Dec
07
2020
From The Blog
Final Report Shared by Adaptive Management Plan Task Force
The Kiawah Island Community Association (KICA), with the support of the Town of Kiawah, established a task force in July 2020 to initiate the development of an Adaptive Management Plan (AMP) to assist Kiawah in addressing the impacts of sea level rise, climate change and flooding on the island. This plan includes a structured process that identifies goals and objectives, implements management decisions, and carefully monitors the system. In the case of sea level rise and climate change impacts on Kiawah Island, the goals are to address unacceptable impacts on quality of life. These unacceptable conditions are “thresholds,” situations that we never want to reach.
During this first phase of work, the AMP Task Force organized focus groups, a community survey, a commercial entity survey, and conducted interviews with key stakeholders in the Kiawah community. The results of this work verified that property owners are concerned about the impact of sea level rise, climate change and flooding on their quality of life. Property owners felt the many situations involving flooding were of equal importance and described a holistic view of addressing this on Kiawah. The feedback from this community engagement facilitated the identification of threshold areas.
Key recommendations for the town and KICA include:
- Accept and refine the threshold conditions that resulted from this effort.
- Commit to developing a fully functioning AMP, proceed with the things they need to do in order to establish this, and ensure that this plan is institutionalized on behalf of the Kiawah community.
- Continue to collect information on and improve our understanding of the Kiawah environment, including supporting research programs that add to our knowledge base.
- Monitor and annually report key information to the Kiawah community and other stakeholders.