What does resilience actually look like at the county level? For coastal Chatham County, it means thinking about everything from solar panels on government buildings to daycare access, because a single shock, like a hurricane closing local daycares, can ripple through an entire community.

In our latest Georgia Climate Digest video interview, host Eriqah Vincent talks with Jackie Jackson, Resilience Program Administrator for Chatham County. Jackie is a Chatham County native and a biologist by training who spent 30 years in environmental and community planning before helping stand up the county's first resilience program in 2022.

Since then, she has helped Chatham County install rooftop solar on 14 municipal buildings, purchase and conserve an undeveloped coastal island, and build out electric vehicle charging infrastructure along hurricane evacuation routes, all while working to bring historically underserved communities to the table.

Chapters
00:00 Welcome and Meet Jackie Jackson

02:00 Why Chatham County Started a Resilience Program

05:40 Defining Resilience at the Human Scale

10:03 Solar, Code Updates, and the Green Island Conservation Project

14:07 Building EV Charging Infrastructure Along Evacuation Routes

22:10 Bringing Underserved Communities to the Table

27:30 How Chatham County Prioritizes Resilience Projects

30:29 Advice for Other Georgia Policymakers

37:56 What's Giving Jackie Hope

Watch the video above to hear their full conversation, or keep reading for highlights on how Chatham County built its resilience program and what other Georgia communities can learn from it.

Why Did Chatham County Start a County Resilience Program?

Chatham County launched its Resilience Program in 2022, making Jackie one of the first people hired specifically for this kind of role in a South Georgia county. The timing wasn't random: after a decade of major storms hitting the Georgia coast, county leaders were ready to move from reacting to each event toward planning ahead of them.

"We have, in the past 10 years, had so many storms, so many scenarios and situations hitting Chatham County and the coast that our elected officials were comfortable bringing in a different mindset," Jackie said. "There was never really an entity or a program, or even a person, that had that higher level perspective of all the different things going on."

Jackie had already spent decades working in Chatham County as a planner, so she brought a long view of the community's needs. That gap in perspective is what the Resilience Program was built to fill.

What Does Climate Resilience Mean?

Jackie keeps her definition simple. "It's how do we position ourselves as a county, both internal and external, to allow our residents and members to be able to handle those shocks and stressors," she said. "How do we come out of those shocks and stressors in a better position?"

Climate sits underneath all of it, including sea level rise, flooding, and heat. But Jackie is quick to point out that resilience in Chatham County goes well beyond climate alone. It reaches into daycare availability, living wages, access to medical care, food security, and housing.

"Everything is interconnected," she said. "Not one is really a standalone. There's a domino effect through everything."

She points to a simple example: if a daycare closes because of a storm, a parent may not be able to get to work, and that single shock ripples out to affect the whole family, and eventually the community.

What Resilience Initiatives Are Happening in Chatham County?

Since the program started, Chatham County has moved on several fronts at once:

• Rooftop solar on municipal buildings. The county has installed solar at 14 locations so far, including its jail and sheriff's complex.

• Updated codes and policies. Chatham County had not done a full code update since the 1960s. The resilience program has helped push forward updates to engineering, subdivision, tree, and building codes with a changing climate in mind.

• Land conservation. At the end of 2025, Chatham County purchased Green Island, an undeveloped, historically significant coastal island, to protect it from development and use it as a storm buffer for neighboring communities. The site also sits in a high pollution susceptibility area and a groundwater recharge zone.

• Electric vehicle infrastructure. The county partnered with Georgia Power's Make Ready program to install its first EV chargers at a fleet facility, as a first step toward eventually adding EVs to its own fleet.

Jackie credits the program's early momentum to a wave of federal funding, including ARPA dollars, that became available shortly after she was hired. "I was grant-driven. I was just going for the funding," she said. "We definitely didn't get funded for everything we applied for, but that's where I started working, applying for things I thought were priorities. Some are low-hanging fruit that make so much sense, and then others are going to be a harder approach and a stepwise process."

How Can Governments Bring Historically Underserved Communities Into Resilience Planning?

Community input shaped where those EV chargers will go. Instead of presenting a finished plan, Jackie's team went to community meetings, including local Gullah Geechee community gatherings, with maps in hand and asked residents directly: Would you use this? Have you had flooding here? What about lightning?

Jackie also points to Chatham County's faith-based communities as a critical partner. "Nine times out of 10, a community member is going to go to their church, their leader, whoever that may be," she said. "They're going to go to those trusted resources, and we recognize that."

How Should Governments Prioritize Resilience Projects?

There's no perfect formula, Jackie admits. Elected officials' priorities and available funding both play a role. But one strategy has helped: rather than always creating new initiatives, the county is finishing a Resilience Roadmap that revisits plans and projects already adopted over the years but never fully implemented.

"Instead of creating new plans and new projects, let's look at what we've had on the shelf and have adopted and have promised throughout the years," Jackie said. "These are still viable strategies and projects. Let's see what's maybe stalled, and where this program can help lift up another program or another project."

The Resilience Program has also earned a seat at the table during budget planning with most major departments, which lets Jackie connect resilience goals to projects departments already want to pursue. She recalled a conversation with the Parks and Recreation department: "She's like, 'you're helping me accomplish my capital projects.' ... That's the human scale again. Help each other accomplish the bigger goal."

What Should Local Governments Know Before Starting Resilience Work?

Chatham County's Resilience Program started without a dedicated budget. Jackie's advice to other communities facing the same limitation: build partnerships before you build a budget.

"The willingness to have conversations outside of your typical players is huge," she said. "I think we have gotten so much accomplished solely because of partnerships."

Chatham County has leaned on partnerships with Hunter Army Airfield, Fort Stewart, local nonprofits like Georgia Conservancy’s Association of Georgia Land Trusts, and area universities including Savannah State, Georgia Southern, the University of Georgia, and Georgia Tech. The county also convenes its nine jurisdictions regularly through an effort called One Chatham, so local governments can compare notes instead of planning in isolation.

Jackie is candid about her team's size. "I'm a one-woman show," she said. "I like to say I have a strong team of three: me, myself, and I. So the comment that you need a ton of staff isn't necessarily true. You can accomplish a lot with partners and conversations and stakeholders."

What Is Giving Jackie Jackson Hope About Climate Resilience in Georgia?

Jackie says local governments are often their own worst enemy when it comes to sharing good news. "I say local government is often our own worst enemy, that we don't talk about all the great stuff that's going on that we're accomplishing," she said. "People really tend to only hear the negative. But I see it, and I hear the conversations, and I see the staff trying to do really awesome stuff."

She also points to a genuine shift among elected officials, some of whom have moved from skepticism to active interest once they saw what resilience planning could accomplish. Georgia's coast has 100 miles of protected shoreline, and Jackie sees growing willingness among decision-makers to invest in that kind of long-term protection. "It's refreshing to me that I'm seeing folks who have switched to understanding what resilience can accomplish," she said.

"We're doing more than we've ever done before," she added. That shift in mindset, more than any single project, is what keeps her optimistic about where Chatham County, and Georgia, are headed.

Stay Connected to Conversations Like This One

Subscribe to the Georgia Climate Digest to receive the latest good news on climate in Georgia and to hear directly from business leaders, researchers, and community voices advancing climate solutions that work best in our state, all sent right to your inbox twice a month.