Climate Adaptation Programs across Agencies

Agencies in Action Federal Programs That Deliver Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Benefits Every Day
Find out more about the briefings in this series below:
Part 1	Financing Inclusive Clean Energy Investments in Rural America
Part 2	Energy Efficiency Means Business
Part 3	Climate Adaptation Programs across Agencies
Part 4	Building a Durable National Framework for Large Landscape Conservation

The third briefing in this series covered climate adaptation programs. As climate change continues to impact communities and ecosystems across the country, federal programs that focus on adaptation are playing a key role in helping communities prepare for and stay safe from the impacts of our changing climate. Panelists discussed adaptation-focused federal programs administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers, and other agencies, and why these programs are important for districts across the country.

Highlights

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The United States does not currently have a national adaptation strategy and federal programs that support adaptation and resilience are spread out across agencies. The White House National Climate Task Force has five resilience working groups focused on wildfires, coastal impacts, extreme heat, drought, and flooding. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has set three climate goals: providing climate data that best supports decision-making; advancing equity in all aspects of NOAA’s mission; and recognizing the opportunity for economic growth and climate-smart innovation. NOAA tools to support adaptation work include Climate.gov, Drought.gov, Atlas 14, and the Digital Coast Sea Level Rise Viewer. Funding for a program like Restore the Mississippi Delta comes from across the federal government, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), NOAA, and the Department of Interior. The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy aims to restore and maintain landscapes, build fire-adapted communities, and improve response to fire. Currently, significant investments are being made in fire response and suppression, but the same level of investment is needed for landscape restoration and fire-adapted communities. Adaptation and resilience funding and programs must address systemic inequities and work to increase equity. Initiatives must focus on increasing capacity within communities, so that they can design solutions. When developing programs, it is necessary to also provide support to communities to access relevant grants, as many communities lack the technical capacity to apply.

 

U.S. Representative Scott Peters (D-Calif.)

• In 2021, Congress passed the historic bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L.117-58), which will invest nearly $50 billion in climate resilience.
• Representative Peters introduced the bipartisan National Climate Adaptation and Resilience Strategy Act (H.R.6461/S.3531) earlier this year, with Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) and Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
• The bill would require the development of a national climate adaptation and resilience strategy, which would ensure a unified vision for the U.S. government's response to climate hazards.
• The bill would also authorize a chief resilience officer in the White House to direct national resilience efforts and to lead the development of the U.S. resilience strategy.
• Climate resilience is an issue that can bring Republicans and Democrats together.

 

Laura Petes, Chief of Staff, Climate & Environment and Assistant Director for Climate Resilience, White House Office of Science & Technology Policy

• The United States needs both mitigation strategies (reduction of greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptation strategies (reduction of risks and preparation for future climate impacts).
• All federal agencies are required under Executive Order 14008 to develop climate adaptation plans. Congress and the Biden-Harris Administration are working to increase resilience funding for these agencies’ adaptation programs. For example, they are seeking increases to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) programs to support pre-disaster hazard mitigation projects that enhance community resilience.
• The Biden-Harris Administration centers equity in resilience and adaptation efforts by ensuring funding to disadvantaged communities that are often the most impacted by climate change yet lack the capacity to plan and adapt.
• Justice40 is a whole-of-government effort: coordinated agency action is needed to ensure that at least 40 percent of the overall benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy are delivered to disadvantaged communities.
• The White House National Climate Task Force has five resilience working groups focused on wildfires, coastal impacts, extreme heat, drought, and flooding.
• In October 2021, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and FEMA released a report, called for under Executive Order 14008, on ways to improve and expand climate information and services for the public.
• The National Climate Assessment (NCA) is a recurring report developed and released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) that serves as the authoritative source of information on climate change impacts in the United States.
• The Fifth NCA is underway with five guiding priorities: advance the conversation around new scientific developments since the previous NCA; make it accessible to a broad audience; be creative in communication and create memorable ways of conveying science; center people and diverse perspectives to improve the relevance of information; and ensure that it is useful in providing context for risk management choices.

 

Mark Osler, Senior Advisor for Coastal Inundation and Resilience, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

• Interagency cooperation and coordination are crucial because all agencies support different work and inform different decision makers.
• NOAA has set three climate goals: providing climate data that best supports decision-making; advancing equity in all aspects of NOAA’s mission; and recognizing the opportunity for economic growth and climate-smart innovation.
• NOAA is responsible for producing cutting-edge, world-class science and is also responsible for local place-based engagement and capacity-building on the ground.
• Some examples of NOAA products and services:
  • Climate.gov is an authoritative clearinghouse of what we know about how the earth system is changing. There are also guides and toolkits that provide insights on how to apply the information.
  • Drought.gov is coordinated by the National Integrated Drought Information System, which is a partnership between many federal agencies, the Western Governors Association, and the private sector. It tracks, monitors, forecasts, and communicates drought conditions across the United States.
  • Atlas 14 provides information on the climatology of precipitation. Atlas 14 has been identified in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for advancement and funding.
  • The Digital Coast Sea Level Rise Viewer allows users to map out and visualize sea level rise under different scenarios. This is applied science that allows data to be useful and relevant to place-based discussions.
• One example of engagement and capacity building comes from NOAA’s Global and Regional Seal Level Rise Scenarios for the United States technical report. NOAA was able to embed non-science practitioners with technical authors to help guide how the science is described and portrayed in technical reports. This initiative increases accessibility by making the science more digestible to the average reader and on-the-ground decision makers. The practitioners are also in the process of writing a companion application guide.

 

Cathleen Berthelot, Senior Policy Manager, Restore the Mississippi River Delta, Environmental Defense Fund

• The Restore the Mississippi River Delta coalition is made up of local and national partners. They have worked together for over a decade in partnership with local, state, and federal agencies.
• The Louisiana Coastal Master Plan is a comprehensive science-based plan that is a 50-year blueprint combining projects to restore, build, and maintain coastal wetlands with projects to provide enhanced risk reduction for coastal communities. It also provides a guide for federal and non-federal investments. The next master plan will be released in 2023. The master plan receives unanimous and bipartisan support from the Louisiana legislature.
• A primary source of funding for the Restore the Mississippi River Delta project has come from private penalty money from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlement made available by Congress via the RESTORE Act in 2012.
• Funding is anticipated from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which is the largest investment ever in the resilience of natural and physical systems.
• Additional specific program funding comes from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Gulf of Mexico program and Lake Pontchartrain Basin Restoration Program; NOAA’s Coastal Zone Management Act grants and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's (NFWF) National Coastal Resilience Fund (a partnership between NOAA and NFWF); and the Department of the Interior’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Program (NRDA Restoration Program).
• Looking forward, there are opportunities for FEMA BRIC grants and Department of Transportation PROTECT grants to fund natural infrastructure projects.
• According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, natural infrastructure can save hundreds of billions of dollars annually in climate adaptation costs while delivering the same or better outcomes as traditional physical infrastructure.

 

Cecilia Clavet, Senior Policy Advisory, Forest Restoration and Fire, The Nature Conservancy

• Wildfires are becoming more frequent, intense, and deadly. These “mega fires” are costly to human health and contribute to climate change by releasing carbon and other particulate matter into the atmosphere.
• The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy aims to restore and maintain landscapes, build fire-adapted communities, and improve response to fire. Currently, significant investments are being made in fire response and suppression, but the same level of investment is needed for landscape restoration and fire-adapted communities.
• Right now, at the federal level, the cost of suppression comes at the expense of other forest management activities, including those that would help in wildfire resilience and risk reduction.
• The Nature Conservancy’s 2021 Playbook for Climate Finance suggests pathways for funding, including expanding existing wildfire resilience investments within the Forest Service and Department of the Interior; redirecting funding from other relevant federal programs, like Environmental Protection Agency air quality programs; and expanding public-private partnerships and private investments.
• Each funding opportunity would have the potential to support improved forest management. Forest management can get ahead of disastrous wildfires, but it must be done at a massive scale and use science-based, ecologically-sound approaches, including prescribed burns, mechanical thinning, and reforestation. Forests play an important role in climate change mitigation because they capture and store carbon.
• The 2018 wildfire cap adjustment helped stabilize federal budgets around wildfire protection and response. This allows agencies to better assess their long-term needs. Additionally, Congress is investing in wildfire resilience at higher levels than ever before through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and fiscal year 2022 appropriations.

 

Q&A

Q: How do we ensure that we are advancing adaptation work in an equitable and just way?

Petes:

• It is important to understand the holistic challenges that communities face, not just climate change challenges.
• Federal agencies need to build long-term relationships built on mutual trust to make programs most effective.

Osler:

• Adaptation and risk reduction, although necessities in many cases, are also luxuries. We need to continue to advance the ability to measure, track, and predict the return on investment of ecosystem service functions and social and public health outcomes.

Berthelot:

• Policies must address systemic inequities and work to increase equity.
• Initiatives must also focus on increasing capacity within communities so that they can design solutions, rather than having solutions come from Washington, D.C.

Clavet:

• When developing programs, it is necessary to also provide support to communities to access relevant grants, as many communities lack the technical capacity to apply for grants.

 

Q: Are there steps that Congress can take to improve the climate adaptation benefits of these programs?

Petes:

• It is necessary to holistically capture the benefits of projects, not just the climate resilience benefits. It is challenging but really important.

Osler:

• There should be a greater focus on working with community leaders who can best communicate with community members and return their feedback to the federal level.

 

Q: As we look across these adaptation programs, what are some things that policymakers should be thinking about as they seek to improve the climate adaptation benefits of these programs?

Petes:

• We really need to think holistically about the climate crisis, meaning we need to focus on both adaptation and mitigation.

Osler:

• Regarding equitable adaptation, policymakers can address “data deserts” where communities do not have the environmental information to understand risk and vulnerabilities, let alone what to do about them.

Berthelot:

• Many of the communities that are in dire need of lots of these federal funding opportunities are not able to come up with a local match. One thing policymakers could do to address this is to waive the requirement for a local match in underserved communities in order to advance our national adaptation and resilience priorities.

Clavet:

• Policymakers should incentivize private bank financing to leverage federal funds. Policymakers should also allow for some flexibility, in terms of timing. We are dealing with long-term problems that cannot be solved in the next few years, so we need to put in thoughtful planning for the future.

 

Q: Are there examples of the private sector enhancing the effectiveness, reach, or capacity of a particular project?

Petes:

• The role of the private sector in climate change solutions is huge, but the potential is largely untapped. There is really important government information and data that could be customized, but it is important to prevent anything from becoming a pay-for-service model; the beauty of the government information is that it is free.
• The government cannot possibly tailor information for every single stakeholder that wants to use it. There is a real opportunity there for universities, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector to band together and help communities get the information they need.

Osler:

• The focus of the National Coastal Resilience Fund, which is a private-public partnership, is to restore natural systems in ways that both increase protection for communities from coastal storms and sea level changes, and also improve valuable habitat for wildlife.
• NOAA is working with insurance companies to invest in green infrastructure to develop a shared industry understanding of the insurance components of climate change and the ability to use insurance as a risk-transfer mechanism.

Berthelot:

• The private component is critical. For example, in Louisiana, when we do not have the funds for a project, we look for new mechanisms to raise additional funds. This might include green banks and other sources, depending on what would work for each project and area.

Clavet:

• The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) through the U.S. Forest Service brings together different partners, including the private sector.

 

Compiled by Emilie Austin and edited for clarity and length. This is not a transcript.