One More Chance to Participate in Harvard MVP Workshop

Residents of Harvard and other stakeholders have one final opportunity to attend a workshop and provide ideas regarding how the Town should address the impacts of climate change. After hearing from both the agricultural community and a wider representation of citizens on what hazards are likely to befall Harvard from climate change, this Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness or MVP workshop is the best chance to debate what local assets should be our focus and what steps the Town should take to protect those assets.

Think of this process as a risk management problem. How would an actuarial determine risk related to automobile accidents, risk of catastrophic health issues, or storm damage to your home? Think of this in the same terms. Wouldn't you want to protect your home, life, and car with insurance? The MVP program is a rough equivalent to climate insurance for the community. We need to be aware of the likely risks, take an inventory of our most important assets that could be impacted by the hazards, and then take steps to protect the assets or intelligently adapt to the inevitable.

Assets are multifold and are both private and public. They include our homes and land. They include the trees and soil on our land. If we farm, it includes all of our fields, farm buildings, and other assets. It includes roads and streets, storm drains and culverts, dams, municipal buildings, power lines, parks, ballfields, and school playgrounds.

While we do not have many local business properties, the ones we have could also be at risk to flooding or other storm damage due to the greater frequency and intensity of storm events in the future. So hopefully you have a few hours on Thursday evening to join us and express your concerns and provide ideas regarding what we should do. The ideas that we generate will not only help us identify what we should protect, these ideas and the report that they will be contained within will be the ticket we need to be eligible for further state funding under the MVP program. For more information on our MVP project, please go to our web page at this link.

Also please help us gather more information by taking our brief survey at this link. If you can't attend our meetings, at least take the time to complete the survey.

Certainly this isn't the last time that we will be talking about this threat to our community, but at this stage, we can be more proactive and less reactive. People concerned about climate change as it may impact us here locally but also how it may have wider implications, can get involved in a variety of different initiatives. But first, consider visiting a few sites that have great information regarding the issue:

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Download the reports. Admittedly this stuff is dense and not summarized well but if you want the latest science from the best source, this would be it.
• EPA Overview of Climate Change
• NASA Summary of Evidence
• Stanford University/Stephen Schneider Outreach Page

 As noted above, there are a variety of ways that citizens can get involved beyond attending our workshop or filling out the survey. You can participate in a range of organizations from the local to the global:

• Bolton Local - Interestingly, the very first "local" was the Harvard Local, which inspired Groton, Ayer, Bolton, Concord, and others. Check Bolton out, and consider reviving the Harvard Local.
• Massachusetts Climate Action Network
• MassAdapt
• More Than Scientists 
• 350.org

 If you have any questions about Harvard's MVP project, what comes next, or anything related to climate change initiatives, please don't hesitate to contact me at cryan@harvard.ma.us or 978-456-4100 x323.