Keeping Our Heads Above Rising Water With Urban Ocean Lab’s Sheetal Shah
When Sheetal Shah talks about the effects of climate change on coastal communities, she’s talking about her own home. In Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood (on Lenape, Canarsee and Mespeatches land), flooding, pollution and sewer overflows are in-your-face reminders of worsening coastal climate hazards, deteriorating infrastructure and a legacy of environmental injustices—and they directly inform her work as Program Director at Urban Ocean Lab (UOL), a think tank dedicated to developing equitable policy at the intersection of climate, cities and coasts.
We chatted with Shah about how UOL is leading the way to more comprehensive climate solutions—and how she stays positive working on the front lines of climate change.
Climate change and your grandma
“In the next 30 or 40 years, it is quite possible that the coastline will be encroaching on where my grandmother's house is,” Shah says. “It could be affected by sea level rise and flooding. That's very personal to me.” On top of threats to her own Brooklyn home, she’s observed impacts when she visits her family in Mumbai each year (she’s a first generation Indian-American). “In a coastal city like Mumbai, you can really see how the climate crisis affects people in different ways, especially during the monsoon season. The city floods and drinking water is contaminated. It is life-threatening at this point, particularly for those who are unhoused,” she says. In the U.S. alone, 65 million people live in coastal cities, nearly 60% of which are people of color.
A photo of the view of the ocean near Shah’s family's house in Mumbai, photo credit: Sheetal Shah
Shah recently earned her masters in energy and environmental policy and global economics from NYU’s Center for Global Affairs—and while she was studying, conducted research for a private equity firm to identify funding gaps and investment opportunities in strategic infrastructure in the U.S. She saw firsthand how certain communities disproportionately bear the brunt of climate change—and how implementing solutions while avoiding unintended consequences can be a thorny process. It cemented Shah’s commitment to furthering more equitable, just and inclusive climate policies. For her, that means solutions must be designed alongside groups most impacted by the climate crisis.
At UOL, policy is built around five specific themes: supporting the natural shoreline protection provided by coastal ecosystems, expanding offshore renewable energy, investing in infrastructure, strengthening community resilience and advancing proactive, justice-centered climate-driven relocation. Shah brings a unique background—at the intersection of design research, program design and the climate crisis—to the table.
This is big
This year UOL released its Climate Readiness Framework for Coastal Cities, which includes more than 70 recommendations to help coastal cities better adapt to and manage climate risks. These include creating green jobs and a trained workforce (the coastal economy supports 58.3 million jobs and contributes $9.5 trillion to our total GDP) and retrofitting infrastructure to be more climate resilient. One of the most important pieces of this process, Shah says, was simply to accurately hone in on exactly how many coastal cities there are in the U.S., and what their demographics are. Previously, there was no universally accepted definition of what a coastal city is, and this information is critical to creating effective “bottom-up” policy.
As part of UOL’s research, they found there are 375 coastal cities in the U.S., and they're home to 20% of the population. So one-fifth of the national population could be directly impacted by the policy recommendations included in the newly released framework.
“Research that we’re currently conducting finds that only about 35 to 40% of coastal cities have climate action plans in place,” Shah says. “Many of these coastal cities are smaller cities. They might be under-resourced. So, being able to build this broad framework that can then be adapted by different coastal cities according to their needs, but also being able to eventually create a community of practice through which cities can share knowledge and learn from the successes of other cities, while also elevating community knowledge and priorities is really important for us. So in that sense, the framework is just the beginning.”
The power of acting locally
Sometimes disconnects appear between the actual impacts of climate change and where attention or funding is paid—but a benefit to working with cities is that they can be climate leaders, Shah says. “Cities are nimble. They have an ability to move fast and focus on issues that the federal government sometimes can't.” For example, when President Trump announced his intention to pull out of the Paris Agreement, New York City was the first city to sign on. Cities have the ability to be models for innovative policies that can then be scaled to the state and federal level, Shah says.
A poster protesting a fracked gas pipeline that National Grid was trying to install in Shah’s neighborhood, Greenpoint (residents successfully halted construction of the project), photo credit Sheetal Shah
UOL’s role is to help coastal cities better address some of the gaps in their approach—to elevate the ocean, and the solutions that the ocean and our coasts provide, into more effective and comprehensive policy. “Rather than responding after the inevitable happens, helping them be more proactive rather than reactive,” Shah says.
Tools for the next steps
Also coming soon, UOL’s Resource Hub will be a tool for cities—and those working to make them more resilient—to use, built using the organization’s trusted, thoroughly vetted sources, with datasets, reports, sample legislation and more. “The hub is built with the user in mind and will be regularly updated,” Shah says, and will eventually include a visualization of the 375 coastal cities, with information on which ones have climate action plans, which ones don't, and what their demographics are.
A map of the Meeker Avenue Plume (and EPA superfund site) within which Shah’s apartment is located. Photo source article here.
That visualization aspect is super important—and something Shah’s background in design research supports. “If we’re putting forward policy solutions, it can run the risk of being jargon heavy,” Shah says. “It can feel intangible. It can feel abstract. … That's the role that I think design and art plays, its being able to visualize issues and potential outcomes so that we, as well as policymakers, community members, anyone who might use the ideas that we're putting forward, can understand what they mean outside of just words on a page.”
Keeping our heads above water
As the UOL team pushes forward, including work on the difficult subject of climate-driven relocation—“Five years ago, no one wanted to talk about relocation,” Shah says. “Now, we're seeing that it is going to be unavoidable in some cases.”—keeping a focus on positive potential is essential.
Pointing to UOL’s founder Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Shah says she’s lucky Johnson’s leadership focuses on the opportunities to create lasting change. “She is so solutions-oriented and is always saying, ‘We have to put the solutions first. It can't just be doom and gloom. The sky is falling. That might feel like the case, but we are not out of time.’ ”
For Shah that means keeping perspective, remembering humans themselves are part of nature, instead of separate from the natural world and its cycles. “In the grand scheme of things, there is no hierarchy in nature,” she says. “There's no sort of food chain where humans are at the top. We're all in this together with the rest of the planet. That's how I approach all of this work, that we are absolutely integrated in nature. We are doing our best to ensure a future not just for humans, but for all living things.”
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