Islands Climate Resilience

Striving for greater community resilience and local self-reliance in the face of climate change through grassroots action.

The Madrona Institute focuses on climate resilience efforts at the local level. Being prepared for and adapting easily to change is imperative if we are to survive the cascading impacts of a changing climate in the Pacific Northwest in the years ahead. Our efforts in this arena over the last ten years have evolved into Islands Climate Resilience (ICR), a program of The Madrona Institute.

Back in 2014, The Madrona Institute sponsored a summer climate science education series, co-sponsored by a dozen local organizations and featuring over 10 climate experts from Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. The Climate Acton Imperative focused on understanding the major impacts of climate change and the choices that will we will face.

The Madrona Institute sponsored an annual climate science lecture series from 2015 to 2017. Featured speakers were Dr. Charles Greene of Cornell University, Dr. Nicholas Bond, Washington State Climatologist, Dr. Daniel Kammen of the Univerity of California at Berkeley, Dr. Roger Pulwarty of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Dr. Jan Newton of University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory – with all attention on the oceans and atmosphere.

As a result of the Climate Action Imperative In 2014, a grassroots ICR volunteer group (Gretchen Allison, Katie Fleming, Kari Koski, Linda Lyshall, Doug McCutchen, Nikyta Palmisani, Lovel Pratt, Sarah Severn, Steve Ulvi, Jane Wentworth, Keith Wentworth, and Ron Zee) formed on San Juan Island in 2015 to facilitate a collaborative process to encourage preparedness for climate-related impacts in the San Juan Islands. The primary goal was to foster the development of a San Juan Islands climate action plan. To help accomplish that goal, ICR prepared the report, "Working Towards Climate Resilience in the San Juan Islands” in November, 2017. This document provided an initial overview of what we knew about climate change projections and potential vulnerabilities in four sectors: water, terrestrial ecosystems, energy, and agriculture. Included were preliminary ideas about adaptation measures that could help address our climate change vulnerabilities. These ideas were intended to serve as a basis for further discussion in the San Juan Islands community and eventual San Juan County Council action.

Since that time, the ICR has provided recommendations to San Juan County regarding language in the most recent 2019 Comp Plan Update process focused on climate change and climate action. A Forward to the Comp Plan Update which highlighted the overarching reality of climate change on public laws and policies was submitted to the Department of Community Development along with recommendations for the Climate Change section of the County Vision Statement. The Madrona Institute supports the work of the San Juan County Climate and Sustainability Advisory

Committee in its work to develop a County Climate Action Plan, and will provide comments to the development of a Climate Element to the next Comp Plan Update in 2025.

In September and October 2023, ICR presented a Climate Action Speaker Series with federal, state, and local presenters including Joe Creswell of the Washington Department of Ecology, Dr. Charles Greene of Friday Harbor Labs, Paul Cereghino of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Vince Dauciunas and Jay Kimball of the San Juan County Climate and Sustainability Advisory Committee, and State Senator Liz Lovelett who addressed climate solutions.

Beginning in May, 2024, ICR will sponsor The Climate Restorers, a four-part documentary film series narrated by Peter Coyote that explores climate and ecosystem restoration that could return climate to a state in which all life can thrive.

San Juan County and its residents can achieve a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and net carbon neutrality by 2050, if there is the necessary will and action to do so.