Kyle King - Sara Belligoni
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[00:00:00] Kyle King: Welcome to the Crisis Conflict and Emergency Management Podcast, where we have global conversations and share perspectives about international crisis, preparedness, and how to build more resilient societies. My name is Kyle, and I will be your host. And just how vulnerable are we to the changing international environment and what can we learn from this experience?
[00:00:18] Kyle King: From AI to space warfare, to community development and crisis communications. There's something here for everyone. Join us for unique international conversations and perspectives into the current threats, challenges, and risks to our society. This podcast is brought to you by Capacity Building International and sponsored by the International Emergency Management Society.
[00:00:45] Kyle King: Okay, so welcome to the CBI podcast and where we discuss crucial topics in resilience and emergency management. I'm your host, Kyle King, and today we're gonna be exploring the issue of climate change and migration. And with us today is Sara Belligoni from Rutgers University, who will share her insights and expertise on this subject.
[00:01:03] Kyle King: So as climate change continues to disrupt our global ecosystems, coastal communities and vulnerable populations are feeling the brunt of its impacts. Migration, both domestic and international, is becoming an increasingly significant response to these challenges. And in this episode, we're gonna delve into the various factors shaping this phenomenon and the diverse approaches that countries can take or communities can take in addressing it.
[00:01:26] Kyle King: So without further ado, let's dive right into our discussion. And Sara, thanks for joining us today. And let's start with a quick introduction and background.
[00:01:34] Sara Belligoni: Absolutely. So thank you so much for having me here. I really appreciate having the chance to talk a little bit more about what I'm doing, what I will be doing for a while.
[00:01:44] Sara Belligoni: So again, Sara Belligoni from RutgerU university, I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate working closely with the Megapolitan and Coastal Transformation Hub. I am originally from Italy where I got my first steps in the academic field, getting my first degrees there. And then I recently got my Ph.D. From the University of Central Florida.
[00:02:08] Sara Belligoni: So I have wide expertise on climate change and migrations focused with different lenses. So I'm happy to be here today and talk with you more. And as a disclaimer, of course, all my views are mine.
[00:02:25] Kyle King: Absolutely. All right, well, thanks. Yeah. Thanks again for joining us. I think this is gonna be an increasingly important topic as we have even seen just in recent days in the States with, you know, significant storms and even blizzards falling in California and things we can obviously see are changing quite a bit, you know, even almost in real time, even though we've sort of been building up to this for a while.
[00:02:47] Kyle King: But why do you think that this topic is relevant to our work in terms of emergency management and in the resilience or merchant management space overall?
[00:02:55] Sara Belligoni: Absolutely. So the problem with migrations associated with climate change, it's very much connected with both the emergency management and the resilient aspects, simply because if you think about migrations, resulting from climate change, they are the adaptation measure that people take to become more resilient to climate change.
[00:03:20] Sara Belligoni: So simply put people when they feel that they are vulnerable and not really resilient to climate change, resulting disasters. The way they adapt to that is also by migrating, so it has a very strong connection with the resilient aspect, but also with the emergency management because the more the emergency management is eventually able to plan for disasters and focus strongly on adaptation or mitigation, then that means that the likelihood of communities to migrate can change. So the better the emergency management plans for that and the less likely people are to migrate and vice versa. So I think that's a strong connection.
[00:04:12] Kyle King: I definitely think so. And in terms of sort of the planning for migration and things like that I think one of the interesting aspects that we're seeing, I think we're underestimating the impact on communities and sort of the migration numbers.
[00:04:24] Kyle King: When we look at the overall shift and perspective, and the numbers are, for example, from a NATO perspective, we look at migration of 2% of a population. But it's more than that, right? And so whether that's from conflict or climate driven reasons we're seeing upwards of substantially, more and more so in some cases we've seen 20% and up in some cases upwards of 40% of smaller populations that are going into this migration are moving internally or internationally.
[00:04:55] Kyle King: And so I think there's a substantial impact that's occurring. And also in terms of emergency management, if we just looked on the southern border in the United States, just in terms of migration, regardless of the cause, that migration itself is a significant resource driver. And there's a lot of resource constraints and capacity as well that we're all experiencing in the community levels.
[00:05:14] Kyle King: But as that continues to grow and we start to see increased migration for whatever reason. What are some of the impacts of not really addressing this issue?
[00:05:23] Sara Belligoni: Yeah. Well, the impacts are twofold. So on one hand you have the impact on the community, the communities that are living, so basically that are losing people, but also at the same time, you have an impact of the communities that are receiving migrants.
[00:05:38] Sara Belligoni: So I think the attention can go in both direction, making sure that you are carefully assessing what will be happening in the communities where you have a lot of people leaving. What does it mean for the economy, for the labor dynamics? And at the same time, the same considerations are to be done in the community that is eventually receiving.
[00:06:05] Sara Belligoni: On top of that, I would say that most of the attention is given primarily on the macro phenomenon. So we're looking at the migration in a very broad, or I would say global lens, but there is no real attention on more the microscopic aspects. So what does it mean for the people that are actually migrating?
[00:06:27] Sara Belligoni: So there is very little attention to the impact that can have on the finances of a family, on the education of kids, on the professional career of adults. So all these things are being often overlooked, but I think they have a strong impact on not only the people that, as I said, like they migrate. But ultimately that is something to keep into consideration, especially for the communities that are receiving migrants.
[00:06:56] Sara Belligoni: So in other words, you have to plan accordingly. If you don't plan accordingly, creating opportunities for these people, making sure that kids can continue their education and so on. Then you somehow fail these people, but you fail also as community because then all these issues will create more.
[00:07:16] Sara Belligoni: So I think there is a lot of attention from the macro level, very little from the micro level. I think that both should be considered. And also, we have to keep in mind that there are areas in the world where you can migrate within country, but the experience of domestic migrants is much different than those of international ones because of course there you have all challenges that come with international migrations, adapting to a new culture language.
[00:07:47] Sara Belligoni: Perhaps having to face long visa processes and try to adjust to the new community, the new country. So also the migration experience can shape a lot how you have to plan for receiving these people. And very often we are seeing a tendency of considering migrations resulting from climate change or multitude of reasons because sometimes climate change is one of the many reasons why people migrate.
[00:08:18] Sara Belligoni: And so there are countries that are framing that with the lenses of national security. While I think that might pose some ethical issues, and so maybe equity lenses would work a little bit better, I would say definitely better. But unfortunately we see less equity lenses, much more national security lenses.
[00:08:41] Sara Belligoni: And so that's actually what researcher and scholars are trying to understand what a shift could eventually mean for the overall phenomenon of climate migrations.
[00:08:55] Kyle King: Yeah, that's interesting and I think you highlight a very distinct point between when we say emergency management and then when we talk about resilience, because you know from that, very basic sort of framing here, but in terms of emergency management and looking at it from receiving a large migration of a population attending to their immediate cares and needs, there's never much of a discussion because it's a disaster framework. You sort of return them to where they're displaced from and you cover and you mitigate in your future emergencies. But in terms of climate security, climate change and things like that, you don't really return anybody back to a that population or that area that they're coming from.
[00:09:32] Kyle King: And so then it becomes an issue of resilience, right? Where, okay, if you just accepted these thousands and thousands of people into your communities, then what do you do with them in terms of, as you actually just mentioned? I mean in terms of the job training, the economic and sustainability of integration of new populations into the communities, changing demographics and everything that goes along with that?
[00:09:52] Kyle King: And I think that's a very good example in terms of the difference between when we talk about emergency and disaster management and then also leaning more into long-term community. I think in terms of that, let's explore for a bit in terms about the equity piece that you were talking about when you are looking at that from this perspective, because I come from the climate security perspective, right?
[00:10:14] Kyle King: And so that the climate change and the things that are occurring and the impacts on national security, and resources and things like that. So can you explain a little bit more about the non climate security view?
[00:10:26] Sara Belligoni: Yeah, so I mean, I think like one, somehow it's connected because I think that when we talk about providing these people that migrate with more welcoming, I would say environment, we talk about making them feeling safe because we have to remember that these are people that are migrating because they feel unsafe where they were living. And most of the time those are people that have very little resources and they see the migration as the only option they have. There are some people that are not even having this option. There are people that just don't migrate because they have no choice. So those that migrate can either be people that really can afford that, and they maybe also have resources and assets to perfectly fit in a different community, but that's not always the case. And so in this case we have to make sure that these people feel safe where they are and they can access like if ideally would be the same kind of resources that they used to access where they are coming from.
[00:11:37] Sara Belligoni: And then of course that would be ideal because recreating a safe space where they feel they're more resilient, they're vulnerability is not anymore there constantly worrying them. I think that would be like a great goal. But that requires time because indeed we're not in a kind of like disaster planning anymore.
[00:12:00] Sara Belligoni: We're talking about the long term. And so that comes with a lot of less I would say crisis kinda response, more like a resilience kinda response and long term planning. So, I think the safety issue still really plays a key role, but definitely it has to also include more aspects that are related to make feel these people more welcome and really part of a community.
[00:12:30] Sara Belligoni: And that involves a lot of efforts.
[00:12:33] Kyle King: You know, we actually see quite a bit of that especially in the conflict and or post-conflict space as well. So if we, I often, many times I refer to what's happening in the events in Ukraine and sort of looking at that from an emergency management lens.
[00:12:47] Kyle King: And then we see in terms of evacuations and people leaving these towns and communities that are directly in conflict, it is coming down to these sort of enabling factors of maybe they don't want to leave. Or maybe they're elderly, it's been their house forever, you know, and economically maybe they can't leave.
[00:13:05] Kyle King: And so there's options of just really where are they gonna go and what are they gonna do? And that really has a significant impact in terms of people's own personal decision making and what they think their future might be. And I, there isn't a great way to address it in terms of the conflict space, but it's good that we're having that discussion in terms of, coastal cities and our own communities.
[00:13:26] Kyle King: But you know, now that we're sort of looking at this internationally though, what are some of the ways that this topic is being addressed internationally?
[00:13:33] Sara Belligoni: Yeah, so I mean, the problem internationally is that then you have series of considerations that are more geopolitical than anything else. So domestically, if you see people starting to move from an area to another one, what you can do is that ideally you're going to work on a mitigation strategy, but you can still try to adapt, you can still provide people with incentives to make their homes more resilient and so on. Internationally, what happens is that you have a series of other considerations, or first of all, these people just migrating for climate purposes or not.
[00:14:14] Sara Belligoni: Are these people even having like a background which can come from like their education, their professional skills that might fit the communities where they're going. And so there are a series of additional considerations that make the international migrations more complicated. So for example, in the United States, you see migrations that are both domestic and international. You see other areas in the Southeast of Asia where most of the migrations are instead, international. So countries like Australia, New Zealand are seeing more massive migrations from small island states.
[00:14:56] Sara Belligoni: And so like they're framing the migrations there more as an international issue only. But in areas like the Southeast of Pacific, then you have a lot of geopolitical considerations because there is some scholarship addressing that as a sort of like great power competition over there because massive shift in the demographics can also lead to massive shift in economy.
[00:15:21] Sara Belligoni: And there, there are a lot of interest in bold, China, Australia, even the United States. And so that creates also a lot of discussion from a geopolitical perspective, which ultimately means that the issue there is much more framed as a matter of national security than anything else.
[00:15:45] Sara Belligoni: Eventually there we can see more a sort of like emergency management kind of crisis response framework, which instead you might not see inside within the border of a country.
[00:15:57] Sara Belligoni: So of course when it comes to the domestic migrations in the United States, you don't necessarily frame them as a matter of national security. But when you see those migrations across like a continent, a region, then the lenses change a lot. And that's why some scholars, especially from the security studies, the political science field, are starting to discuss that as a sort of like great power competitions where they're trying to understand what these migrations might mean from their own interests in the area.
[00:16:34] Kyle King: That's always been a challenge, I think, with international organizations. You know, and it is difficult, especially in large organizations like United Nations to sort of reach a consensus on different ideas and on how to approach things, which I can understand because everybody's sort of different.
[00:16:49] Kyle King: Just like in the United States. I mean, every community is different. Every location is gonna be different in terms of their threats, their risks, and sort of their ability and resource ability to deal with these issues. And so that's where I think it's gonna be extremely interesting to see how this can play out.
[00:17:05] Kyle King: And I'm also very curious in terms of how international sort of conversations shape what we're doing in the States and sort of have you seen much in terms of the perspectives of international, other international communities influence or shape the way that we're doing things in the US?
[00:17:20] Sara Belligoni: The role of the international organizations, of course, is more on the regulatory framework.
[00:17:26] Sara Belligoni: So big organizations like the UN and all the panels and bodies that are created within the UN to address specifically climate change issues, of course work more from a regulatory perspective and framework. So, they work a lot on the mitigation aspect, setting goals that countries eventually are supported and helped in achieving.
[00:17:56] Sara Belligoni: So in the United States we had a lot of like back and forth on how we frame climate change, how much we engage eventually in climate change framework, conventions, and so on. And so recently we see that climate change is being recognized as an issue, as a crisis. And so there are several regulations that, and executive orders that also were issued in the last couple of years that try to address climate change more with the lens of how it's being seen at the international level.
[00:18:33] Sara Belligoni: However, the point here is that these framework and regulations that are passed at the international level can certainly help and shape the US or any other country approach to climate change, the climate crisis, and migrations. But the problems are very local. So the way in which the United States will eventually approach that at the local level.
[00:19:00] Sara Belligoni: It's very different than how any other country will do. So here in the United States, because we have this double migrations, domestic and international, it seems that there is of course a lot of attention given in the domestic ones. So there is a lot of attention of what demographics are changing. For example, are we seeing more people moving North?
[00:19:25] Sara Belligoni: Are we seeing more people moving from East to West or vice versa? And also what are the challenges of them, these people moving? Because think about like, tries to leave the West for the wildfires, but then, you know, comes to the East and then you have to deal with the sea level rise because hurricane, flooding, and et cetera.
[00:19:44] Sara Belligoni: So I think in the United States, there is a lot of more attention now to the international frameworks, but there is a lot of attention also on the internal shift and there is a lot of like attention given to these changes in the demographics from area to area. To understand if these people moving from, for example, the West to the East, then at some point they will probably move somewhere else because of the vulnerability that they feel in the East.
[00:20:16] Sara Belligoni: So I think the United States case is a little bit more complex because of this, both international and domestic aspect.
[00:20:25] Kyle King: So let's, let's bring that back down a little bit towards the communities and get a little bit more specific since a lot of the research that you're working on now. So what kind of threats are more likely to affect coastal communities, such as sea level rise, changing characteristics of storms, you know, which we continue to see even this last week that produce more flooding and things like that.
[00:20:45] Kyle King: So what sort of threats are we more likely to be affecting our coastal communitues?
[00:20:49] Sara Belligoni: Yeah, for sure sea level rise, that's a big part of, let's say the hazards that are likely to affect coastal communities, and that's true in the United States. That's true in so many other areas of the world. Unfortunately, we have seen, like the problem with the last few years is that we are seeing these climate changes being faster than they used to be. And that's why we are also kind of like scrambling to adapt to them to plan for them.
[00:21:19] Sara Belligoni: So one of the main examples I can give you as someone that has extensively studied hurricanes is that the hurricanes themselves are changing in their characteristics. In the Atlantic Ocean, we have much more storms that are originating. But not just that, the timeframe also of the well known hurricane season, Atlantic hurricane season is changing, like the peak of the season is changing.
[00:21:51] Sara Belligoni: And at the same time also the characteristics themselves of the storms are changing. The last hurricane season, we have seen with the case of Hurricane Ian impacting Florida, we have seen how like a rain event like Ian can cause a lot of damages. Almost the same as for a wind only event. So we have Southwest Florida that was devastated because of a combination of rain and wind, but at the same time, then you still have also central Florida that is being severely affected because of the rainfall that Ian was bringing.
[00:22:31] Sara Belligoni: And so like this changing characteristics of hurricanes also require a different kinda planning. And in general, coastal communities are of course the one that are most affected because even the adaptation measures are not easy to implement, they do not occur overnight, and there is pretty much the same kind of issue that we see with migrants.
[00:22:55] Sara Belligoni: There are people that can afford to become more resilient. There are areas where you have several incentives to make your house more resilient. There are other areas where there are less resources, so there are no incentives. Maybe people don't have their own savings to invest in that. And so those are all, you know, like a series of issues that, of course, also have to be taken into consideration from an emergency management perspective. Because if you know that your community is more resilient than you plan in a certain way, but if you know that if a hurricane is coming and most of the people feel insecure at home, it's much more different the way you plan, the way in which you evaluate whether to issue evacuation orders and you plan for shelters opening and so on.
[00:23:47] Sara Belligoni: So it's very complex for coastal communities and the attention is now given on them because of this reason. But it's not necessarily the only communities that are affected by climate change because we have seen like an increasing heat waves and wildfires. So it's unfortunately is a serious of different effects that might really lead to a much more complex phenomenon that the one that we might have envisioned for a while before now.
[00:24:21] Kyle King: When you were talking about that, I had a couple of thoughts and I wanted to hear what your perspective is on this. So first of all, you know, there's the climate migrants or climate refugees. There's sort of a shifting terminology as this subject continues to come to the forefront of our conversations.
[00:24:37] Kyle King: And it's interesting because when you look specifically at some of the islands, Pacific Islands or where they are, that they're actually losing their nation. There's not a status for these type of migration as far as I understand, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. You know, and they're not migrating because of conflict. They're not migrating because of economic development or whatever. There's no visa scheme or anything else like that. They're migrating because they're losing their entire nation and culture and we don't have any sort of framing for any of that type of migration. So before I, we talk about the next point, what are your thoughts on that?
[00:25:11] Kyle King: Have we come to reconcile the issue of climate migration and sort of visas and how people migrate?
[00:25:18] Sara Belligoni: Yeah, I mean, the problem is that as of now, there's very little in the regulations that recognize the status of the climate refugee. And so, even though it's a term that is being used at the international level within regional, international organizztions, that's very little than at the country level that recognize their status.
[00:25:40] Sara Belligoni: So I think that what is being discussed a little bit more and might have sense, is to consider those climate refugees more as I would say humanitarian refugees. Because in reality, if you think about like people that are leaving their country because the whole country might be affected at some point by sea level rise or any other hazard, those are people that really have no jobs. So there are strong shift in the labor, and so there might be also people that were employed in agriculture. And at some point the size of crops are half of what they used to be. So there is a lot of like loss in terms of like food production and labor dynamics are also affected.
[00:26:28] Sara Belligoni: So that sounds very close to a humanitarian crisis. And so probably what is going to happen in the short term is more like considering them as humanitarian refugees. And then hopefully regulations at the international level and more and more at the country level will allow for a more precise definition of climate refugees, providing them with a sort of like framework and laws that might allow them to migrate more easily.
[00:27:03] Sara Belligoni: But I think the short term solution can be considering them as humanitarian migrants because in the end it's very much alike.
[00:27:13] Kyle King: And the second part, I guess at some point we have to come to a definition of what's going on in sort of a way to deal with that. I don't know when, but it's going to be an issue. And the other thing, and you mentioned this in terms of resource constraints and the impacts on communities. For me it's interesting in terms of a long-term impact on community, public safety programs, and things like that because of the fact, if I just make a very simple example. If you have repeated hurricanes off the coast of Florida and they're more and more intense and more frequent, you're going to eventually get to a point of migration.
[00:27:45] Kyle King: People will leave that community and they will move on to go somewhere inland where it's less sort of hazards and risks. Now, at the same time emergency management and all the public services are largely taxpayer based, funded, and, you know, require that sort of revenue stream in order to be able to have those essential services.
[00:28:02] Kyle King: So in that term, it's, if you think about the long-term impact, does that migration actually reduces overall sort of total tax revenue and stream, reduces the ability to actually effectively respond to disasters and over gradually, over time, you start losing key public administration positions, which are even including emergency management or an office of emergency management because the tax base is no longer there.
[00:28:24] Kyle King: And it's essentially a long-term strategic resource drain on the community.
[00:28:29] Sara Belligoni: Yeah, that's very much possible because I mean, you really see in Florida from like perspective of someone that lived there from a while. Many people feel, for example, that Central Florida is much safer because even if you get early against or much less strong. And so many people try to say, to just move from the coast inland, maybe just one hour away and maybe still commuting if that's the case, but literally moving their residents more inland. And that means that everything that is on the coast will see a decrease in, of course revenues coming from property taxes, which are mainly the main sort of resource for funding all the public safety and emergency management efforts.
[00:29:20] Sara Belligoni: So I think that would, in the long term, be problematic and eventually motivate even more people in migrating just as a result of that. So I think that we'll see like a sort of like first wave of people migrating because of these vulnerability feeling they have by living on the coast. But then you will have eventually people that even decided at first place to stay, but because of the impact of having less people around and just have cities that, where businesses even are closing because maybe there's no the same amount, number of people around. And then they will be motivated to leave because of that. So might not be like a direct climate reason for them to live, but it will be more an indirect one because of the impact that these migrations that of people that are leaving might have on the community itself. So that's something that in the long term, can have an impact on emergency management, on public safety and the overall wellbeing of the community because even businesses are going to.
[00:30:31] Kyle King: And that's something that I don't really see and maybe I'm just sort of not paying attention to it or something, but it's something I really don't see discussed very much, which is sort of the creeping effects of climate change or, you know, and sort of the impact there because of the fact that maybe that if we stay on that theme of Florida or any coastal city, really, there's a tourist window.
[00:30:52] Kyle King: And the changes in the weather and sort of patterns and strength and frequency of storms will eventually close that tourist window. It'll become not maybe six months, maybe it comes four months. And there is an impact on business and revenue streams and that, you know, we don't see that very much, at least in, in some of the information's being published. It is, but I think maybe it's not a real broad and frequent discussion within most of the communities these days.
[00:31:17] Sara Belligoni: Yeah, no, I agree. And it's not by chance that the parks are all in Orlando in Central Florida. And it's actually true. The reason why you have Disney, Universal is because these areas considered much more resilient.
[00:31:32] Sara Belligoni: So that's why, even though the coast is fantastic and it's beautiful. Those parks with a long term like vision were built there because of sense of more resilience and, but of course the coast will have more and more impacts and not just the east coast of Florida, if you think about it, but even the Gulf Coast, so the West coast, the whole area of Tampa, because we have seen more and more hurricanes going towards the Gulf direction, and that is also, you know, something to keep in mind because you have several touristic attractions and beautiful areas over there that have been impacted because like the tourism usually is during the summer, but it's also when you start see a peak in the hurricane season.
[00:32:25] Sara Belligoni: And so this is something that should be taken much more into consideration because of the impact that might have also on the, let's say, more private sector, the business, the hospitality sector for sure.
[00:32:38] Kyle King: And so one of the questions I always ask when I get to have people on the show is talk about, you know, what can we really do today in terms of these larger, more strategic issues? And what are some of the key takeaways that we can possibly key up discussions or whatever the case is. From your perspective and being at Rutgers and looking at this topic more intensively than most of us, what are some of the things that we in the emergency management community, in the resilience community or public safety field, you know, what can we be looking at today?
[00:33:06] Sara Belligoni: For sure. Yeah. I can speak from a research perspective. First, we definitely should be a little bit more aware that climate change is such a complex phenomenon that we cannot look from one side to one direction only. So there's need of always think in an interdisciplinary way. I think much more disciplines should come together and work together.
[00:33:29] Sara Belligoni: And I'll give you an example of why there's a lot of like, for example, in the STEM field, in the heart science field, there's a lot of work done to eventually work on renewable energies and alternative sources of energy because they are seen to be one of the best mitigation strategies in the long term.
[00:33:49] Sara Belligoni: The problem is that if you don't put the human aspect into these developments, then you fail to consider what these developments can help on the ecosystems, on communities.
[00:34:04] Sara Belligoni: So if you develop, let's say whatever kind of alternative sources of energy infrastructure that then has a strong impact on the ecosystem where you are planning to place it. Then what's the point you are trying to mitigate something to create other issues from a different perspective. So I think that that's an exactly like an exact example of why multiple disciplines social, STEM, should work together.
[00:34:33] Sara Belligoni: And I think what is also very important is having a better understanding of what is happening in the field. So especially in the research, in the academia, like people like myself, not just have a traditional academic path, so have experience in working with them. Not-for-profit, private, government sectors and so on, can play a key role in not only framing the issues in a much more practical manner, which is very much needed. But also try to develop what I call the actionable solutions in a way that speaks the language of the people that eventually we're trying to develop these frameworks and recommendations for.
[00:35:22] Sara Belligoni: So it's very important to keep in mind that there are ideal solutions and then there are practical solutions. So it doesn't make sense to give a recommendation to a policymaker and say, oh, implement that. No, it's very important that we think what's the global issues? What's the international issue? But then we focus on the local, we work with the communities so that our recommendations given to the policy makers are much more tailored to the local communities. Because sometimes there is this tendency of thinking globally, thinking like as big as possible, but it's not really effective when it comes to climate change because the extent and the frequency that we see a certain hazard affecting community A, so different for community B.
[00:36:15] Sara Belligoni: So yes, in terms of regulations, we can go global, we can have international organizations doing even more. But in terms of like implementation of recommendations, tailored solutions, we have to think very local. And so it's very important for those of us with a knowledge on how policymaking, politics, et cetera work, that we try to frame these actionable solutions in a way that can be really useful for the policymakers in a certain area and really answer the needs of the communities. Because otherwise there's no point of doing the work we do every day.
[00:36:54] Kyle King: Yeah, and I think that's a great point to end on, which is really the aspirational discussions that are happening, which serves a lot of them. And then there's the practical application in the communities where as we say, the rubber meets the road, right? In terms of where the actual changes are occurring.
[00:37:09] Kyle King: I'll highlight that and close out our conversation with just this one example. There's a initiative in Berlin, in Germany, which is largely heading towards that sort of climate-friendly, climate neutral type of status. And a recent initiative in Berlin was shot down dramatically over the last week or so because of the practical implications of energy, cost of energy and things like that. And so that the climate neutral 2030 sort of initiative that was put to a vote was just dramatically defeated in the last week or so because it, these are aspirational things which don't meet that practical reality.
[00:37:41] Kyle King: And so I think that's a great point that we have to engage communities and come up with practical steps and incremental changes and improvements over time.
[00:37:49] Kyle King: So, Sara, thanks a lot. If somebody wants to reach out to you, what's the best way to find you? Are you on LinkedIn?
[00:37:54] Kyle King: Is that a good way to find you?
[00:37:55] Sara Belligoni: I am absolutely. I have my own website, which is just my name and last name .com and I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me on Twitter. So plenty of ways to get in touch and I am always happy to engage in more conversation on this topic.
[00:38:11] Kyle King: All right, Sara.
[00:38:11] Sara Belligoni: Thank you so much.
[00:38:12] Kyle King: Thanks a lot for joining us today and really appreciate it.
[00:38:15] Kyle King: Have a good day.
[00:38:16] Sara Belligoni: You too. Take care.
