Report: Extension Climate & Extreme Weather Programming

and women landowners and trying to get them more involved in land management. For a variety of reasons, that’s becoming increasingly important.” (R03)

Expanding Mitigation-Focused Programs By and large, interview respondents’ C/EW programs focus on adaptation and resilience, and there is fertile ground for expanding mitigation-focused programming. Three respondents said that 100% of their climate or extreme-weather related work is focused on adaptation while the majority (13 respondents) reported a fairly even balance of adaptation vs. mitigation-focused climate or extreme weather programming in their work. Only one respondent reported a majority (85%) focus on mitigation in their C/EW Extension programs. Extreme weather events often serve as a catalyst for launch of or increased demand for programs focused on adaptation (in a reactive sense) and then when things calm down, focus and interest in mitigation might expand. At least one respondent reported growing interest in or demand among their clientele for mitigation-focused programs while another spoke to the challenges of mitigation-focused programming. ● “I very rarely hear talk of ‘we need to reduce emissions in the work we do…’ or ‘we need to stop X thing from happening…’ And there 's probably some talk of that... I know there are discussions I'm less involved in about planning for urbanization in areas that are of high importance and high development likelihood. Yeah, there is some of that but I would say that most of it falls into the adaptation category. ” (R03)

● “I really have not worked at all on mitigation .” (R06)

42

Powered by