The World Resources Institute (WRI) recently published a resilience roadmap for the federal government and local agencies. Based on discussions held among a bipartisan group of local elected officials from coastal states during WRI’s 2015 Rising Tides Summit, the roadmap presents eight resilience actions that the incoming administration and Congress can take to support local and state resilience actions.
Underpinning the eight recommendations is a need for sustainable funding mechanisms, although the report recognizes that the effective use of resilience funding will require clarity and transparency.
Many of the recommendations and related actions raise similar points to those AMWA has made in comments submitted to federal agencies and White House workgroups over the past few years, such as improving intergovernmental and interagency coordination and support and incentivizing pre-disaster mitigation.
The report also recommends advancing FEMA’s disaster deductible concept into a complete policy. The disaster deductible concept would require states to pay a deductible before receiving federal disaster assistance; the deductible would be lowered if states implemented pre-disaster resilience initiatives.
Other recommendations include advancing integration of resilience into planning and investments by ensuring all federally funded projected incorporate the best available science and projections, making disaster assistance dependent on how much states have taken steps to reduce future climate risks, prioritizing pre-disaster support for at-risk communities and vulnerable populations, expanding public-private partnerships to supplement government efforts, promoting nature-based and multi-benefit resilience initiatives, enhancing disaster resilience-focused metrics and enriching usefulness of resilience-related date to increase public awareness.
“Local officials will be looking to the Trump administration to play a constructive role in supporting local resilience efforts,” the report concludes, adding that factoring resilience into infrastructure investments will ensure taxpayer money is spent responsibly.