The Georgia Department of Natural Resources Coastal Resources Division will host a Climate Conference this week that will raise awareness of work across the state and identify opportunities to do more to address climate change.

The conference is set for Thursday and Friday at the Jekyll Island Convention Center. The theme will be "Minimizing Georgia's Risk, Maximizing Georgia's Future," and conversations throughout the event will focus on what a changing climate means for Georgia and what the state's leaders and residents can do about this issue.

The convention is already booked with 350 planned attendees, who will include representatives from multiple state universities, all levels of government, coastal and natural resource managers, private businesses and other interested parties.

"It's just a really wide range of people, which is exciting to me," said Jennifer Kline, coastal hazards specialist for DNR and one of the event's organizers.

The conference will be packed with events, including more than 70 presentations, with five concurrent sessions taking place both days, as well as three keynote speakers.

These events will cover a diverse range of topics, Kline said. The conference aims to highlight work that's happening throughout the state and provide opportunities for networking and creating new partnerships.

"Climate change affects multiple sectors," she said. "... These are Georgia projects that are going to be presented on, which has always been my goal for our climate conferences."

Keynote speakers will include Van Johnson, mayor of Savannah; Roy Richards, a business leader who helped found the environmental advocacy nonprofit One Hundred Miles; and state Rep. Lynn Smith, who currently chairs the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee.

DNR hosted previous climate conferences in 2016 on Jekyll and 2019 in Atlanta, in partnership with the Georgia Climate Project.

"It's really been our intention in working with the research institutions and our partners to get it to go back and forth, to volley between the coast and Atlanta," Kline said.

The theme of the conference is the same used in 2019, and organizers hope to make this a recognizable tagline that captures the scope of the event's purpose.

"We're not going to be able to stop climate change, and that's not our goal," Kline said. "Our goal is figuring out how to adapt and to mitigate, which will minimize our risk and allow us to plan for a better future."

Conference details are online at https://georgiaclimateconference.org. COVID-19 safety protocols will be in place throughout the conference.