This research provides a contextualized and detailed illustration of how climate change could overwhelm elderly adult's adaptive capacity and highlights the need for support services to provide safeguards. The issues and concerns raised may bear similarities to other locations, especially urban settings facing similar climate stressors with similar socioeconomic conditions. The findings suggest a need for further research to improve our understanding and serve as the basis for collaborative adaptation planning that engages elderly communities with local governments and a broad coalition of partners to keep elders safe.

Despite older adults’ vulnerability to climate change, little research has investigated their preferred adaptation strategies. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into their perspective and the potential for participatory adaptation to enhance their resilience. This paper presents the results of a collaborative adaptation planning process conducted with older adults in Bridgeport, Connecticut. During two meetings, older adult participants developed recommendations following adaptation best practices. Recommendations focused on encouraging preparedness through workshops and informational materials tailored for older adults. Additional recommendations focused on enhancing community services to provide effective warning mechanisms, shelter access, ride sharing and transportation assistance, and establishing a telephone based clearinghouse for extreme weather and emergency resources for older adults. A prioritization exercise showed that the participants and city staff believed all recommendations were potentially effective and feasible. A summative evaluation showed that the participatory planning enhanced resilience by raising awareness among the older adult participants and city agencies, enhancing communication, and increasing the older adult participants’ ability to self-advocate.

Certain groups are more vulnerable to climate change than others and will likely feel its effects more severely. These groups include children, older adults, refugees, minoritized racial and ethnic groups, and people living in poverty. To safeguard vulnerable groups, their knowledge and perspectives need to be integrated into climate change adaptation planning. Institutions of higher education have many resources to contribute to this effort. To inform and promote engaged scholarship focusing on adaptation planning in collaboration with vulnerable groups, this research presents a case study evaluation of a project conducted by researchers at Antioch University New England with the older-adult community of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The evaluation explores attributes of the project that contributed to both positive outcomes and challenges. Key themes include the value of developing a primary partnership with a local organization, fostering an accessible and inclusive process, connecting subject matter with participants’ concerns, using an iterative process to build capacity, collaborating with multiple other local organizations, recognizing ongoing community efforts, and generating initial actions. This evaluation also explores potential transferability to other contexts.