Municipal leaders and concerned residents from around Indiana met virtually to learn how climate change is affecting the state and what can be done to lessen future damage from related factors such as higher temperatures and increased rainfall.
Earth Charter Indiana, a nonprofit organization that seeks to promote and advance sustainability, hosted the Climate Leadership Summit Aug. 27. The summit was planned to be held in Evansville, but was moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A series of workshops during the conference taught attendees about how man-made climate change has altered life in Indiana over the last hundred years and the strategies communities can take to minimize effects that are expected to worsen in coming decades.
Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute presented several online tools like the ERI toolkit, which helps local governments provide information about adaptation strategies tailored to their communities; the Hoosier Resilience Index, which lets communities learn about current and future climate change impacts and how to prioritize actions to prepare; the Indiana Resilience Cohort, which lets cities, towns and county governments measure, manage and track their greenhouse gas emissions; and the Hoosier Life Survey, which tracks public opinion on attitudes toward topics like environmental change and policies to address them.
