Economic Architecture The Podcast

We tend to picture property as something fixed: lines on a survey map, a deed, a square footage that holds steady year after year. In coastal Virginia that picture is already coming apart—the Hampton Roads region has the highest rate of relative sea level rise on the East Coast, rainfall intensity has climbed 20% since 2006, and Norfolk now sees more than 40 days a year when flooding makes roads impassable. As land converts to open water along a shoreline that is almost entirely privately-owned, sea-level rise becomes a private property crisis with no rules yet in place, and an ecological one as well: Virginia could lose 89% of its tidal wetlands by 2080 unless the land behind them is prepared to receive them.

In this week’s episode, host Stuart Yasgur sits down with Mary-Carson Stiff, Executive Director of Wetlands Watch, to discuss how a small Norfolk-based organization is working to make our economic structures as dynamic as the shoreline itself. Stuart and Mary-Carson explore why wetlands are worth fighting for, why adaptation has to start with what communities can act on today, and how Wetlands Watch built the first-in-the-nation rolling conservation easement — an agreement that commits a waterfront headquarters to be removed once the tide reaches a set elevation, financed by Virginia’s transferable land conservation tax credit.

Learn more about Wetlands Watch: https://wetlandswatch.org/