Marines eye nature to help address climate change challenges
Marines tie a boat to a buoy as part of a hurricane preparedness drill at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina. Marine Corps/Cpl. Jade Farrington
By
Nick Wakeman
The Marine Corps is in search of a contractor to help analyze risks at its facilities and find ways to mitigate potential risks from natural disasters.
The Marine Corps wants to learn from nature about how it can mitigate the impacts of climate change at its facilities and wants a contractor to help figure out how to do that.
The Marines are working with the Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s environmental laboratory to look for what they are calling “nature-based solutions” for challenges at facilities in Hawaii, South Carolina and North Carolina.
Nature-based solutions can include rebuilding dunes and creating living shorelines with grasses and other natural structures that can absorb the impacts of storm surges.
This new solicitation describes the use of the Army Corps of Engineer’s Engineering with Nature program as seeking ways to reduce the impact of natural hazards from coastal storms, floods, desertification, drought and wildfires.
The Defense Department estimates it has suffered more than $10 billion in damage from natural hazards, according to the solicitation.
“The risks produced by natural hazards, climate change, and aging infrastructure systems are increasing, as are the need and demand for innovation and action to create resilient systems,” the Marine Corps says in the solicitation.
The contract is an off-shoot of the Navy’s Climate Action 2030 plan that highlights the uses of nature-based resilience. The action plan itself resulted of the Navy’s response to President Biden’s Executive Order 14072 on addressing climate change.
The Marines want a contractor that can collect data on the local facilities and establish a baseline that includes local needs. There is also demand for policy development and training.
Some of the specific areas of expertise include planning and program management, landscape architecture, ecology, geology and hydrodynamic modeling.
The three Marine Corps facilities to be covered by the contract include Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina, Marine Corps Base Hawaii, and Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina.
Proposals are due Sept. 1. There is no estimate for the value of the contract, which is being awarded through a full-and-open competition.