McGowan MG102
McGowan Building
411 Pacific St
Monterey, CA 93940
View in Campus Map

Free
Open to the Public

  Clesi Bennett (MAIEP OCRM '2017) Poster Session Cal Coastal Commission
Clesi Bennett (MAIEP OCRM ‘2017) at 13th Annual State of the San Francisco Estuary Conference, October 2017.
 

Integrating environmental justice and social equity into the regulatory and policy language of coastal zone management is no easy feat.  For Clesi Bennett, Coastal Planner at the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), this is focus of her work.

Last summer, California’s coastal zone management agency for the San Francisco Bay area, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) voted unanimously to initiate the process of amending its regulatory framework, the San Francisco Bay Plan to include policies on environmental justice and social equity. Join speaker Clesi Bennett, Coastal Planner at BCDC (and graduate of the MIIS International Environmental Policy program) as she briefly covers the basics: BCDC’s history and functions, the San Francisco Bay Plan, and an overview of environmental justice and social equity in natural resource management in California. We will then dive into what incorporating environmental justice and social equity could look like for coastal zone management of the San Francisco Bay, including guiding principles and common obstacles and hurdles. We will end with an update on BCDC’s environmental justice and social equity San Francisco Bay Plan amendment process to-date.

About the Speaker

Clesi Bennett is a coastal planner at the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), California’s coastal zone management agency for the San Francisco Bay area. At BCDC, Clesi works on policy and long-range planning initiatives and is currently working on formulating an amendment to BCDC’s San Francisco Bay Plan to integrate environmental justice and social equity into BCDC’s regulatory and planning work. Prior to BCDC, Clesi worked at The Nature Conservancy’s California Coastal Resilience Project on science and economics communications, the Center for the Blue Economy on ocean and coastal climate change vulnerability research, and the California State Coastal Conservancy on sea-level rise adaptation research. Additionally, Clesi has done food justice organizing with Real Food Challenge, worked on sustainability issues in institutions of higher education, farmed and taught sustainable agriculture principles and practices, and cooked in professional kitchens. Clesi has an M.A. in International Environmental Policy with a concentration in Ocean and Coastal Resource Management from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and a B.A. in Environmental Policy from Sewanee: The University of the South.  

Lecture Location:  McGowan 102

The McGowan Building is located at 411 Pacific Street, Monterey, CA, 93940, on the campus of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Attendees should enter through the glass doors from Pacific Street, and room 102 is located inside to the right. View the campus map.

Parking

Parking is available in any Middlebury Institute campus lot after 5 p.m., or on the street (time limits on surrounding streets end at 6 p.m.)

Questions

Contact Rachel Christopherson at the Center for the Blue Economy at cbe@miis.edu or (831) 647-6615.