The Climate-Smart Development Regulatory Prioritization Tool is a set of recommendations for regulatory updates that support the integrity and continued viability of our landscapes before, during, and after development. It evaluates how Clinton and Bolton’s existing regulatory landscape currently supports community climate resilience and ecosystem health; and identifies opportunities to update and strengthen regulations to reduce carbon emissions, increase climate resilience, encourage sustainable and equitable development, and strengthen ecosystems while engaging whole communities in creating climate solutions.

 

The Prioritization Tool was developed for the towns of Clinton and Bolton, MA in order to identify opportunities in their municipal regulations to better support climate resilience; but the hope and intention is that they may also be useful and applicable to municipalities across Massachusetts and the Northeast United States.  

lands are invaluable in providing carbon storage, sequestration and resilience to the impacts of climate change including providing localized cooling, while simultaneously being extremely sensitive to these impacts themselves. Wetlands are particularly biodiverse, and biodiversity tends to confer climate resilience. Protecting wetlands from climate impacts is essential to protecting the other WPA and bylaw/ordinance interests. The existing eight interests of the WPA all provide climate adaptation and resilience benefits to humans and nature. 

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