Climate disasters are too often making headlines as fires, hurricanes, and flash floods hit communities across the country. U.S. coasts are particularly vulnerable. Since 2018, coastal states have experienced 480 billion-dollar disasters. The impacts of increasing extreme weather events are acutely felt, and local governments are working to up their communities’ resilience against them. At the same time, efforts to mitigate the root cause of these climate disasters are at risk, in part because future mitigation benefits are less tangible than emergency disaster response
What if we could embed long-term mitigation actions in projects that immediately benefit the public?
To me, viewing climate change from a human-centric lens has always made sense. My entry into climate work wasn’t theoretical—it was watching wildfires tear through my hometown in California. My parents were on the frontlines of these disasters as firefighters. My friends were too, as many lost their homes. The adaptation measures that were put in place to prevent and reduce the impact of these wildfires in subsequent years were not abstract. They were survival mechanisms.
That experience shapes how I see this moment. We need climate solutions that address urgent needs and build political durability, solutions rooted in systems that already have momentum.
Adaptation infrastructure has that momentum.
Resilience spending is real.
Public works will continue to be funded.
Coastal rebuilding is seemingly constantly underway.
As these projects move forward, in response to the immediate needs of coastal communities, the strategic question becomes: Can we design adaptation infrastructure that also supports long-term mitigation goals?
Since July, I have researched and interviewed coastal resilience practitioners to inform Our Coasts, Resiliency, and Carbon Dioxide Removal: A Practitioner-Informed Roadmap for Enhancing Coastal Resilience and CDR Potential Along the U.S. Coastline.
This roadmap explores how carbon removal can be embedded as a co-benefit within publicly funded coastal resilience projects, extending the value of investments communities are already making to protect themselves.
Coastal rebuilds are happening—let’s make the most of the investment
Marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) is a suite of processes that modify the chemistry of the ocean to draw down more carbon dioxide. Our new roadmap identifies three pathways where abiotic mCDR can align with coastal resilience:
- Living shorelines: where the materials already placed to stabilize shores could also draw down more carbon dioxide.
- Marsh restoration: restored systems that will take up more carbon and/or material applied to build elevation, creating a logical integration point for carbon-absorbing materials.
- Stormwater infrastructure systems: episodic, but often contained, environments that can facilitate carbon drawdown during storm events.
These interventions are tied to projects that are funded, permitted, and moving forward right now.
Too often, adaptation and mitigation live in parallel policy silos, with separate offices, budgets, dialogues, and success metrics. With our coasts, we have the opportunity to build a bridge between these silos and demonstrate tangible gains from dual-benefit projects. Pursuit of carbon removal as an ancillary goal to resilience projects can improve monitoring systems, broaden supply chains for sediments, and, overall, deliver more benefit to publicly funded projects.
If we design coastal infrastructure to adapt and mitigate climate change impacts at the same time, we unlock leverage that neither resilience nor carbon removal can achieve on its own.
Build the guardrails to unlock potential
Of course, these projects should not be pursued without adequate measures in place to ensure projects reach positive outcomes. Responsible integration depends on:
- Robust MRV (monitoring, reporting, verification) that can track both resilience performance and carbon removal outcomes.
- Transparent environmental review and permitting that respects local ecosystems.
- Meaningful engagement with invested and Indigenous communities, from planning to evaluation.
The roadmap doesn’t offer engineering specs, dosing formulas, or scaled carbon removal potential, all of which should be next steps in scoping pilot projects. It maps where integration is physically plausible, institutionally aligned, and outlines actions for various groups to move these projects forward, using case studies in Louisiana, California, North Carolina, and New Jersey.
Those geographies are evidence that this is not an idea confined to one state, one coast, or one research community. It’s a nationally relevant strategic frontier.
No silver bullets, only better design
The climate field does not need another abstract promise. And it can no longer afford to wait for sweeping policy change.
We need actionable pathways that couple adaptation and mitigation, and we need them where public infrastructure decisions are already being made.
We don’t need silver bullets.
We need public infrastructure that pulls double duty.
Read Our Coasts, Resiliency, and Carbon Dioxide Removal.
Explore C-QuIP, our newest tool for understanding the potential of CDR integrations, or read more about our thinking on the topic.
