Program

The 2025 Midwest Climate Resilience Conference program is designed to:

• Encourage active participation and engagement in the conference

• Reflect innovation and diversity among the various session topics and speakers

• Reflect a balance and connection between research and practice

• Support a diverse and inclusive audience including attendance by groups or communities not well-represented at previous conferences

Conference Program

Keep an eye out for the open call for session and presentation submissions to be announced in March.

Cross Cutting Conference Themes

The conference program will be organized around several cross-cutting conference themes: 

Effective Climate Communications and Engagement

Increasing capacity by effectively communicating risks, opportunity, resources, and best practices for community engagement and empowerment

Collaborative Climate Action

Examples of new and evolving multi-sector, multi-jurisdictional, and multi-disciplinary collaboratives, initiatives, and partnership approaches to adaptation and resilience

Equitable Adaptation 

Integrating climate resilience with parallel social movements to advance community capacity and grapple with profound questions of place, ethics, equity, and justice

Financial Solutions

Funding climate adaptation and resilience through public, private, philanthropic, and community-led finance mechanisms

Actionable Climate Science

Integrating traditional ecological knowledge, community science, and new climate research, models, and tools to support climate adaptation and resilience

Cascading Climate Impacts

Adaptation solutions that address climate change impacts in the context of multiple societal, environmental and economic challenges and drivers of risk and vulnerability

Policy, Governance and Law

Building towards transformative change through effective and inclusive governance and decision-making processes