation to bolster restoration efforts for estuaries and their surrounding wetlands. But what are the best tools to do that? To answer that question, our friends at RAE are hosting the 2024 Coastal and Estuarine Summit next month, on October 6 through 10th. Experts from the coastal restoration and management communities will gather to explore issues, solutions and lessons learned for policymakers and other stakeholders. Sounds like a great event.
Alison: It does sound like a great event. And EESI is proud to be planning a session for this event which will explore federal policy and investment in coastal resilience. If you plan on attending the conference, be sure to join us at 11am on Monday, October 7. I'll give you a moment to add that to your calendars. That's October 7 at 11am, I think it's an hour and a half, well worth the time. And the conversation will focus on the progress that has been made since EESI published our 2020 report, titled, “A Resilient Future for Coastal Communities: Federal Policy Recommendations from Solutions in Practice.” And of course, the link to that report will also be in the show notes. This panel will be moderated by our very own Dan Bresette, and it will feature EESI Policy Director, Anna McGinn. Anna has been working really hard behind the scenes to prepare the panel discussion, so I'm excited to hand the mic over to her for our chat with our guest today. Hey, Anna, how's it going?
Anna McGinn: Hey Alison, thanks for having me. Going well so far, it is a pleasure for me to introduce our first guest of season eight on the podcast, and another Daniel, President and CEO of Restore America's Estuaries, Daniel Hayden. Daniel joined RAE in 2020 with more than 25 years of experience as a leader in the private and public sectors. Before coming to RAE, Daniel built multi-million dollar partnerships and programs for Rare, an international conservation NGO focused on proven, locally led solutions, and in a previous role at PCI Media, he organized the UN Environment Program’s Webby award winning Wild for Life campaign. More recently, Daniel led business operations for the Digital Impact Alliance at the UN Foundation. Daniel, welcome to the show.
Daniel Hayden: Great. Thanks. Very nice to be here today, Anna.
Dan B: Well, Daniel, I'm going to go by Dan today, you can go by Daniel for the purposes. Since this is an audio medium, we have to make sure that our audience can keep track of who's talking, which Dan or Daniel. Thanks for helping us kick off season eight of our podcast, and I'm gonna start our interview today. Think this one might be a little bit of a softball, but here it goes. Why are estuaries and their surrounding wetlands uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and what role do those estuaries play in climate resilience?
Daniel H: Sure, that's a really important question. Climate change is causing multiple impacts on wetlands and coastal ecosystems. I mean, the first thing is that rising sea levels threaten to flood coastal ecosystems, causing them to die off. And also changing ocean acidification is changing the water chemistry, and that affects what types of plants and animals can live in these ecosystems. And this changing chemistry, along with warming waters, also creates additional stressors that impact the vitality of the ecosystems. And then finally, we can look at sort of the increasing number of storms and less predictable weather patterns, whether that's more rain or less rain, already sort of affects and weakens these ecosystems and makes them much more vulnerable to climate change. So the second part of your question is a really important one, which is, you know, what part do coastal ecosystems play as a climate solution? So what we do know is that nature based solutions can provide up to 1/3 of the greenhouse gas reductions we need to address climate change. And what's great is that coastal ecosystems are particularly effective in absorbing greenhouse gasses. So there's this concept called coastal blue carbon, that the carbon can be sequestered in wetlands, seagrass and mangroves, and it's up to 10 times more productive per acre than, say, forested ecosystems. And a key part is also that the carbon is sequestered deep into the soil so it becomes less vulnerable to external weather events, so blue carbon can play a key part in addressing climate change. But also, you know, coastal ecosystems like sea grass, coral and oysters help to attenuate wave action, so this helps protect coastal communities from storms. And we also know that the benefit of that can reduce the damage from storms up to 16% to related, you know, ancillary property. So it's an important both sort of natural feature and property protection feature as we address the rise in coastal storms. And I’m also kind of focused a lot on water originating from the sea. But wetlands also reduce flooding by rain or rivers caused by storms, because they readily absorb water much faster than hardened infrastructures or even agricultural land. So there's a lot of key benefits that our coastal ecosystems play in protecting coastal communities and addressing climate change.
Dan B: We cover natural climate solutions and nature-based solutions a lot in our work, because of what you were just describing. They're win-wins. They provide mitigation, they provide adaptation and resilience benefits. But I'd like to go back to blue carbon and ask a little bit more about what specifically Restore America's Estuaries is doing to support blue carbon ecosystems.
Daniel H: So first, blue carbon ecosystems, that is, we define as sort of wetlands, seagrass and mangroves. They're not really separate work streams for our work in coastal restoration and protection, but rather an integral part of the work we do to protect these ecosystems. So you talked about sort of ancillary benefits. We also talked about, like co-benefits. So you know, blue carbon is a co-benefit of all the restoration work we do. So currently, our sort of biggest work streams are focused around convening and policy to protect blue carbon ecosystems. So we actively convene a national blue carbon working group that brings together a diverse range of experts that covers both ecology, economics and policy. And what this working group does is it documents the knowledge gaps and the progress we're making to better understand and then support these ecosystems. And if you want to learn more, we do have a whole newsletter dedicated just to blue carbon. So you can go to our website at estuaries.org and sign up for that. And we finance, you know, assessments around the potential of blue carbon at sites across the U.S. We've integrated blue carbon into our economics of estuaries work, and we've conducted assessments of the legal barriers to implementing blue carbon at the state level, on the policy side, and we've worked quite a bit with members of Congress to support legislation and policies to advance blue carbon. Unfortunately, to date, nothing has passed. And actually, to our knowledge, and I welcome your audience participation on this one, there's nothing in the federal law that specifically defines blue carbon or protects it as a coastal ecosystem. But what is good to see, at least, is there is interest in both the House and the Senate, and both Republicans and Democrats support legislation to define blue carbon and the benefits of blue carbon, so hopefully change is around the corner.
Anna: So speaking of policy, at EESI we talk a lot about the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, so want to dive into that a little bit with you, and curious specifically about how you see either of those laws having greater emphasis on green as opposed to gray infrastructure, nature-based solutions more broadly, and you know what gaps remain that kind of didn't get covered. You just mentioned, you know, blue carbon. But are there other ways that federal policy can better facilitate support for nature based solutions in coastal communities?
Daniel H: One of the biggest things that happened in both pieces of legislation is it starts to blur the line between gray and green infrastructure, because I think both pieces legislations have created sort of a roadmap for us all to be asking very important policy questions like, you know, what are we actually trying to accomplish with infrastructure? What are the cost effective ways to achieve it? And how can we avoid so many of the negative externalities of our built infrastructure? So if you start to think really holistically about the direct benefits and co-benefits of infrastructure, the natural you start to realize that green or softer infrastructure has to be part of the mix of our future infrastructure. So I just think about the communities where many of us live. You know, if we need to address flooding, what would we all prefer in our neighborhoods? Would you prefer a concrete channel to convey flood waters? Or would you prefer a riparian park that occasionally floods when there's a storm, but then you have access to green space the rest of the time? For me, that's like a pretty easy and straightforward trade off. And the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act allow us to think about those types of opportunities. So going forward, some of the biggest gaps in federal policy is really driving home these notions of co-benefits of softer green infrastructure and alternative solutions. Now we have to recognize that in some cases, it does actually cost more to do sort of much more green focused infrastructure. For example, if you're rebuilding a road and you need to widen a bridge span to allow water to pass underneath it, some of the benefits from that may include improved wetlands or forests. You may open up that area to recreational uses, and it can improve the flooding, but it is more expensive in the short term. But those other co benefits need to go into the cost benefit analysis, and that's currently not the norm. Another way to think about green infrastructure is it actually, in many cases, is less expensive. You know, if you're protecting coastal wetlands, the costs are very little. They absorb the impact of storms, and when they're damaged, they heal themselves, and their location can shift as conditions change. These are all benefits from sort of soft green infrastructure that you just don't get from a concrete seawall. So we need to start codifying these concepts into our federal policy. And you also look at sort of emerging concepts, like the social cost of carbon. That looks at the economic and social and health costs of atmospheric carbon and the resulting climate change, and we need to think about sort of what that means for creating lower cost lower carbon solutions. And we know that nature can help mitigate climate change that's very well documented. We also know that access to nature can improve our physical and mental health. So again, there's lots of co-benefits by thinking about our infrastructure much more holistically, and it's time for the federal policy to sort of catch up with that.
Anna: Thanks. So many good points there, and I would echo your trade off—I would like the park! As a sneak peek for our listeners, we are going to be doing a lot of coverage on infrastructure conversations coming up next year, and integrating lots of conversation on everything that Daniel just mentioned into those briefings and other events. So, looking forward to that. Jumping to our next question for you. Exciting to hear the announcement earlier this year that RAE was awarded $20 million to manage EPA’s Great Lakes Environmental Justice Grant Program. Wondering if you can share a little bit about some of the early progress that's been made with that funding, and any sneak peeks at future plans?
Daniel H: So we're really excited about this program. It's part of our longer term commitment to broadening who receives the benefits from investment in our coasts and coastal communities. So it's really outstanding news to see EPA create this program for the Great Lakes they've done in other regions. Now the Great Lakes program in particular is really exciting, sort of the popular media. We often call this area the “Rust Belt,” and that really kind of reflects the fact that many of these communities have faced really tough times, feel ignored and left behind. So programs like this provide the means these communities need for a better future. And as we think about sort of previewing what will happen, this program will do sort of two main things. It'll provide grants up to $750,000 for community-based environmental restoration projects, and the second piece is it will provide training and capacity development for community-based groups working in underserved communities so they can grow better serve their communities and become viable recipients of federal funds that have traditionally not been eligible they've not been able to sort successfully compete for but with greater capacity, hopefully they'll be viable recipients of federal funds in the future. So, you know, most immediately on the horizon, we'll be working on sort of the communication of this. You'll hear more about our partnership with the Junction Coalition. You know, it's really important for us to do this grant work and a collaborative, socially respectful way. And the Junction Coalition is going to provide us a lot of expertise in terms of community outreach, better work with our state, local and federal agencies and developing relationships with business leaders in the region. So we look forward to working with them to really sort of understand and make an impact at the grassroots level. Also this fall, you'll be hearing about specific training programs offered to community-based groups, and this winter, we'll be announcing our first request for proposals.
Anna: That's really exciting. And I feel like a lot of these more recent federal programs that have been developed have a lot more emphasis on that training and capacity building, which is an exciting sort of shift to see building that long term capacity in communities.
Daniel H: I think managing federal money is very complicated. Even responding to an RFP is a daunting task, and it just really turns off a lot of smaller community based groups from receiving this funds, and that means that the people the community groups that are most connected to the communities at risk are not actually managing the funds, and this just creates a gap in terms of our ability to deliver services to people most in need and communities that are most in need for environmental restoration work.
Anna: Well, many thanks to RAE for your leadership in that effort. That's exciting to hear about. One other question from me, curious about RAE's approach to collaboration with tribal nations for wetland conservation efforts. We'd love to hear any examples of your work with tribal communities, engaging in specific programs that you all are a part of.
Daniel H: I would say that working with tribal communities is something that is a learning experience for most of the staff at Restore America's Estuaries, it's something that we do, but it's definitely something we can do better, but it's also something we want to do more of. So it's nice to see that there's much more emphasis on working with tribal communities and supporting that work. As we think about our mission, we think about the benefits of these investments, both in terms of coastal protection and restoration for the benefit of both people and nature. Now, in the context of sort of tribal support, as someone who's not from a tribal community, it's really important for me to keep in mind that tribal nations have a much deeper sense of place and connectivity to the lands and waters than other communities do. And really distinctively, they also have a religious element to that connection that makes those sort of relationships unique and different than other types of communities that we work with. So a tribal community's sense of what's important, how to do things, is often quite different than how we would work in other places. But all that said, sort of this can all come together too, it's not an insurmountable barrier or something. To keep in mind, an example of some of the work that we're doing is that we did provide, recently, a grant to a tribal umbrella organization called the Lowlander Center in Louisiana. And this project restored wetlands by filling in canals that were dug mostly for the oil and gas industry. And what's different about this project is that the communities, the tribal communities in that area, wanted to prioritize wetland restoration and protection, but focus around their sacred sites. And so this is sort of a different focal point of the priority for restoration work. And as an organization, we needed to be sensitive that the tribal community members didn't really want to specify where they're working and which sites they're protecting, simply because there is such a long, long and sad history of these sacred sites being looted. So they needed to sort of keep a lot of that information within their community. And really, normally, that's not something that we'd be comfortable with not knowing where exactly the restoration was occurring. But we also needed to respect these long and important reasons for distrusting people from outside their community, and recognizing that some of the reasons why we wanted to do the restoration work is somewhat different from what they wanted to do, but that we could come to a respectful understanding about how to work together. And so I think it's great that there's so much more emphasis on working with federally recognized nations, tribal nations and communities, and integrating traditional ecological knowledge into our projects. That definitely strengthens the work that we do. I'd also sort of highlight that there is a need to support tribal communities that aren't federally recognized. These communities tend to be smaller and lack some of the benefits of federally recognized tribes. But fortunately, we've been really lucky that most of the funding that we've received over the last few years for. Focuses on restoration work and underserved and underrepresented communities, and that's given us the flexibility to work with a sort of a broader range of tribal communities and find innovative approaches to work with them towards shared conservation goals.
Dan B: Well, Daniel, all of that is great, and my guess is that a lot of these topics will also be covered at your upcoming summit, the Coastal and Estuarine Summit, which will be held in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of DC, starting on October 6. We are super happy, thanks mostly to Anna, that we're preparing a session around federal policy, looking back at our coastal resilience report that we prepared a few years ago. We're super excited to participate. Thinking ahead to what you expect the conversation to be like at the summit, what's something that you think will be discussed that you wish more policymakers understood about U.S. coastlines and estuaries and the work that you all are doing to promote climate change mitigation and adaptation in those areas?
Daniel H: you for that question. I mean, we're really excited about the summit and the opportunity to be so close to the nation's capital to sort of bring together all these policymakers. I think the first thing to think about is that America's estuaries, bays, sounds, wetlands, fjords are more than just unique ecosystems or places to go on vacation. They're the economic engines of our country, and if they're not protected, these economies and these communities can be disrupted by weather events. Our coastal counties make up just 4% of all our content to land mass, but it is home to 40% of the U.S. population and 47% of the entire U.S. economy. So these are really small areas with huge impacts for our country. So if you just sort of think about it, when Port Fourchon in Louisiana closes, gas prices worldwide go up. When Manhattan was flooded due to a hurricane, the stock market closed for a day. When we have sunny-day flooding in places like Norfolk, Virginia, our military is less prepared, and our country is less safe. So we think about sort of very specific, small places that have disproportionate impacts on our country as a whole. So when it comes to sort of federal investment, increased funding for programs relevant to estuaries, such as the EPA’s Geographic Programs, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the NEP programs are really greatly appreciated. So we want to emphasize, you know, supporting existing programs. But really, when you think about sort of the amount of money that goes into these smaller programs, it is sort of literally, sort of a drop in the ocean in terms of funding on the size and scope of the federal budget. But RAE and its partners have been able to accomplish a lot of great work that's leading to on-the-ground impacts that really affects specific communities throughout our country. But what we've seen over the last 10 years is that the number of storms that caused over a billion dollars in damage has doubled, and the number of people who have died in those weather events has increased 69%. So really, the urgency of doing something is immediate. So our question, I sort of throw out to sort of the policy makers out there, is, you know, how do we shift from a reactive response to these events to a proactive approach? And how can we think about investments at the scale of the challenge that our country, and frankly, the whole world is facing. And so big investments and big ideas are really important, but it can be kind of hard to understand when you're dealing with sort of the size of the federal budget. A few questions back, I mentioned the Lowlander Center and Sabine Parish in Louisiana. The initial grant that they got was rather small, but it led to their ability to get money from the county, their parishes, as well as state governments. So it really sort of catapulted that program forward. And I cite this example because it shows the need to do both big things, but in a way that's grounded and respectful of communities. For example, sort of looking back historically, you think about the rollout of the interstate highway system, which is a tremendous accomplishment for our country. But we also have to look at the cost it had on specific communities and on our environment. So as we think about the investments in our coast. Kind of need to take some of these prior infrastructure investments we've had in our country, take it to heart and make sure we can do both big things and respect sort of local places. Now the good news is we do have champions in Congress. We have a lot of support from the Congressional Estuary Caucus, and I really appreciate the work of Representatives Posey, Mast, Larsen, and Bonamici, who have been advocates for our coasts and coastal communities. We need to expand that coalition. Have it be as big and as important as the issues that face our coasts and coastal communities.
Dan B: Daniel, thank you so much. I look forward to meeting you in person in October at the summit and that's going to be just a great event. Also like to just share a quick thanks to your colleague Brad for helping pull all of this together. You know it takes a village. I know that and really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today, feature you on the podcast, and learn a little bit more about all of the important work that needs to happen to protect our coastlines and our estuaries, and the human settlements, but also just the natural environment that those that those areas contain. So thanks so much for joining us on the podcast.
Daniel H: Thank you very much for having me. I look forward to seeing you at the summit in October, and hopefully many of your listeners at the summit in October, you can still register until the day of the event. So look forward to seeing you there.
Dan B: Well, it was a real pleasure to host Daniel on the podcast this week, or this episode, I should say, because it comes out every two weeks. Really interesting. You know, we were working on our coastal resilience briefing series when I started at EESI, five years ago now, and I really enjoyed that briefing series, and I'm really pleased that we were able to pull off that really incredible report. A lot of work went into that 2020 report, as Anna knows, and I think it'll be really, really interesting and actually really fun to go back and revisit that report and think about what's changed since then, since 2020. Anna mentioned the IRA and the IIJA in one of her questions, those are obviously two very big things that have happened. But as Daniel mentioned, there are also more and more climate impacts hitting coastal areas. The number of billion dollar disasters has only been going up since we released that report, and to me, that says something about the urgency of going back and revisiting those recommendations and taking a look at those solutions in practice. Anna, you also teased some upcoming briefings we have next year on infrastructure, but we're going to be doing a lot more than just infrastructure briefings in the next year or so. We're also going to be looking at river community resilience. So we'll be taking, I think, some inspiration from the coastal resilience briefing series and report, and applying that to looking at river communities, really excited. Our first briefing will be about the Mississippi River that's coming up, and probably something that we can also link to in the show notes as well. And if not, Alison can take this part out of the wrap up thoughts, and we'll just move on. But thanks for pulling this together. I thought it was great and always a pleasure to work with and feature the work of Restore America's Estuaries in what we're doing here at EESI.
Anna: I am also excited to revisit the report. It was a fun and crazy thing to put together a couple years ago, and it's going to be really exciting to have this coastal summit as an opportunity to sort of take a look back and reflect on where we've come in the last couple of years. And I think one of the key themes of that report was sort of captured in Daniel's final comments. I loved how he described “do big things, respect local places.” I feel like that really captures so much of what RAE seems to be working on and what EESI tries to convey through our resources for Congressional staff. And I think one thing that underscores that, and that has really shifted, as I mentioned earlier, is the increased support for communities and figuring out how they can actually access federal resources, and building that capacity in a way that allows communities to really build those muscles of knowing how to access federal resources so that for years and years and years to come, they'll be able to be a part of all these great programs that are being established by the IRA and IIJA and hopefully lots of future legislation as well. So I think that that will do wonders for the respect and empower local places in order to make it possible for us to do these big things that need to happen to address the climate crisis. So exciting conversation. Looking forward to continuing it in a couple weeks at the conference.
Alison: So Anna, I have a feeling you already knew this, but I was pretty surprised to learn when Daniel said that there's no legislative definition for blue carbon or blue carbon ecosystems. And especially because coastal wetlands sequester up to 10 times more carbon dioxide than tropical forests. So it's a really high impact area that hopefully it will get the legislative attention that it deserves promptly. I'm also still thinking about what he was saying about cost-benefit analysis when it comes to green infrastructure versus gray infrastructure. So for example, it's surprising also to learn, first of all, that green infrastructure projects are often more expensive than gray infrastructure projects. But also, when you're conducting that cost-benefit analysis, how do you go about quantifying the economic benefit of improved well being for people that they get from proximity to green structures in green spaces? It's something that I hope that we can think about as we see more climate legislation coming up to build on top of the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Anna: Sounds like a topic for a future podcast episode.
Alison: Maybe even a briefing! If you want to learn more about EESI’s work on coastal communities, head to our website at eesi.org. Also, follow us on social media @eesionline for all of our recent updates. The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe. Thanks for joining us and see you next time!
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