Researchers are proposing a new strategy for local governments to make municipalities more resilient against climate change. The “compounded resilience” strategy lays out how local governments can take advantage of opportunities to both limit adverse impacts of climate change on their communities and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change.
“Local governments are already dealing with the impacts of climate change,” says Christopher Galik, corresponding author of a paper introducing the strategy and a professor of public administration at North Carolina State University. “There are more extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and flooding, which force municipalities to make decisions about how, where and – in some cases – whether to rebuild. The changing climate is also influencing where people want to live, forcing some municipalities to make decisions about how and where new development will take place to accommodate a growing population.”
“All of these development and redevelopment decisions represent an opportunity for local governments to adopt policies that better prepare infrastructure and neighborhoods for the new conditions driven by climate change,” says Georgina Sanchez, co-author of the paper and director of research engagement in NC State’s Center for Geospatial Analytics. “Policies designed to incentivize adaptation strategies that make communities more resilient to flooding or other increasing challenges can be intentionally linked with efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change itself. This combined approach is what we call ‘compound resilience.’
“Instituting new policies and regulations that govern zoning, construction requirements, and so on, can be expensive and politically challenging,” Sanchez says. “But if communities are already having to build or rebuild in response to climate change, implementing compound resilience policies may be more feasible.”
“We are already seeing municipalities compete to attract people and businesses displaced by climate change, so there is an incentive for local governments to present themselves as being safe places for people to move and invest,” Galik says. “On the other hand, we find that, if nothing else changes, climate-driven shifts in where people live could actually increase greenhouse gas emissions. The argument we are making here is that there is both a need and an opportunity to adopt compound resilience policies.
“These are policies that can help communities grow while improving quality of life,” Galik says.
“For example, we know that incorporating greenhouse gas efficiency measures into new construction is substantially less expensive than retrofitting existing structures,” says Sanchez. “These measures improve energy efficiency and ultimately reduce costs for property owners. Thinking about these ways to improve efficiency at the same time we are thinking about ways to build climate resilience, such as fire resistance or flood mitigation, present tremendous advantages for local governments and the people who call those places home.”
The paper, “Compounded Resilience: A Step Towards Achieving Climate Mitigation and Adaptation in the U.S. Built Environment,” is published open access in the journal Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change.