A Conversation About Building Climate Resilience on the Georgia Coast

Chapters

00:00 Welcome and Threats Facing Georgia’s Coast 

03:20 Connecting Climate, Equity, and Community 

06:38 Christi Lambert on The Nature Conservancy’s Coastal Work 

21:58 Jill Gambill on Georgia Tech’s Coastal Equity and Resilience Hub 

35:34 Dawud Shabaka on Harambee House and Resiliency 

51:44 Panel Discussion and Audience Questions

How is community-led work creating climate resilience on the Georgia coast? And what work is already being done to preserve our wetlands, a crucial climate solution in our state, and empower coastal communities?

To explore these questions, Drawdown Georgia co-hosted a conversation with the experts in partnership with One Hundred Miles, a conservation organization dedicated to preserving and protecting Georgia’s 100-mile coast through advocacy, education, and civic engagement. Co-moderators Megan Desrosiers and Jazz Watts lead a conversation with three panelists working across the coast.

What Threats Is Georgia’s Coast Facing?

Megan Desrosiers and Jazz Watts open with the two threats they think about most at One Hundred Miles: sprawling development consuming land seven times faster than population growth, and sea level rise, up 8 to 10 inches over the past 80 years. They frame the conversation around how these threats compound for communities already facing systemic inequities.

How Is The Nature Conservancy Building Resilience Through Oysters?

Christi Lambert maps out the interconnectedness of Georgia’s coastal ecosystems, from rivers to reefs, and explains why oysters are a powerful nature-based solution, protecting shorelines, filtering water, and supporting local economies. She shares the story of Ernest McIntosh, a McIntosh County fisherman whose oyster aquaculture grant grew into a youth work-study program.

Why Doesn’t a Gullah Geechee Community Qualify for Justice40 Funding?

Jill Gambill explains how Georgia Tech’s Coastal Equity and Resilience Hub found that Pin Point, a historic Gullah Geechee community, is excluded from federal Justice40 funding because it sits in a census tract skewed wealthier by surrounding development, a pattern a follow-up study found affects roughly half of 145 Gullah Geechee communities statewide.

What Does Resilience Mean Beyond Storm Recovery?

Dawud Shabaka of Harambee House describes a twofold definition of resilience: recovering from acute shocks like hurricanes, and addressing chronic stressors like legacy pollution and daily exposure to toxins in historically disinvested communities. He shares how rebuilding trust, sometimes over a period of years, has to come before any technical solution can take hold.

Whether you work in conservation, community development, or environmental justice, this conversation offers a grounded look at what it actually takes to build resilience that serves the communities most affected by a changing coast.

What You’ll Learn

• Why sprawling development and sea level rise compound the risks facing Georgia’s coastal communities.
• How The Nature Conservancy is using oyster reefs and living shorelines as nature-based climate solutions.
• Why a Gullah Geechee community doesn’t qualify for federal Justice40 funding, and how widespread that problem may be.
• How Harambee House defines resilience beyond disaster recovery, including daily exposure to legacy pollution.
• Why rebuilding trust has to come before any technical resilience solution can succeed.
• What it means to genuinely share power and follow community leadership, rather than just gathering community input.

Continue reading in our companion blog to learn more about how these Georgia leaders are protecting our fragile coastal wetlands and empowering coastal communities.

Download the Interview Transcript

Prefer to read the conversation instead? Download the complete PDF transcript of this webinar to explore these panelists’ insights on coastal resilience, environmental justice, and community-led solutions.