The Santa Barbara Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation is delighted to welcome Dr. Charles Lester for a fascinating talk at our upcoming General Meeting
Thursday February 20, 2020 at 7pm
South Coast Watershed Resource Center at Hendry’s Beach (Arroyo Burro Beach Park)
2981 Cliff Dr, Santa Barbara, CA 93109
Climate Change – Social Change
The Next 50 Years of Coastal Protection
Dr. Charles Lester
Director, Ocean and Coastal Policy Center, Marine Science Institute, UCSB
Please join us to consider the future of the coast! The passage of California’s Proposition 20 Coastal Initiative in 1972 launched perhaps the greatest coastal protection experiment ever. California has since become an international leader in coastal management, with a vision to protect the coast for present and future generations while providing for its sustainable development. By most accounts, California’s coastal protection effort has been a huge success. Yet today, the state faces an ever-growing set of challenges, from sea level rise, to insidious plastic pollution, to the wide-spread gentrification of the coastal zone. Questions are squarely raised: has California’s coastal management experiment achieved its original vision? Is the state of the coast after 50 years of considered management a cause for celebration, or is it time to take stock, diagnose, and re-tool for the next 50 years?
Dr. Lester, former executive director of the California Coastal Commission and now Director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center at the Marine Science Institute, will reflect on California’s original vision for coastal management, and discuss some of the core challenges facing the state. At the end of the talk, Dr. Lester will invite discussion of these challenges, including to consider how researchers, NGOs, government and citizens might help take them on through collaborative.
This meeting is free & open to all, and as always there will be pizza and light refreshments.