BETTMAN SESSION: Law and Planning for Climate Change

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• How to track new legal trends, compare fact patterns, analyze potential liabilities, coordinate strategies, and recognize the challenges of accountability with climate and adaptation-planning, including takings law
• How to relate federal and state policies and regulations, comprehend the relationships among risk standards and insurance implications, integrate multiple benefits (such as FEMA programs), and better visualize climate and adaptation planning
• How to draw comparisons (such as ordinance and policy adoption), build from presented case studies, harmonize examples, and utilize new and existing policy frameworks for responsive climate and adaptation planning

MORE SESSION DETAILS

This Alfred Bettman session will provide updates on state and national legal cases, policies, and regulations, raising new considerations in planning for adaptation and sea-level rise. The panel will discuss the legal implications of planning for sea-level rise and climate adaptation, including a multi-state synopsis of planning approaches, takings, and liability for this evolving planning field. The use of actionable data and analysis, planning scenarios, and considerations of future flood risk in the planning process have become legal issues as well as benefits and burdens to individual property owners within takings cases. The session will also explore what the new federal actions on climate and adaptation mean for planning and projects. Topics will include, but not be limited to, linkages with FEMA’s Community Rating System Program, national flood insurance reform, risk management standards, and federal environmental permitting implications for adaptation planning. Defensible solutions and planning approaches will form the basis of “case studies” to be discussed. This Law session qualifies for 1.5 Law CM.