Climate Resilience

*text is up to date, although pending graphic adjustments

Climate resilience refers to a system, community, or place’s ability to respond, adapt, and mitigate the negative effects of the climate crisis. Negative effects or environmental hazards such as flooding, fires, extreme temperatures, and weather test a place’s climate resilience. Within a place’s ability is its capacity to respond to future threats as well, so a place’s climate resilience can vary over time and decrease as it faces more adverse climate effects.

Climate resilience encompasses both adaptation and mitigation strategies. Adaptation refers to a system, community, or place’s ability to change and adjust processes necessary for a healthy environment in the midst of rising temperatures and climate-related hazards. Mitigation refers to a system, community, or place’s efforts to lessen or reduce the root cause of negative effects or hazards. Any strategy that directly reduces the amount of carbon emissions in the atmosphere is climate mitigation. Adaptation and mitigation strategies work in tandem, often applied in policy avenues, urban planning tactics, and nature-based solutions.

Author Noémi Gonda further clarifies the concept of climate resilience by stating “resilience is not ‘innate.’ Climate resilience practices and processes emerge on the terrain of conflict and collaboration tied to territorialization processes of settler colonialism. This pointedly challenges the notion that climate resilience occurs only in reaction to environmental impacts. Instead it builds and occurs in spaces and communities threatened by colonialism and systems of oppression. One such example is the creation and maintenance of green spaces in urban communities. Many low-income, often minority, and urban communities suffer from urban heat island effect, where their lived environment is hotter than other communities because of a lack of green spaces. This lack is intentional and created through inequitable zoning policies, redlining, and discriminatory housing practices. To combat urban heat islands, communities create green spaces and corridors. Equitable and just policies and city planning are key to climate resilience and are “especially important in historically marginalized communities, where climate impacts can exacerbate existing inequalities.”

Climate resilience requires data collection, planning, policy creation, and solution implementation to transform a community. The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency plans for climate resilience via five categories: Climate awareness, scenario development, consequences and assets, adaptation planning, and risk assessment. A robust set of prediction modeling is required to test “what if?” climate scenarios. This is the first of many steps to prepare a community for worsening climate effects and essential to building infrastructure and incorporating nature-based solutions that are resilient. Natural ecosystems often hold the solutions and building-blocks for a community’s climate resilience. For example, flood-prone tropical areas benefit from replanting mangroves along coastlines to lessen negative flood impacts.

The United Nations Global Climate Action plan identifies the need for all actors (businesses, governments, and communities) to engage in the adaptation necessary to build climate resilience. Their team of researchers has outlined six steps that can help our world plan for this changing future.

1. Awareness-raising and advocacy – Be clear that the future will not resemble the past; base this on science and examine different scenarios (e.g. 1.5-degrees and higher) and their impacts. 
2. Carry out climate risk assessments at national, local (city/region), sectoral or organizational level and use a systems approach.
3. Develop and implement appropriate actions and interventions.
4. Mobilize resources – Build capacity and scale up actions.
5. Monitor and track progress.
6. Share knowledge, experiences and solutions.

Most importantly, within climate resilience it is imperative to prioritize and build equitable solutions. Climate change is a threat-multiplier and affects disadvantaged communities at a greater rate. When our most under-resourced, and vulnerable communities are resilient we all stand to benefit.