*The jumbled downtown of Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, where writer/public-health leader Michael Fine, M.D., worked*

The next dinner of the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com) comes on Wednesday, Jan. 8, with Michael Fine, M.D., the speaker. He'll talk about his novel Abundance, set in West Africa, and the challenges of providing health care in the developing world. He’s also a short story writer and essayist.

Dr. Fine has been an advocate for communities, health-care reform and the care of under-served populations worldwide for 40 years. He is a former director of the Rhode Island Department of health.

His career as a community organizer and family physician has led him to some of the poorest places in the United States, as well as dangerous, war-ravaged communities in third-world countries. He is a former director of the Rhode Island Department of health.

Please let us know if you're coming to the Jan. 8 event by registering on our Web site, thepcfr.org, or emailing us at pcfremail@gmail.com. You may also call (401) 523-3957.

Please go to thepcfr.org, or email to pcfremail@gmail.com or call (401) 523-3957 for information on how to join the PCFR. (It’s very simple.)

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And for the rest of the PCFR season, subject to the vagaries of weather, flu epidemics and so on:

On Wednesday, Feb. 5, we will welcome Cornelia Dean, book author, science writer and former science editor of The New York and internationally known expert on coastal conditions. She’ll talk how rising seas threaten coastal cities around the world and what they can do about it.

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On March 18 comes Stephen Wellmeier, managing director of Poseidon Expeditions. He’ll talk about the future of adventure travel and especially about Antarctica, and its strange legal status.

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News to come about an early-April speaker

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On Wednesday, April 29, comes Trita Parsi, founder and current president of the National Iranian American Council, author of Treacherous Alliance and A Single Roll of the Dice. He regularly writes articles and appears on TV to comment on foreign policy. He, of course, has a lot to say about U.S. Iranian relations.

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On Wednesday, May 6, we’ll welcome Serenella Sferza, a political scientist and co-director of the program on Italy at MIT’s Center for International Studies, who will talk about the rise of right-wing populism and other developments in her native home of Italy.

She has taught at several U.S. and European universities, and published numerous articles on European politics. Serenella's an affiliate at the Harvard De Gunzburg Center for European Studies and holds the title of Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia conferred by decree of the President of the Republic for the preservation and promotion of national prestige abroad.

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On Wednesday, June 10, the speaker will be Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou, who directs the Initiative on Religion, Law, and Diplomacy, and is visiting associate professor of conflict resolution, at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She titles her talk "God, Soft Power, and Geopolitics: Religion as a Tool for Conflict Prevention/Generation". She was originally scheduled for Dec. 5 but had to postpone because of illness.

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From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

You may have heard about the Charlestown, R.I., man who is suing the town of South Kingstown and one of its police officers over his arrest in June on a trespassing charge while he was collecting seaweed along a beach.

The charge was dismissed, but the act itself was, in part, intended to call attention to unresolved questions about shoreline access here in Rhode Island, a right enshrined in our state constitution. A 1982 Supreme Court ruling attempted to clarify the issue by saying the public’s right ends at the mean high-tide line, but since that line is a calculation of averages over an 18.6-year cycle, there’s no way for a beachgoer to identify it.

Further complicating matters is that the line will continually move inland as sea level rises, most of the time gradually, but at times heaving large chunks off dunes and other coastal features. With sea rise, property owners and members of the public whose shoreline access is constitutionally guaranteed will continue losing ground.

After Hurricane Sandy destroyed properties along the coasts of New York and New Jersey, there was an uptick in discussion about whether some particularly at-risk coastal properties should even be rebuilt. Many were, in fact, abandoned there, because increasingly violent weather events and rising seas have rendered them too much of a risk for repeated loss.

As much as we value the right of landowners, there may well be properties in our state, too, that are similarly unjustifiable risks for flooding, destruction, and even loss of life.

As the Ocean State, we should be much more proactive when it comes to resiliency along our shores. We should be exploring the actual risk to each coastal community and each property using current technology that models expected risks. We must continue to train our municipal planning and zoning boards on the risks of sea rise so they have the tools they need to make sound decisions that don’t jeopardize property investments and keep the shoreline open to the public under their constitutional rights.

There’s little doubt that, in general, homeowners are less than ideally prepared for flood risks, particularly the increasing risks associated with rising seas in the coming decades. Only about 15,000 Rhode Island properties in the flood zones carry flood insurance, and only those with mortgages are actually required to have it. Those with enough cash to buy a beach home without a mortgage aren’t. While they may have the means to risk property destruction in the event of a major disaster, are they putting public assets and people’s lives at risk?

The risk isn’t limited to private property. Doubtlessly, many state and municipal assets are also in areas that are already prone to flooding, or whose risk is increasing. Stewards of public resources have a responsibility to understand and defend those assets from potential damage, and must face the reality that the most prudent step might be to move them elsewhere.

Our state needs a more robust action plan for protecting public and private properties from the ever-increasing risk of coastal flooding, and that plan must include an accounting of where the high-tide line is, and how it’s projected to move.

The creation of this plan should include an audit of properties to determine what the real risks are, and it should also bring in real-estate professionals, insurers, and lenders, because they help determine the price of ownership of such properties, and should be sure that those prices accurately reflect the real cost of ownership, including potential destruction.

The Ocean State must face the fact that the more of our state is becoming part of the ocean with each passing year. Leaders and property owners must take much more concrete steps to predict the encroachment and protect our assets from it.

Rhode Island state Rep. Lauren Carson is a Democrat who represents District 75 in Newport. Rep. Terri Cortvriend is a Democrat who represents District 72 in Portsmouth and Middletown.