Melissa Roberts

Founder and Executive Director of the American Flood Coalition, a nonpartisan coalition advancing flood adaptation and resilience solutions for communities across the United States. Previously, she led strategy at First Street Foundation and worked on infrastructure finance and planning at McKinsey & Company.

Water Makes Climate Risk a Fight Over Access and Control

Water is where climate risk becomes an immediate political question: who absorbs flood losses, controls public systems, pays for resilience, and decides how a shared supply is used. In this Aspen Ideas: Climate discussion, organizers and water-policy advocates Alaina Harkness, Melissa Roberts, Colette Battle, and Ryan Strode argue that water can unite people across political divides because its consequences are felt in homes and communities—but that durable resilience depends on local authority, public investment, and organizing that turns opposition into a plan for stewardship.

The Aspen InstituteJul 29, 202611 min read