Addressing Climate Change at the Community Level in the United States

The concept of community, in all its diverse definitions and manifestations, provides a unique approach to learn more about how groups of individuals and organizations are addressing the challenges posed by climate change. This new volume highlights specific cases of communities developing innovative approaches to climate mitigation and adaptation around the United States. Defining community more comprehensively than just spatial geography to include also communities of interest, identity and practice, this book highlights how individuals and organizations are addressing the challenges posed by climate change through more resilient social processes, government policies and sustainable practices.

Through close examinations of community efforts across the United States, including agricultural stakeholder engagement and permaculture projects, coastal communities and prolonged drought areas, and university extension and local governments, this book shows the influence of building individual and institutional capacity toward addressing climate change issues at the community level. It will be useful to community development students, scholars and practitioners learning to respond to unexpected shocks and address chronic stress associated with climate change and its impacts.

Paul Lachapelle is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Montana State University in Bozeman and serves as the Extension Community Development Specialist. Working in partnership with the Local Government Center, his responsibilities involve providing research, technical assistance and training on various community development topics. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Montana’s College of Forestry and Conservation with a focus on natural resource policy and governance and currently serves as the President of the International Association for Community Development and Editor of the Community Development Society Current Issues Book Series.

Don Albrecht began his role as the Director of the Western Rural Development Center in July 2008. He received a B.S. in Forestry, an M.S. in Sociology from Utah State University and a Ph.D. in Rural Sociology from Iowa State University. He then served as a member of the faculty at Texas A&M University for 27 years where he worked in the Departments of Rural Sociology and Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Sciences. He has researched and written extensively on the issues confronting the communities and residents of rural America. Among the issues explored are natural resource concerns, economic restructuring, demographic trends, poverty, inequality and education.