North Carolina’s Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary is renowned for its natural resources. Its ecosystems support productive commercial and recreational fisheries, clean beaches and waters, and a dynamic travel and tourism economy. It is the second largest estuary – after the Chesapeake Bay – on the Atlantic side of North America. Climate change and sea level rise threaten the ecosystems, the economy and the communities of the estuary. The region is considered as vulnerable to sea level rise and coastal storms as the Mississippi delta and Southern Florida. NC’s Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Program (APNEP) with support from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Ready Estuary program has contracted with the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions to develop recommendations to help state and local officials and citizens plan for and adapt to climate change and sea level rise. APNEP and the Albemarle-Pamlico Conservation and Community Collaborative conducted seven public listening sessions on sea level rise and coastal population growth in the summer of 2008. Students at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Albemarle Field Station in Manteo surveyed public awareness and concerns about sea level rise in the fall of 2008. Students at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment surveyed local elected and appointed officials in NC’s coastal counties in the spring of 2009. The NC Division of Coastal Management conducted an electronic public opinion survey about sea level rise in the fall of 2009. Bill Holman, Amy Pickle and Katherine McGlade, MEM 2009, made presentations to local elected and appointed officials in Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington Counties and in Columbia, Manteo, Plymouth, and Washington in the summer and fall of 2009 to assess their awareness and concerns about climate change and sea level rise and to ask them what information and tools they needed to plan for and adapt to climate change. Holman, Pickle, McGlade and Joanna Field, MEM 2009, are developing strategies to guide future public outreach and engagement and are drafting recommendations and options to help state and local officials plan for and adapt to climate change and sea level rise. Their report is due to APNEP in September 2010.