In the wake of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s announcement of a $19.5 billion plan to make the Big Apple better prepared for future extreme weather events on the scale of Hurricane Sandy, dozens of other cities and counties in the U.S. are showing increased interest in pursuing so-called “climate resilience” plans.
On Tuesday, 45 local elected officials from cities A (Ann Arbor) to W (Washington, D.C.) signed on to a new campaign called Resilient Communities for America to share information and take actions that would bolster their communities against the multifaceted challenges posed by global climate change, including more frequent and severe extreme weather events and, in coastal cities, sea level rise.
Some cities, like New York, are already taking action. Broward County, Fla., is part of the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact, which recently created a climate action plan that includes coastal flood protection measures. Broward County experienced flooding from Hurricane Sandy as well as a high tide event, damaging portions of the vital A1A coastal roadway. Farther south, the city of Miami is incorporating sea level rise into its Post-Disaster Redevelopment Plan, slated to be completed by the end of the year.
And smaller cities are beginning to assess their climate change risks, too. Cambridge, Mass., for example, is conducting a $300,000 climate-change vulnerability assessment.
A major limitation facing local leaders, though, is a lack of federal assistance during this time of tight local budgets. A new report released on Wednesday points out that the federal government is spending far more money on post-disaster assistance than it is on pre-disaster preparation and mitigation.
The report, by the Center for American Progress, a progressive Washington think tank, found that the federal government spent just $22 billion on resilience efforts between fiscal year 2011 and fiscal year 2013. This compares to the $136 billion the government doled out in separate disaster relief and recovery funds during the same period.
“Based on those figures, federal taxpayers spent nearly $6 for disaster recovery for every $1 spent to increase general community resilience over the past three years,” the report said.
According to FEMA, every dollar spent on enhancing communities’ ability to withstand extreme events reduces the cost of damage from such events by about $4.[…]
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