Future Ready

10Nature-Based Solutions from Coast to Coast

Highway 98 runs through Florida's panhandle region, hugging the coast from Pensacola to Alligator Point. In the 1980s, the road was known as the Forgotten Highway because it was left out of tourist brochures. These days, Highway 98 has made it onto maps, but the unassuming stretch of asphalt with views of the Gulf of Mexico still seems an unlikely place for the future of infrastructure to be taking shape. Just past Apalachicola, a small town punctuated by oyster bars, lies a peaceful, sparsely populated stretch of the highway that carries high infrastructure vulnerability. It is also the site of a remarkable program that brings together sustainability and resilience, while offering many other benefits to the community.

While every region of the United States is being impacted by climate change to varying degrees and in different ways, Florida's combination of extreme temperatures, flooding, and hurricanes regularly places it at or near the top of climate-risk rankings.^1,2,3,4 Headline-grabbing examples include the increasingly common sunny-day flooding in Miami Beach at high tide—when saltwater runs onto the streets from wastewater drains—and dire predictions that large portions of South Florida will be uninhabitable within a few generations.⁵ But in Apalachicola, at the slower-paced, northern end of the state, the impact of climate change and resource depletion has also arrived with disconcerting speed.

Shellshock

Until recently, ...