Climate Program Office (CPO) Adaptation Sciences: Interdisciplinary research, engagement and capacity building to advance adaptation and resilience in islands of the Caribbean and the Pacific

The Adaptation Sciences Program resides in the Climate Program Office’s (CPO’s) Climate and Societal Interactions Division (CSI). CSI has traditionally been a home for high-impact science, catalyzing some of the earliest U.S. government investments in regionally scaled, societally relevant, interdisciplinary climate research and engagement focused on characterizing risk and addressing vulnerability and adaptation through the use of climate knowledge and information in social context. Today, CSI continues to work with partners to enhance community, sectoral and national resilience in the face of climatic changes, through human-centered research, engagement and capacity building activities designed to connect innovative science directly to complex and dynamic preparedness, adaptation, and resilience challenges and opportunities. Programs managed by CSI are a key component of NOAA’s cutting-edge research enterprise, which has evolved over time to include the private sector, NGOs, and a wide range of practitioners. CSI includes the Adaptation Sciences (AdSci) research program (https://cpo.noaa.gov/Divisions-Programs/Climate-and-Societal-Interactions/The-Adaptation-Sciences-Program), which supports projects and partnerships to help advance the knowledge, methods, and frameworks needed to move society beyond incremental adaptation toward more widespread, connected, adaptive pathways and resilience strategies with clear economic and societal co-benefits, and the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (https://cpo.noaa.gov/Divisions-Programs/Climate-and-Societal-Interactions/RISA/About-RISA) or RISA program,which advances equitable adaptation through sustained regional research and community engagement. CSI seeks to foster collaboration and integration across these program areas in order to optimize the investment of NOAA resources in support of capacity-building to meet societal needs.The Adaptation Sciences Program The AdSci program is composed of several lines of effort - each shaped by ongoing engagement and structured partnerships with key stakeholders - and program strategies that reflect the societal needs and opportunities for collaboration that emerge from these partnerships. AdSci’s current lines of effort include partnerships and projects focused on the following: international collaboration to advance adaptation and resilience; climate impacts on fisheries and pathways for adaptation in fishing communities; and water-resources challenges and opportunities in coastal communities. Research focuses on the integration of acute and chronic stressors that occur over multiple timescales, which can lead to cascading impacts that threaten to overwhelm and undermine systems important to daily life and social and economic well-being. The goal of the AdSci Program is to foster adaptation and resilience by supporting research and partnerships focused on: *Developing an understanding of key drivers and conditions that shape and enable adaptation across multiple temporal and spatial scales (e.g., socioeconomic context, adaptive behaviors, risk perception, public awareness and education); and *Identifying key aspects of and promoting opportunities for the use of scientific information to best support preparedness and planned adaptation of high value to social and economic goals. The AdSci International program element works with partners in the public and private sector to enhance the knowledge, engagement and capacity needed to foster adaptation and resilience in the face of a changing climate. Programs work across regions, and the sectors and systems upon which communities depend (e.g., human health, disaster risk reduction, water resources, coastal and marine ecosystem management, food security, infrastructure), and help support the integration of climate information in related risk management and decision making processes. In FY 23, Adaptation Sciences is seeking proposals for interdisciplinary adaptation research activities to identify and better understand evolving climate -related risks, vulnerabilities, and adaptive capacity and foster the integration of this knowledge into adaptation and resilience planning for islands in the Caribbean and Pacific. DEIJ CSI programs encourage applicants and awardees to support the principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion when building their proposals and while performing their work. Ensuring justice and equity means paying particular attention to populations most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, which are often low-income communities, communities of color, indigenous and tribal communities, those already overburdened by pollution, those who lack economic or social opportunity, and people facing disenfranchisement. Diversity here is defined as a collection of individual attributes that together help organizations achieve objectives. Inclusion is defined as a culture that connects each person to the larger organizing structure. Promoting justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion improves the creativity, productivity, and vitality of the communities in which the program engages.
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