Institutional Decision-Making

The international scientific community has begun to focus upon the reality of global climate change and sophisticated research techniques provide increasingly accurate models of the potential impacts of associated weather extremes, disease outbreaks, and global and local environmental destruction. Yet decision-making institutions have not, for the most part, incorporated global climate change in their policies and planning efforts. This report presents the implications of climate change, thus far considered largely in a global context, in very local terms. As research and discussion of climate change begin to focus on anticipated regional impacts, decision-makers in the Metropolitan East Coast (MEC) Region and elsewhere should begin to consider and implement practical adaptation policies affecting land use, infrastructure, natural resource management, public health, and emergency and disaster response.