What is climate resilience, and why does it matter?

Climate change is already having detrimental effects on our world. In the U.S., we’ve experienced major power outages, wide-sweeping forest fires, and raging hurricanes over the past few years. Each event left devastating consequences in its wake. To make matters worse, these effects were, and still are, particularly harmful to low-income communities of color.

To manage the myriad climate risks we face today, our resilience plans (a.k.a., the process that communities undergo to identify potential threats and challenges to establish mitigation and recovery plans) can’t be one-dimensional. They need to address environmental racism, plan for near-term events, and begin tackling issues simmering under the surface that will create problems later.

As the climate crisis grows more urgent, we must act quickly to mitigate the effects that are already underway. As mentioned above, the consequences of climate change disproportionately affect marginalized communities; in fact, research shows that people of color in the San Francisco Bay Area are exposed to 55% more nitrogen dioxide pollution than their white neighbors. We must do more to protect the most vulnerable members of our communities–before it’s too late. In this article, we’ll explain what climate resilience is, discuss how to assess climate risks, and outline what it takes to build climate resilience–even though it feels daunting.

What is climate resilience?

Climate resilience refers to a community’s capacity to gauge and contend with the impacts of climate change. Climate change is already underway: If all emissions stopped today, the earth’s temperatures would keep climbing due to the warming that’s already occurred.

Climate resilience is often associated with acute events, such as wildfires, heat waves, or hurricanes; yet, communities should be prepared to tackle more than these challenges to gain resilience. Thorough climate resilience planning also considers long-term effects. Chronic issues like rising sea levels and population migration may not show significant damage now, but will certainly have negative results later.

Unfortunately, these patterns mainly affect marginalized populations, which exacerbates existing inequities. Communities with marginalized populations are often significantly hotter than communities with non-marginalized populations. These groups are also the least likely to afford or access air-conditioned spaces, and higher demand for those spaces drastically increases greenhouse gas emissions.

Furthermore, members of marginalized communities are more likely to suffer from the adverse effects of climate change, as they often face chronic, compounded health issues. Consider: Various meteorological, topographical, and natural factors influence air quality, making it both dynamic and hyperlocal. In fact, Aclima research shows that air quality can vary over 800% on one city block. Factors like industrial manufacturing emissions and exhaust from cars and trucks on city highways create smog, which can lead to devastating effects on the ozone and the local community.

Poor air quality can aggravate issues like asthma, and often leads to compromised respiratory and cardiovascular systems. This means that not only do minoritized communities face lower quality air, but these factors are also compounded with statistically higher incidences of obesity, smoking, substance misuse, and chronic stress, as well as lack of access to proper care.

The multitude of variables at play like the ones mentioned above make identifying the impact of climate events tough to spot–and even tougher to measure. In order to boost climate resilience, we must consider where the current impacts of climate change are most deeply felt. This way, we can invest in our local communities and build a more sustainable world.

Calculating climate risks

Since climate resilience considers future risks, it’s critical to know what those risks and impacts are. To calculate climate risk, you must first estimate the probability of an event’s occurrence and then determine the potential resulting damage it could inflict.

To get the most accurate reading, you should:

Develop a list of climate hazards: This list could include droughts, floods, hurricanes, or any other event that could cause severe harm to a group of people or physical assets (like homes or other buildings).
Categorize climate risk scenarios: Some climate events won’t be as harsh as others. Flooding could cause mild, extreme, or unprecedented consequences. In order to prioritize your planning, consider the severity of climate consequences against their probability of occurrence.
Identify all assets that could be affected: Be sure to contemplate economic, social, and physical assets as well as the direct or indirect impacts a climate event might have. Direct effects would include injuries or business closures, while indirect effects could be hikes in insurance rates or a strain on nearby hospitals.
Assess the potential damage: Now that you have a list of every asset that could be harmed in every scenario, it’s time to run the numbers. Advanced software can help you model the annual and cumulative risk of climate change.
Consider community vulnerability: Take the time to evaluate the sociodemographic and health factors of a community in order to see the greatest likelihood of impact of climate events. These factors may cause a community to be more susceptible to the negative effects of climate hazards; for example, a community with a high demographic of elderly neighbors will be more negatively affected by air pollution.

In order to truly build climate resilience, communities should be aware of the potential risks and impacts that any adverse event could have. If you stop to consider which adverse events might happen, you can adequately prepare and mitigate those outcomes.

Building climate resilience

While calculating climate risks requires calculating potential consequences, building resilience involves prevention and adaptation. Of course, mitigation efforts and investment in climate interventions should prioritize the least resilient communities, as they are most at risk of the hazardous impact of climate disasters. And we need to start adapting now– urban communities are responsible for 60% of the world’s emissions.

The first step in offsetting the negative effects of climate change is to address its root causes: emissions and fossil fuels. That means shifting to renewable energy sources, using energy more efficiently, and creating more public transportation. Some of these changes will be harder to enforce than others: Due to a lack of proper infrastructure, most Americans are dependent on cars to get groceries, commute to work, or visit their loved ones.

If the U.S. does not minimize vehicle miles traveled (VMT), global temperatures can rise by 1.5℃. One way to curb this temperature increase is through modern land use strategies. Some key interventions to combat VMT are:

Infill and transit-oriented development (TOD), rededicate open space to new construction, while promoting more compact, walkable urban communities.
Updating transportation policies to incentivize not driving, which could lead to a prioritization of public transportation and reduction in cars.
Develop a congestion- or parking-pricing program to force drivers to consider alternative forms of transit that could lead to a reduction of traffic jams.
Introduce pay-as-you-drive (PAYD) policies to enable scalable registration, insurance, or road usage charges based on mileage driven.
Stop highway expansions that generate “induced demand” and quickly lose decongestion benefits.
Redesign streets to reallocate additional space for bus, bike, and foot traffic and reduce the amount of road space for private vehicles.

Of course, a reduction of VMT is not the only way to build climate resilience. As the effects of climate change are underway, communities should also consider the following methods to build resilience and curb the effects of it:

Reinforcing electric grids to better withstand extreme weather.
Investing in housing and infrastructure in areas hit by rising sea levels.
Planting trees to reduce excessive heat in cities.

There are many considerations when structuring climate resilience plans, but logistical hurdles aren’t the only barriers to overcome.

Overcoming barriers to climate resilience

Powerful stakeholders prioritize their own political interests over communities’ needs. However, the focus should be on marginalized populations.

Due to structural inequities, marginalized communities are especially unprepared for climate risks. Many lack the financial resources to make sustainable change, as green energy is often prohibitively expensive. These communities often also face environmental racism, which causes unequal distribution of environmental resources and hazards. That means that these communities encounter far more environmental hazards than benefits. Likewise, discrimination and prejudice prevent the creation of policies that support the environment. So not only are these groups hit the hardest during climate disasters, but they also bear the brunt of long-lasting environmental impacts.

It’s essential to incorporate justice into building climate resilience. In the face of disaster, we must prioritize communities; they should have access to funds and disaster resource guidance. Our society should ensure that climate action plans actually help marginalized communities, not harm them. Of course, there are simple solutions that can help build climate resilience within a community: expanding low-income households’ access to solar power, improving communities’ energy efficiency, and adding more public transportation can help to lower climate risks.

Create your climate resilience plan

Establishing a climate resilience plan requires qualitative and quantitative skills. To build a cohesive, comprehensive plan, you must take a hard look at where your community is today. How are low-income people of color affected by climate change? What climate dangers are headed your way, and how can you prepare? You need to understand your data, and that’s where UrbanFootprint can help.

UrbanFootprint is the world’s first and only urban intelligence platform powered by up-to-date, enriched datasets. The cloud-native software can help communities better evaluate their current plans, assess future climate risks, and determine how even small upgrades to their climate resilience plan can have significant positive impacts–especially on marginalized communities faced with greater climate risks.