The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) Coastal Management Program received a Project of Special Merit (PSM) grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as part of NOAA’s Resilient and Sustainable Coastal strategy.
The Project of Special Merit, A Seat at the Table: Integrating the Needs and Challenges of Underrepresented and Socially Vulnerable Populations into Coastal Hazards Planning in New Jersey, was designed as a collaborative effort among the NJDEP, NOAA and the Rutgers Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and the Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve, part of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station
The project objectives were to:
- Update and enhance access to data for practitioners to identify socially vulnerable populations as part of coastal community climate resilience planning;
- Develop a web-based training curriculum to inform and support practitioners’ efforts to engage socially vulnerable populations as part of coastal community climate resilience planning;
- Offer options for changes in coastal management policies that will support engagement of socially vulnerable populations in coastal climate resilience planning.
