Community climate resilience

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Contents

While climate change is a global problem, its effects are felt locally. And with the federal government intent on moving backward on climate, it’s becoming increasingly important to act locally and prepare our communities for climate chaos.

Resilience is the ability to withstand and recover from sudden change. It comes from the Latin resalire meaning “to jump back”. A related concept, especially in the domain of community climate resilience, is antifragility which is the ability not only to recover from sudden change but to let it make one stronger.

Why Resilience Now

When your survival depends on systems, it’s always a good time to think about resilience. And most things you can do to make your community more resilient to climate change are “no-regrets” measures: things that will benefit you and your community regardless of whether you end up depending on them for your survival. But my recent focus on community resilience came from two places. The first is the world’s failure to meet the key global warming target of 1.5℃, erasing my hope that world leaders might steer us away from catastrophe. And the second has been the news that the president intended to withhold federal funding as a political tool and my involvement in my school district’s losing battle to avoid punitive funding cuts and potential dismantlement by the state legislature. I can no longer trust our leaders to avoid climate catastrophe or, when catastrophe arrives, to protect my family and community. So we must protect ourselves. Ecologist David Orr said “Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. Hopeful people are actively engaged in defying or changing the odds.” So let’s roll up our sleeves.

What & How

Practically, community climate resilience means preserving your community’s ability to meet its needs through growing resource scarcity and various acute crises. Such needs include:

Water
Food
Shelter, including warmth in winter and cooling during heatwaves
Physical and mental health (the latter including opportunities for rest, creativity, and play)
Social cohesion and decision-making
Communication, within the community and with the outside world
Safety and security

Most of the above depend on both energy and resources, which are indirect needs. After “what do we need?” the next most important question to ask is “on what external systems do we currently depend on to meet these needs?” In my community, for example, almost none of these needs are being met from within the community, making us vulnerable to external shocks and shortages.

There are two ways to build resilience within systems: stocks and flows. Temporary resilience comes from increasing stocks to buffer against temporary supply disruptions. Long-term resilience comes from creating your own inflows or sources of what’s needed. These approaches are not mutually-exclusive, and in fact are mutually reinforcing.

Need: Water

Stocks include households maintaining a supply of water on hand in case of emergency (1 gallon per-person per-day is a good guideline). Inflows include rainwater harvesting systems (still vulnerable to drought, and typically non-potable without filtering/distillation but still useful for growing and washing), and earthworks like swales and retention ponds for retaining water in the land for growing food.

Need: Food

Stocks include maintaining a supply of non-perishable food (e.g. dried, canned, frozen) to weather shortages. Inflows include local produce and livestock across scales ranging from backyard gardening and animal-raising to community gardens to community-supported full-scale agriculture.

Need: Shelter

While one’s home is the primary source of shelter, redundancy is key in the event of disasters making one’s home uninhabitable. Friends’ homes (especially in areas less vulnerable to the same environmental risks) and community spaces can be a backup. Consider redundancy of climate control as well so you’re not one power outage away from freezing in winter or heatstroke in summer. Inflows might include the knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to quickly build shelter/fire in the event of emergency.

Need: physical and mental health

Physical: people with knowledge of medicine, first aid, and herbalism. Sources of medicinal plants. Stocks of first-aid supplies. Exercise to build strength and endurance before you need it (a true “no regrets” measure: you’ll live longer regardless!)

Mental: mind your addictions (mild or otherwise) so you don’t fall apart if you’re suddenly unable to access the substances or behaviors they depend on. Cultivate mindfulness and the ability to remain present and effective under stress. Especially focus on community relationships: we need each other emotionally, and isolation makes everything harder.

Indirect Need: Energy

While we can technically survive without electricity, many of the systems on which we depend for our survival will require it. Stocks include battery backups to insulate against short-term outages. Inflows include generators (which themselves depend on a limited stock of gasoline), home- and community-scale solar arrays (including solar co-ops), and in limited cases local-scale wind power and hydropower/water wheels. Fire has been our species’ main energy inflow for most of our history, so consider a source and stockpile of firewood.

Multifaceted Solutions

Resilience Hubs

A bottom-up third place helping communities adapt to climate change.

Resilience Hubs are community-serving facilities augmented to support residents, coordinate communication, distribute resources, and reduce carbon pollution while enhancing quality of life. Hubs provide an opportunity to effectively work at the nexus of community resilience, emergency management, climate change mitigation, and social equity while providing opportunities for communities to become more self-determining, socially connected, and successful before, during, and after disruptions. (from https://resilience-hub.org/)