Climate Futures in Puerto Rico
This four-phase, youth-led initiative is reimagining climate resilience in Puerto Rico by putting design tools, decision-making, and power into the hands of young people and local communities.
.jpg)
0
Young people are not just consulted—they co-designed, tested, and built climate solutions.
0
A custom-designed Climate Justice Board Game created space for intergenerational dialogue
0
The final prototype will be constructed with local materials and hands, ensuring the solution was accessible, replicable, and rooted in place.
0
The final prototype will be constructed with local materials and hands, ensuring the solution was accessible, replicable, and rooted in place.
Project Impact
Project Summary:
This four-phase, youth-led initiative is reimagining climate resilience in Puerto Rico by putting design tools, decision-making, and power into the hands of young people and local communities. Led by Puerto Rican-American student Dana Ladd, the project uses games, workshops, and hands-on building to spark climate awareness, activate local solutions, and strengthen environmental literacy.
Though just beginning, the Puerto Rico Climate Futures project is already showing how climate adaptation can be rooted in joy, creativity, and everyday life. More than building infrastructure, it’s focused on rewilding lives, not just landscapes—inviting people to reconnect with nature not as crisis, but as care, protection, and possibility.
This Included:
The Puerto Rico Climate Futures project was a four-phase, youth-led initiative designed to address urgent environmental issues on the island through community-centered design and climate education. Led by Dana Ladd—a Puerto Rican-American landscape architecture and planning student—this initiative used playful tools, creative engagement, and participatory design to reconnect communities with nature, spark local solutions, and place power into the hands of those most affected by climate change. Each phase contributed meaningfully to climate literacy, place-based action, and intergenerational resilience.
The Story behind the Seeds:
Everyday Nature Collection
Nature in this project was not presented as something separate or grand—it was understood through lived experience and everyday surroundings. Phase 1’s Climate Justice Board Game reimagined the way people engage with nature by embedding environmental themes into familiar stories of daily life: what happens when your street floods, when food prices rise due to drought, or when the power goes out during a storm. The game grounded nature in the routines and realities of Puerto Rican life.
By Phase 2, participants were designing real, small-scale adaptations such as urban gardens, shaded cooling areas, and rainwater collection systems. These weren’t abstract ideas—they were everyday ways for people to experience nature as protection, nourishment, and care. The final built prototype in Phase 4 became a lasting local feature—a place to gather, learn, and coexist with nature every day.
Youth Led Change
This project was guided and shaped by youth from start to finish. Dana Ladd brought her lived connection to Puerto Rico into the core of the design, turning her university coursework into a tool for real-world change. In Phase 2’s Climate Design Lab, young people worked with educators and local experts to imagine and prototype climate solutions. They weren’t just participants—they were co-designers, researchers, and community leaders.
By Phase 4, the same youth team was awarded funding to implement their chosen prototype. From a simple idea to full installation, they owned the process. This journey helped grow skills, confidence, and a stronger belief that young people can lead transformation—not in the future, but now.
Grassroot Action
Each of the four phases was intentionally designed to start from the ground up. Phase 1 began with listening—through mapping and game play, communities shared their concerns and hopes. That data informed Phase 2’s prototypes, which used local materials and local knowledge to develop practical climate adaptations.
In Phase 3, the Public Exhibition gave power back to the people. Rather than experts choosing what got built, community members voted for the solution they most believed in. Then in Phase 4, the winning prototype was installed using a £5,000 grant and built collaboratively by locals and the youth team. The final outcome was deeply rooted in the people and place it was meant to serve—simple, effective, and locally led.
Deep Human Connection
This project fostered connection across generations, geographies, and life experiences. In Phase 1, gameplay created space for shared storytelling and laughter—young people learned from elders, and vice versa. It turned environmental conversations into communal reflections.
Phase 2 deepened those bonds as design teams worked together, building trust and momentum. Phase 3’s exhibition became a public celebration of collaboration, drawing together residents, activists, and creatives. And in Phase 4, the construction process created pride and ownership—not just in a structure, but in one another.
By grounding each stage in care, listening, and shared action, the Puerto Rico Climate Futures project built more than climate infrastructure. It built a stronger, more connected community.