Mitigation Banking Challenges in the Era of Climate Change

The scientific community has long known about the potential impacts of climate change, but the general populace is now beginning to see and feel the effects of prolonged droughts, more intense and frequent hurricanes, devastating floods and wildfire, and rising seas. In the mitigation industry we are trying to plan for climate resiliency, all while having to demonstrate performance in the here and now. With catastrophic events that used to occur once in a century or millennium now happening on the decadal scale or even more frequently, mitigation practitioners are facing an increasingly difficult challenge of developing resilient projects that can perform even in adverse conditions. The current restoration approaches and regulatory paradigm in mitigation banking need to be reevaluated under these evolving conditions to address topics such as crediting resiliency efforts (e.g. protecting uplands for sea level rise retreat/future tidal wetlands), determining a "normal" water year, dealing with prolonged drought and wetland performance, and reassessing what are "Extraordinary Circumstances". This presentation will discuss these topics and the challenges the industry faces in tackling them while providing examples from existing mitigation banks.