Second Annual Hinshaw/FIU Climate Change Conference to Focus on Economic Impacts to Insurance, Lending and Real Estate Industries

U.S. law firm Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP, with offices in Coral Gables, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa, is pleased to announce the second annual Hinshaw Climate Change Conference to be held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami on April 11, 2018 from 8:00am to 4:30pm. Entitled "Thinking Beyond Risk: The Economic Effects of Sea Level Rise on Business Decision Making", the Conference will focus on the effects which climate change, particularly sea level rise, and government regulation, will have on decision making in the insurance, lending and real estate industries. The Conference is hosted by Hinshaw and Florida International University’s Institute of Water and Environment, and sponsored by TotalBank and Adler Group.

“Rising sea levels will result in major changes and are becoming an urgent economic issue along American coastlines,” said Steven C. Cronig, Conference co-chair and a Hinshaw partner resident in Coral Gables. "As a result, we expect to see significant changes to the built environment and related regulations, with accompanying impacts to property owners, real estate developers, the lenders who finance them as well as the insurers who provide policy coverage."

The emphasis of the Conference will be practical planning for the future and the opportunities which sea level rise may offer to the business community. Among the critical topics the conference will explore include:

• Absent major remediation efforts, at what point does insurance of new construction in South Florida become impossible?
• Does sea level rise render the federal flood insurance program irrelevant?
• Does the cost of constructing buildings which can withstand sea level rise make them too expensive to bring to market?
• What remediation measures would you expect local government to provide and what measures would you expect the developer to shoulder?
• If a city allows development in an area subject to rising sea level, is it appropriate to impose special taxing districts on that area to offset the higher cost of remediation and continued provision of city services?
• At what point does a city abandon efforts to preserve a neighborhood from sea level rise and abandon it to the sea?
• The greater probability of occurrences of tropical storms and hurricanes, flash flooding, droughts, land subsidence, forest fires and heat waves.

Panel discussions at the Conference include:

• Insuring the Changing Coastline
• Development in a Rising Sea Level Environment
• Lending in the Age of Uncertainty
• Government – the Boundaries of Responsibility

Confirmed speakers for the panel discussions are:

• Miami Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez (invited-awaiting confirmation)
• City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez
• City of South Miami Mayor Phillip Stoddard
• Florida Senator Annette Taddeo
• FIU Researchers Evelyn Gaiser, PhD and Tiffany Troxler, PhD
• Joseph Goffman, Executive Director of Harvard Law School's Environmental Program
• Jay Pelham, President of TotalBank
• Ronald L. Kammer, Chair of Hinshaw's Insurance Practice Group
• Jonathan Raiffe, Senior Vice President of Adler Group
• David Martin, President of Terra
• Charles Foschini, Executive Director of Berkadia Commercial Mortgage
• Jesse M. Keenan, PhD, Director of Real Estate at Harvard's Graduate School of Design
• Lise Anne Couture, Principal of Asymptote Architecture 

Hinshaw's Climate Change Group is a multidisciplinary team providing planning and transactional resources for the real estate development, insurance and lending industries. The team also leverages its experience in these industries to counsel local governments.