Colette Pichon Battle: How Can We Prepare For The Next Hurricane Katrina?

Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode Black History ... And The Future

Sea level rise will displace millions by 2100 — and the Louisiana bayous, where Colette Pichon Battle lives, may disappear entirely. She describes how we can avert the worst when disaster strikes. A version of this segment was originally heard in the episode Our Relationship With Water.

About Colette Pichon Battle

Colette Pichon Battle is the founder and executive director of the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy, a non-profit, public interest law firm and justice center with a mission to advance structural shifts toward climate justice and ecological equity in communities of color.

At GCCLP, Pichon Battle develops programming focused on equitable disaster recovery, climate migration, community economic development, and climate justice. She also works with local communities, national funders, and elected officials in the post-Katrina/post-BP disaster recovery, work for which she received the U.S. Civilian Medal of Honor from the state of Louisiana in 2008. Pichon Battle is also a practicing attorney, and manages GCCLP's legal services for immigration and disaster law.

She was named an Echoing Green Climate fellow in 2015 and in 2019 was named an Obama Foundation Fellow.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.