Centering Equity in Climate Resilience Planning & Action Published

Centering Equity in Climate Resilience Planning and Action report cover

Antioch’s Center for Climate Preparedness and Community Resilience received a grant to review and summarize existing best practices for community resilience planning and action that centers and integrates belonging, equity, justice, diversity, and inclusion (BEJDI) through an interactive, co-designed process.

The project, led by Abigail Abrash Walton, PhD (principal investigator), and a team from the Center, Christa Daniels PhD, co-PI; doctoral fellow Clara Fang; graduate research assistant Jess Hench; together with BIPOC community partners, produced the paper Centering Equity in Climate Resilience Planning and Action

Communities in the United States and abroad are already feeling the impacts of climate change. In 2021, the U.S. sustained twenty climate disaster events costing $295.9 billion (NOAA, 2022). As the climate crisis worsens, local-level action is vital to ensure preparedness and build resilience to meet site–specific conditions. Elected, appointed, and professional staff leaders and other decision–makers at municipal, county, regional, and watershed scales – as well as within community–based organizations and small and medium–sized businesses – are on the frontlines of preparing for and responding to the impacts of a changing climate.

This paper introduces and amplifies principles and best practices for centering equity in climate resilience planning and action. The audience is primarily users of the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit and its Steps to Resilience. Climate resilience is the “capacity of social, economic, and environmental systems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance, responding or reorganizing in ways that maintain their essential function, identity, and structure, while also maintaining the capacity for adaptation, learning, and transformation.” (IPCC, 2014).

The publication was released in connection with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Office as part of its new climate resilience and adaptation practitioner guidebooks.

Read a press release published by Climate.gov here.