Climate Adaptation Center honors resilience efforts in the community

Over the next 50 years or so, climate adaptation will be the best strategy for overcoming the impacts of climate change, said Bob Bunting, founder and CEO of the Climate Adaptation Center.

"Even if we didn't put another ounce of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, starting today, the climate would take decades to stabilize, and for that reason, in the short term, the only thing we really have that we can do is climate adaptation," he said. 

The center's Climate Champions Awards, held Feb. 12 at Michael's on East, celebrated four individuals nominated by Sarasota's community for their efforts in climate resilience. 

This year's honorees were David Kotok, co-Founder of Cumberland Advisors and a founding member of the CAC, Karen Holbrook, former regional chancellor of the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, A.G. Lafley, founding CEO of The Bay Park Conservancy, and Tracie Troxler, founder and executive director of Sunshine Community Compost.

According to Elizabeth Moore, the CAC's founding director, the organization, now in its fifth year, is the only Florida-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to climate and its regional impacts.

A community effort 

Nominees spanned a range of fields within the community.

According to the CAC's website, David Kotok, co-Founder of Cumberland Advisors, is responsible for initiatives from "catalyzing CAC’s growth and shaping its conferences to advancing climate finance and fostering international collaborations addressing the impacts of climate warming."

In a video played at the event, Kotok said climate impacts all elements of economics and finance, calling adaptation "probably, other than maybe war... the largest single strategic economic financial shock in the history of all the people that are walking around on the planet now."

"The climate adaptation center five years ago was a little idea, a germ of an idea," he told attendees. "A couple of well-meaning people said, 'You know what? He's on to something.' And I believe in trying to help those ventures."

Photo by Ian Swaby

Karen Holbrook, who retired in December as regional chancellor of the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, is credited by the center's website with hosting all CAC conferences, fostering faculty collaboration, advancing sustainability efforts through the college's Patel School of Global Sustainability, and envisioning a future STEM center that will deepen partnerships with the CAC.

"We are so proud at the University of South Florida that our programs, Bob's programs, are on our campus..." Holbrook said, stating the university was providing not only for the CAC, but also the community, and noting the ability of students to become involved in the CAC through programming. 

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A.G. Lafley, founding CEO of The Bay Park Conservancy, said when the park, which opened in 2022, was built, its shoreline was converted from a "crumbling seawall to an all-native, all natural, resilient shoreline," while its team did everything it could to create resilience and treat stormwater with "a whole range of systems."

"The key thing about today's recognition is that it's a team recognition, not just for The Bay Park Conservancy team, but just as importantly, for the 100-plus external, extended team of partners, resources, stakeholders and supporters," Lafley said. 

Tracie Troxler, founder and executive director of Sunshine Community Compost, was honored for her efforts to educate and inspire the public in the area of composting, the process of setting aside plant and food waste and allowing it to decompose into nutrient-rich material that can be used as fertilizer. 

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"When I look back here, in 2016 I started to tell people that I wanted to start collecting food scraps and I wanted to turn it into compost, people looked at me like I was crazy..." she said. "I know we still have a long ways to go, but the fact that the community efforts happening in Sarasota are being recognized here today is a most important milestone."

Bunting said he hopes the result of the awards will be "to inspire others to follow in their paths, to see that adaptation is not a cost, it's an investment in our future, in our immediate future."

He told attendees that the organization's goal is to "make Sarasota the model coastal city for climate adaptation, and a living laboratory for it."

"We have the talent, the money and the need in ways few communities do," he said.