Grantee Profile
Urban Leaders Adaptation Initiative
Ten Cities and Counties Work Together to Become More Resilient to Climate Change
Chicago’s City Hall building with green roof retrofit - City of Chicago
“Adapting to climate change doesn’t require the invention of an amazing silver bullet,” says Josh Foster, manager of climate adaptation at the Center for Clean Air Policy (CCAP) in Washington, DC. “It is doing much of what we are already doing, only better.”
Finding better ways to help local governments improve their communities’ resilience in the face of climate change is why CCAP joined with local government partners in 2006 to create the Urban Leaders Adaptation Initiative.
With core funding from the Rockefeller and Surdna Foundations, CCAP brings together pioneering government leaders from ten major counties and cities in the US to share knowledge as they develop and implement climate resilient strategies. CCAP brings this understanding of local adaptation ‘best practices’ to Washington, DC to inform ways to make the whole country more resilient to climate change impacts. Where possible, the Urban Leaders initiative also promotes serving the adaptation needs of vulnerable low-income and minority communities that are often overlooked when addressing climate change.
Ten Partners Lead the Way – Separately and Together
The ten partners --representatives from Chicago, King County (WA), Los Angeles, Miami-Dade County (FL), Milwaukee, Nassau County (NY), New York City, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Toronto – keep each other informed on innovative planning processes and solutions for coping with the often dangerous impacts of climate change. They have taken major steps to help their regions adapt to the risks climate change will bring: increased flooding, loss of snowpack and water supply, more severe heat and other weather events, to name a few :
- King County, WA, anticipating future summer water shortages, will modify the Brightwater Reclaimation Plant now under-construction to treat water only suitable for agricultural and industrial uses to make it available for home consumption—at a cost of only 1.5% beyond the existing budget.
- New York City, with over nine million residents and 600 miles of coastline, is preparing for the serious risks that rises in sea level could pose to its water supplies -- including possibly submerging sewage treatment plants. Using recommendations from the NYC Climate Change Panel and Adaptation Task Force, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the city has been able to identify more than 100 types of city infrastructure as at risk to climate change impacts and better allocate $20 billion in water infrastructure investments over the next ten years.
- Phoenix, Arizona, preparing for the extreme heat that climate change may bring to Arizona and the arid southwest, is partnering with Arizona State University to tackle urban heat island (UHI) solutions: conducting studies of cooler materials that can be used in pavements, roofing, landscaping, and airport development which can decrease the temperature in urban communities.
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin, expecting intense precipitation and the dangers storm runoff can pose to the health of Lake Michigan and its tributaries, is working on a number of approaches to watershed management, including installing rain gardens with water-hungry plants to absorb runoff and capture contaminants.
- Chicago, Illinois had a heat wave in 1995 that killed more than 750 people – and made them aware of their vulnerability in future to the heat island effect from climate change. The city has taken several measures to reduce the impact of heat waves–green roofs, cooling centers, planting trees along sparsely landscaped streets in particularly hot neighborhoods, and more.
Step One Is Simple: Just Ask the Climate Question
Though individuals and cities alike often find the prospects of coping with climate change daunting, CCAP encourages its partners to keep it simple. “We tell them to ‘Ask the Climate Question,’ says Foster, whose organization has developed a booklet entitled Ask the Climate Question: Adapting to Climate Change Impacts in Urban Regions. That means, Foster explains, that whether you’re a mayor, city manager, business owner or an ordinary citizen – you need to consider how your behavior can help the community in adapting to, preparing for, or reducing the dangerous effects of climate change.
“Elected leaders, for example, need to ask, ‘Do you want people living in the flood plain and pay the big expenses when they get flooded out?” Foster says. If not, then cities need to create policies that prepare them to deal with the impacts climate change will induce--for example, modifying zoning laws to discourage developers from building in areas vulnerable to flooding or setting aside money to deal with future costs of flood disasters.
Adaption Doesn’t Cost a Lot – It Might Even Save Money
Communities may gain far more than they lose by taking measures to adapt to climate change. Preventing development of flood plains, for example, could mean “local insurance rates may go down, property values may go up, and there may be more tax revenue for the local governments and savings for homeowners because they don’t need to pay the costs of flooding,” Foster explains.
As Ron Sims, Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (and charter Urban Leaders member) is quoted as saying in CCAP’s Ask the Climate Question report, “Dealing with climate change is a question of economic competitiveness and of equity—to ensure a high quality of life for all, across the world as well as our future generations.”
CCAP believes that to be a competitive city, you can’t afford not to prepare for the wildfires, flooding, droughts, and other extreme weather and environmental challenges climate change will bring. “Everyone will have to deal with the inevitable impacts of climate change,” Foster says, “so you may as well start thinking about it now.”
Download Booklet: Ask the Climate Question
Urban Leaders Adaptation Initiative Website
