By Lauren Thacker
Rhode Island incorporates more than 400 miles of coastline and every resident lives within 30 minutes of Narragansett Bay or the Atlantic Ocean. Warming waters and coastal erosion have a highly visible, deeply felt impact.
Emily Hall, M.S. ’23, now a coastal geologist with the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council, meets with Rhode Islanders to talk about ocean policies and has insight into how climate change impacts how people live, work, and play across coastal communities. “I tell elected officials, ‘This is our best science. What is going to be best for your community?’”
Determining what works best for different communities, with needs ranging from protecting shoreline properties to preventing flooding to preserving the fishing industry, is a balancing act. It’s one that requires time—something in short supply as temperatures rise. It also requires cooperation and understanding between scientists, policy makers, and members of the public.
As they provide research, policy measures and advocacy, URI faculty and alumni are working to advance that understanding. Rafeed Hussain G’24 says, “It may be cliché to say, but I want to work to make the world a better place. I want to be an ocean advocate.”
The Stakes
It’s all but impossible to ignore the impact of climate change. We have seen news of (or suffered through) record-setting wildfires, unusual weather patterns like a deep freeze in Texas and longer, more frequent heat waves across the United States, and both extreme drought and unprecedented flooding. In 2024, Hurricane Helene caused extensive damage hundreds of miles inland, demonstrating impacts will be felt in ways we can’t always predict.
The question of who will feel what is one that Kristy Lewis, assistant professor of oceanography, asks in her research. As the heat index rises, for example, how will that be experienced in communities with more or less tree cover and green space? How does flooding in urban areas with significant amounts of hardscaping increase urban runoff, a major contributor to water pollution? Which communities receive targeted coastal resilience mitigation funding, and which communities are historically and currently overlooked when resilience projects are implemented?
“We can be nimble and creative and work on proactive efforts as we are faced with the reality of climate change.”Professor J.P. Walsh
“When we think about policy and climate change impacts, we should consider the most vulnerable populations. Building up protections in these areas will contribute to strength and resilience overall,” she says.
J.P. Walsh, professor of oceanography, cites major hurricanes from Rhode Island’s past: the Hurricane of 1938 and Hurricane Carol in 1954. He says the state’s recognition of this history has led to proactive action, such as the installation of the hurricane barrier in Providence and development of public tools for understanding how new construction will be impacted by storm surge and erosion. All this make Rhode Island more prepared than most areas. Still, he says, another big storm is inevitable. And it will test those defenses.
“A key consideration of the inevitability of that big event is how it will affect our community and economy. We’re ‘The Ocean State’ and the blue economy is significant. Ten percent of jobs are tied to the ocean, and so many people and critical infrastructure are along our shores. It’s going to be real trauma when the next big hit occurs,” he says.
Elected officials and the general public recognize climate threats, Walsh says, pointing to New England storms in the 2023-2024 winter season that caused flooding and erosion. They were major storms, but still small compared to what is possible.
“We’re a small community and that means we have real connections between researchers, communities and policy makers. We can be nimble and creative and work on proactive efforts as we are faced with the reality of climate change,” he says. “The big storm could come at any time. We cannot be complacent.”
Collective Action
Researchers and policy makers alike stress the importance of connections—between scientists, elected officials and citizens, as well as connections between different parts of the natural world—in working toward resilience in the face of climate change.
“We have to think about pathways for science to be a part of policy discussions.”Whitley Saumweber, Ph.D. ’05
It’s something that Whitley Saumweber, Ph.D. ’05, clinical associate professor in URI’s Department of Marine Affairs, has been passionate about for years. Saumweber got his start as a John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellow working with Daniel Inouye, then a U.S. senator from Hawaii, during which time he worked on legislation related to fisheries, climate, and pollution.
“Bridging science and policy is something I think about a lot and now get to address explicitly in my teaching,” he says. “We have to think about pathways for science to be a part of policy discussions.”
An example of building science into the process is the reauthorization of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management, which Saumweber worked on in 2005. At that time, the 35-year-old act had not been updated in 10 years and relied primarily on social and economic considerations in determining regulations like catch limits. The 2005 reauthorization required that management decisions be guided by scientific assessment of fish stock status. Saumweber calls it a “landmark” for thinking about how science influences policy.
At the same time, Saumweber is clear that the economic and social considerations should remain in place. Balancing those inputs was part of his job as a senior ocean policy official in the Obama administration. In that role, he advanced legislation that considered ocean ecosystems, and how people interact with them, from a holistic point of view.
For a success story, Saumweber points to the Papahánaumokuákea Marine National Monument, established in 2016. At the time, it was the largest marine protected area in the world, encompassing 582,578 square miles of the Pacific Ocean.
To justify the size and scope of the protected area, Saumweber and his colleagues considered the ecosystem as a whole, including seabird habitat migration distance, keystone predator ranges and coral reef spawning. This was made possible by the National Ocean Policy, instituted by President Obama in 2010.
“[The policy] directed that the U.S. government adopt something called ecosystem based management, or the idea that in managing our ocean resources, we should think about ecosystem function and how it can be preserved in order to continue to provide services to people, such as fishing and marine transport, while not causing harm,” Saumweber says.
Considering how people in coastal communities live and work with the ocean is a driving force behind Lewis’s work. She approaches climate-driven challenges through the transdisciplinary oceanography lens, which focuses on ecosystem resilience and environmental justice.
“In my lab, we think about how we can work with communities and tribal nations, from problem identification to devising solutions. This is different from the traditional western approach of doing the science first and then taking a solution to the communities, who have had no input,” she says.
For years, Lewis has been working with Groundwork Southcoast, the New Bedford, Mass., chapter of a national organization that builds community partnerships and works towards environmental, economic, and social well-being. Recently, NASA and the National Science Foundation issued calls for research by oceanographers and geographers to work with satellite data and to collaborate with communities.
In a new grant application, Lewis proposed studying how coastal resilience can protect social infrastructure like parks and libraries. “This is where our relationship with Groundwork Southcoast really made a difference,” she says. “They stepped up and said that if we really wanted to engage citizens in building capacity and resilience, talking about putting in oyster reefs or planting seagrass is not the way to go. To get our community excited, they said, engage them through food. Talk about community gardens and public parks.”
Lewis adapted her proposal to using geological data to investigate how sea level rise will impact not only the shoreline, but the coastal community as a whole, and to find appropriate locations for “nature-based social infrastructure.” It is a clear example, she says, of how social and scientific considerations can work in harmony.
Hussain, a Knauss Fellow for 2025, has experience bringing people together. At Ocean Conservancy, he often facilitated conversations between congressional offices and ocean stakeholders. He will continue that work next year in Washington, D.C., listening to concerns and reporting them to members of Congress as they consider policies.
He echoes Lewis’s comments on community involvement, saying the community needs to be involved in science and policy from day one. Doing so results in more equitable, better-informed policies that are more likely to be accepted.
“For example, with an issue like offshore wind, a lot of pushback is coming from the commercial fishing industry,” he says. “In my opinion, they have legitimate concerns—their historic fishing grounds are impacted. So people like fishermen need to be a more central part of the conversation.”
Engaging with a coastal community can also help prevent misinformation from taking hold. Hussain’s master’s thesis focused on the misinformation surrounding offshore wind and specifically, reports of its development causing whale deaths. NOAA found and stated there is no evidence for this connection and Hussain’s research found that many groups promoting the idea have connections to the fossil fuel industry.
“A lot of the people that support anti-offshore wind groups don’t necessarily know of these connections,” he says. “They see groups trying to save the whales and think that must be right.”
To build trust, address community concerns and priorities and combat misinformation, Emily Hall believes the most important thing is to meet people where they are. “Rather than saying that people need to come to a Providence City Council meeting, we might do a shoreline access program in Barrington or an outreach event on East Beach,” she says.
Hall also conducted a recent site visit and talk on the vulnerable Charlestown Breachway, a man-made rock jetty lining the channel that connects Ninigret Pond to Block Island Sound. Hall met citizens on the breachway to hear concerns and share information about science-informed protections.
“I try to be the voice of science while engaging people on their home turf,” she says. “This isn’t ‘parachute science’ where we come into a community, gather data and never come back. We’re trying to give decision-making power to communities.”
“This isn’t ‘parachute science’ where we come into a community, gather data and never come back.”Emily Hall, M.S. ’23
“We value our coasts from a scientific, biodiversity, and economic perspective, but also for the joy and peace we get from it,” she says. “Facing erosion, how do we implement policies to maintain our Ocean State identity?”
The Future of Our Shores
When asked about how to cultivate understanding between scientists, policy makers, and citizens and take proactive steps toward coastal resilience, GSO faculty and alumni spoke about the paradox of time: There’s a need to be nimble and responsive, but time is required to develop connections, gather information and observe the effects of current policies.
Researchers need time to develop connections within communities, like Lewis has done. Hall points out that elected officials and government workers need time to learn new technologies and understand emerging research.
“The ecosystem management approach we implemented was a great first step,” says Saumweber. “But policies need time to iterate and grow. Just like science, you have to iterate and build on ideas, fix what you don’t know and what you did wrong. Still, we have to consider how we translate academic ideas to the language of government that the bureaucracy could understand and use. This is critical.”
Lewis’s comments on working across silos provides some insight into how the paradox may be addressed: investing time in building connections across populations and scientific disciplines can lead to better science that can be turned into policy more quickly. Lewis observes that, at one point, research on new medicines and health technologies averaged about 17 years to go from “bench to bedside.” Not anymore. Creating interdisciplinary research teams decreased that time.
“If we start with everyone at the table, we won’t have that lag time translating science to the community and to policy makers,” she says. “We make it faster for science to go into action.”