The Lowlander Center has worked with the Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe and other partners in support of the creation of a Tool Kit for communities undergoing environmental and developmental pressures. The final product is Preserving our Place: A Community Field Guide to Engagement, Resilience, and Resettlement:
The following is an excerpt from the tool kit outlining its intended audience and purpose:
Audience: This toolkit document is intended for communities who are at high environmental risk and attempting adaptation. The case studies in this document are drawn from a small community with less formal organizational structure and a long history of high demand planning, facing pressures from external groups and forces, all while very much in the public eye. We believe this guide can also serve as a resource for communities facing similar risk and adaptation needs that find themselves in a range of situations, including,for example, but not limited to:
•Communities with less formal structures in place
•Those with more formal organizational structures in place
•Communities at the very beginning of their adaptation processes
•Those who are far along in their adaptation planning
•Smaller communities or larger communities
•Communities somewhere in between
Purpose: One important goal of this document is to provide possible ways for communities to help maintain control of the planning process and its narratives. We believe that some possible uses of this document include, but are not limited to:
•Its use as a decision-making asset
•As a guide for assessing and addressing risk and adaptation needs
•To aid in the navigation of community needs and keeping those needs at the fore front of planning processes
•As a collection of resources, and/or
•As a process guide.
Lastly, and most importantly, this is intended to be a resource for community efficacy and informed decision-making in community-led adaptation and regenerative planning processes in response to environmental stressors and injustice
Research reported in this document was supported by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine under award number 200008164. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Gulf Research Program or the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.