Incorporating Equity

Address systemic injustices by focusing on belonging, equity, and justice in climate adaptation planning and implementation.

• Acknowledge the disproportionate impacts of climate change impacts on people, communities, and cultures.
• Begin the process of dismantling existing systems of power imbalance of addressing the root causes of conflicts among the competing needs of people, the environment, and the economy
• Maintain a positive mindset about the positive attributes and strengths that diverse communities bring.

Ensure that the people who are most impacted by your community's potential climate issues or their solutions are involved in decision-making. 

• Avoid the top-down approach to planning; include community members as equal collaborators from the beginning to the end of your project.
• Seek out and build alliances that empower historically marginalized communities to influence decision-making and drive change.

Acknowledge past and present harms within the community so you can work towards healing and reconciliation. Establish reciprocal trust with community partners. 

• Develop cultural competence for those in your community. Devote sufficient energy to understand different points of view and recognize systemic oppression.
• Proactively reach out to build friendly relationships with members of sub-communities and their leaders.

More than 90 percent of U.S. municipalities have fewer than 25,000 people. Local governments play an essential role in allocating their limited resources to address the complex challenge of climate change impacts. Both “bottom up” community planning and “top down” national strategies may help regions deal with impacts such as increases in electrical brownouts, heat stress, floods, and wildfires. 

Achieving a balanced mix of approaches requires cross-boundary coordination at multiple levels as operational agencies integrate adaptation planning into their programs. Acting in isolation at the local scale can reduce the effectiveness of adaptive responses or lead to maladaptation. Cross-jurisdictional, cross-functional, cross-cultural collaboration is key. 

In a place-based approach, the local community is the primary source of knowledge. Community members are involved in every step of the iterative process that honors learning and accommodates different competencies.

A common pitfall of community-driven planning is that the process is sometimes viewed as a sequence of linear steps to a predetermined objective. In this case, community review of a draft plan might receive few comments or only minor revisions. Though this may seem like a quick and efficient path forward, a community plan is likely to fail without substantial community buy-in. In addition, many planning efforts stall before implementation due to lack of resources and political will.

The entire process of integrating equity into a climate resilience approach must be viewed as an iterative process that continues beyond implementation. Co-creating and implementing an equitable resilience plan is long-term process that builds lasting relationships among the community and other decision makers. To be effective, this process needs to bridge the divide between community members and governance structures.