PARTNERS: Guilford, CT

Guilford participated in the Cross Border Exchange to Fredericton, Canada organized through CA-CP. The trip was fully funded by the Oak Foundation. Guilford is becoming a Cities for Climate Protection community, working with ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability to go through their official resolution process.

In 2004, Guilford organized a forward-looking workshop on sea-level rise and municipal planning, with assistance from Clean Air-Cool Planet. From CA-CP's Winter 2004 newsletter...

"When the Connecticut community of Guilford sought help in addressing a problem they had identified in their town – in part that their Amtrak station, a vital economic link to New Haven and New York City, could be flooded by projected sea-level rise from global warming – CA-CP offered to help. 'In addition to the model stakeholder education initiative we were involved in with Tellus, Cornell, and UVM, we had also begun to look at marine impacts in cooperation with the World Wildlife Fund,' Markham explains, noting that WWF had funded a project to bring marine scientists together to discuss impacts in Northeast waters.

“We had asked Tundi Agardy, of SoundSeas, a Washington, DC, a international authority on global warming and oceans, to help us put together the WWF meeting,” Markham said. That meeting took place at the New England Aquarium in June, and Agardi then worked those proceedings into a report, still in progress, on impacts on Northeast waters.

“So we knew that Tundi was someone with great current knowledge of the state of the oceans in our region, who could be very important in addressing this issue. We were very pleased to make it possible for her to be part of a day-long discussion on impacts and solution strategies in Guilford.”

Decision-makers, scientists and planners gather in Guilford, CT, to talk about sea level rise impacts and responses.

That meeting, November 19, also featured presentations by, in addition to Agardi, Connecticut State Representative Pat Widlitz, Climate Specialist Lynne Carter, Michael Ludwig, NOAA Fisheries, David Knowles, FEMA, John , speaking on behalf of Martin Whittaker, of SwissRe, Gary Yohe, Wesleyan University, and Dwight Merriam, of Robinson and Cole (For proceedings, go to Guilford’s website.

Panelists Agardi, (middle) Ludwig (left) and Wildlitz answer questions from meeting-goers.