As a global pandemic puts current gaps in resiliency–especially as they affect socioeconomic equity–in stark relief, we are witnessing those who are most vulnerable suffer disproportionately. While COVID-19 is a near-term public health crisis, climate change is an ongoing crisis with even greater stakes. The efforts we make to build climate resilience will ultimately help us weather shorter-term disasters as well. To get some answers about the resilience challenges posed by climate change, we spoke with Joyce Coffee, founder and President of Climate Resilience Consulting. Here are some of the highlights of our wide-ranging conversation.
What is climate resilience?
As a fundamental leadership goal, resilience includes improving the life and livelihood outcomes for all stakeholder groups. Climate resilience is ensuring that people are able to deal with and adapt to the impacts of climate change. As a climate resilience practitioner, I aim to build social equity as a means to create climate resilience. One way to do this is to improve livelihoods and lives in the communities that are most lacking in adaptive capacities. For instance, improving food security, local fair wage jobs and public health services can decrease the impact of climate change shocks and stresses. Overall, a vision for climate resilience entails putting social equity at the foundation of closing the gap between mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the changes that we can no longer avoid.
What are some of the barriers to climate resilience now?
I perceive that the financial services industry is beginning to realize that climate risks are impacting financial portfolios. There are stocks and bonds that are doing better or worse because of differences in climate change hazards, vulnerability or exposure. At the same time, as market players witness climate risks growing, they may move money out of high climate hazard areas. There is a role for government to acknowledge and address growing inequities that will come from finance moving away from risk. It’s feasible that, if federal and state policy do not double down on addressing social inequity, climate change will have significant community impacts and resilience will fail. We will end up facing problems similar to those experienced during the 2008 financial crisis–tragic foreclosure rates, disproportionately affecting black and brown people. Another element of a climate disaster-driven housing crisis could be inequitable distribution of FEMA funding to wealthier households–a troubling datapoint. Evaluation and renovation of federal and state government programs is needed to ensure leaders know who is benefitting and who is suffering as resilience-building efforts continue and take action to ensure resilience is progressive, not regressive.
So, what do we need to do toward climate resilience?
Joyce notes that states provide immense infrastructure financing for transportation, water, public housing, and so forth. States also have a lot of climate data from state climatologists and state universities, and states have an impact on bond ratings. Some states are also the beneficiary of federal disaster funds following on tragic natural disasters. With all these resources–and Louisiana has demonstrated this to the nation–a lot can be done towards climate resilience. But we need a shift to address social inequity because climate resilience requires solving for better well being, improving equity in our housing, decreasing social injustice in our criminal justice system, increasing equity in our labor - system, and removing healthcare disparities.
Of course, many of these elements of societal well-being are connected to local government action. State government has the opportunity to remove barriers and increase assets that enable local resilience action. As noted earlier, state data assets about climate change risks should inform all infrastructure capital investment decisions, modifying both infrastructure modernization and new infrastructure designs to address future scenarios of climate change. This procurement change is good governance and will save lives and protect assets now and in the future. Some state elected officials are using executive orders to identify the importance of planning for, and making tough decisions about sea level rise, creating policies that build systemic resilience for our communities.
What has been your strategy to work on climate resilience?
I work on resilience actions such as helping local government to prepare for and resist climate impacts and, increasingly in some communities, to plan for retreat. There has been less emphasis on retreat to date, but I predict that planning actively for graceful retreat from coasts, river shorelines, and wildfire areas, may in the long run ensure more socially equitable communities and bring more peace to more households. In resilience, climate change is a human issue, rather than an environmental one, and we need to focus on the best possible outcomes for our communities–even when that entails very tough decisions today. We will be grateful for them in the long run.
Joyce Coffee is the president of Climate Resilience Consulting based in Chicago, IL and a CPEX partner.