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The
federal government must give local stakeholders and communities improved
access to federal climate data to bolster climate resilience and adaptation
efforts. Introduction and summary Wildfires—which are growing in
number and intensity—are destroying and displacing entire towns. Record
rainfall is flooding farms and communities. Infectious diseases are spreading
to new regions and straining health care systems. Longer and hotter heat
waves are threatening vulnerable populations and overpowering electrical
grids. These are just a few examples of the new normal in a climate-changed
America. Although individuals
experience climate change in different ways across the country, communities
of color and low-income communities are hit hardest. Moreover, the effects of
a changing climate are disrupting the systems, infrastructure, services, and
institutions on which communities rely daily. Local stakeholders need data,
tools, and support to respond effectively to climate change. As a recent
report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working
Group made clear, without immediate and significant efforts to reduce
emissions and reach the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degree Celsius warming limit,
the consequences of climate change will continue to grow catastrophically.1 Immediate
action to mitigate and adapt to climate change is needed to prevent the worst
climate scenarios and to prepare for current and future climate impacts. As part of this effort, the
Biden administration must build on its past work to ensure that federally
collected climate data are accessible to local stakeholders. Such data can
help businesses, municipalities, planners, land managers, community leaders,
and farmers develop and deploy the adaptation strategies that are badly
needed across the country. These strategies will require effective outreach,
trainings, and deployment of the recently released Climate Mapping for
Resilience and Adaptation (CMRA) portal; an increase in climate science and
adaptation funding; and enhanced workforce development initiatives for
climate-vulnerable communities. This report outlines the steps that the Biden administration
has taken to make climate change data available to local stakeholders and
leaders. It also offers recommendations for how the administration can expand
the accessibility and usability of federal climate data going forward.
Closing the gap in climate
adaptation and resilience finance Climate adaptation is critical
to help communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from climate
impacts, yet decades of inaction have left U.S. residents and businesses
vulnerable across numerous indicators, from health care access to the
integrity of the country’s infrastructure. Moreover, the World Bank Group
estimates that by 2030, climate change will drive 32 million to 132 million
more people globally into extreme poverty.2 In North America,
human life, safety, and livelihoods are and will increasingly be at risk from
sea-level rise, severe storms, and hurricanes even if warming is limited to
1.5 degree C.3 Flooding is expected to become a dominant risk
to cities, disrupting and damaging infrastructure, businesses, and homes. Wildfires
are becoming increasingly deadly, expensive, and damaging to infrastructure;
2018, the most expensive fire season on record, cost more than $25 billion.4 Wildfires
from 2010 to 2021 cost $100.1 billion, more than three times the wildfire
costs from 1980 to 2009.5 And a record-shattering heat wave
in 2021 caused 800 deaths in the Pacific Northwest, with older Americans,
people of color, and low-income individuals experiencing disproportionate
harm.6 From 2018 to 2021, there was a 56 percent increase in
heat-related deaths, and these deaths are expected to increase as
temperatures continue to rise.7 The Biden administration has
taken important steps to address the challenges driven by climate change. The
bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) invests roughly $47
billion in resilience funding to prepare communities for extreme weather.8 IIJA
funding will go to programs such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s
(FEMA) Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program for hazard
mitigation projects.9 The funds will also be directed toward
coastal resilience efforts to protect communities from flood risk, sea-level
rise, and coastal erosion, as well as to projects that increase the power
grid’s resilience to extreme weather. The Inflation Reduction Act also
contributes an extraordinary amount of funding to this work, including $3
billion for environmental and climate justice block grants, $2.6 billion for
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to put toward
coastal and climate resilience, $235 million for Tribal climate resilience,
$24 million for the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) 3D Elevation Program, and
$33 million for the Council on Environmental Quality to fund environmental
justice mapping. Other recent federal efforts
to jump-start climate resilience programs include:
Still, more can and must be
done. In 2021, U.S. climate and weather disasters cost $152 billion.18 This
pales in comparison to the $2 trillion per year that climate change is
expected to cost the United States by 2100.19 The estimated
upward costs for 2100 include $2.1 billion in federal expenditures for crop
subsidies, $94 billion for coastal disaster recovery and rebuilding in the
wake of increased hurricane frequency, $9.6 billion to respond to increased
wildfire severity and frequency, and $43.7 billion for infrastructure repair.20 In
addition, climate change will jeopardize the affordability of insurance, with
increasing claim costs leading to higher premiums.21 All
levels of government, particularly the local level, must develop informed,
data-driven climate adaptation plans in order to lower the costs of climate
change and address existing and future inequities. Some cities, states, and
regions are already undertaking their own adaptation and resilience plans.
New York City has experienced increasingly severe and frequent hurricanes,
including Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which resulted in $60 billion in economic
damage, and Hurricane Ida in 2021, which cost $9 billion and led to the
deaths of 16 people.22 In response to sea-level rise and
increased extreme weather events, New York City launched a series of
resiliency plans, including Resilient East Harlem and Hunts Point Resiliency
Project, and mandated a 2022 climate adaptation plan that will be renewed
every 10 years.23 These projects are well on their way to
implementation, but completion of significant infrastructure could be years or
decades away. The planning efforts, advocacy, and leadership taking place
across New York City, and more widely across the state and region, have
allowed the city to be progressive in its climate adaptation response. The
strong cross-collaboration between New York state, the New York City
Department of Environmental Protection, and the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency
has put resilience at the forefront of policy priorities. Alongside these
efforts, the New York City Panel on Climate Change provides access to data
and policy recommendations to city and state officials, as well as access to
additional technical expertise, academic institutions, and scientific
resources within the city.24 Other cities that face similar
adaptation challenges but do not have the same broad access to technical
expertise, political capacity, and fiscal capacity require more federal data
support to make informed decisions about climate adaptation.25 Addressing climate justice and
the needs of stakeholders and communities Historically marginalized
individuals and communities face disproportionate risks from climate change.26 Health,
economic, and environmental disparities in communities of color and
low-income areas elevate residents’ vulnerability to the effects of climate
change and related public health threats.27 Decades of
disinvestment and policies such as redlining have left these communities with
insufficient climate-resilient infrastructure and housing and fewer resources
to finance and manage household evacuations during extreme weather events.
Individuals in marginalized groups—such as women, older adults, people with
disabilities, Indigenous people, and people of color, who continue to face
institutionalized discrimination—often have restricted access to the
economic, legal, and health resources that are at the heart of climate
resilience. Marginalized communities are
also disproportionately exposed to extreme climate threats, as they are more
often located in or near flood-prone areas, heat islands, or toxic waste
sites.28 For example, the historically Black town of Barrett,
Texas, faced an influx of toxicants leached from nearby Superfund sites after
intense flooding from Hurricane Harvey. After testing the river sediment near
the breached San Jacinto Waste Pits, the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) found the presence of dioxin, a human carcinogen, at a level that
exceeded the clean-up standard by 2,300 times.29 While the
EPA works to clean up the site, more than 600 residents have brought a civil
lawsuit against several corporations, claiming that they have developed
health problems due to toxic substance exposures.30 What
happened in Barrett is not an isolated risk: The Government Accountability
Office has found that wildfires, floods, and hurricanes threaten at least 60
percent of Superfund sites.31 In addition, the Union of
Concerned Scientists concluded that under the current emissions trajectory,
more than 1,000 Superfund sites are at risk of sea-level rise by 2100.32 Recognizing that disadvantaged communities are on the front
lines of climate change, President Biden committed to deliver 40 percent of
federal climate and infrastructure investment benefits to these communities.33 In
February 2022, the White House Council on Environmental Quality launched the
Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) to help agencies identify
at-risk populations.34 This tool combines environmental,
health, and socioeconomic indicators to determine where federal investments
should be directed to benefit those most in need. If a census tract surpasses
a certain amount of environmental, socioeconomic, or health indicator thresholds,
then the CEJST designates it as a disadvantaged community. Although the
development and deployment of these tools is an important step in increasing
resilience, continued technical support and community engagement are
necessary to ensure that data are accessible to local stakeholders and
climate adaptation planning. The release of new mapping tools, such as CEJST
and CMRA, require robust outreach and technical trainings so that
disadvantaged and climate-vulnerable communities can understand and take
advantage of the mapping information. While all U.S. regions are already
experiencing the effects of climate change in some form, the resources to
withstand, recover from, and prepare for future climate consequences are not
equally available, and data and access needs will look different at different
scales—from the individual up through the community. Because of these
disparities, the recommendations in the next section point to actions that
the Biden administration can take to continue to support the most
climate-vulnerable communities across the United States. Policy
recommendations The
Biden administration, Congress, and relevant federal agencies have an
opportunity to better prepare communities for the worst consequences of
climate change. The recommendations below seek to foster adaptation
decision-making that is more inclusive and driven by accessible data. Conduct
technical trainings for CMRA using best practices for community engagement The
release of the CMRA portal in September 2022 was an important step in
centralizing climate information to help communities and state and local
governments strengthen their climate resilience plans. Developed through the
U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), CMRA has a real-time dashboard
of current climate hazards, an assessment tool that provides risk reports for
past and potential climate exposures, and links to federal funding
opportunities for managing these risks. The CMRA can be an incredibly
powerful tool for communities, helping them to not only understand the
impacts of climate change but also access funding to manage these risks. To
ensure that communities are using CMRA effectively, USGCRP and other
contributing partners42 should lead a comprehensive and
inclusive community engagement and stakeholder outreach plan for CMRA
technical trainings. The first step of the outreach plan would involve
creating a list of critical stakeholders, from environmental justice groups
and climate-impacted businesses to local governments and Tribal communities,
to ensure that there is sufficient and targeted outreach for CMRA trainings.
Using CEJST’s designation of disadvantaged communities, the CMRA trainings
should also prioritize disadvantaged and climate-vulnerable communities.
Additionally, training sessions for state and local government officials and
agency staff should explain not only how to use the tool but also how CMRA
can be integrated into existing programs and funding opportunities. Finally, the
USGCRP and contributing partners should establish and implement best
practices for accessibility to CMRA trainings, including translating the
technical assistance documents of climate data tools into common languages,
providing language translators and captioned translations for training
sessions, and offering easy and accessible links to training session
recordings for those who need to watch asynchronously. The USCCRP should also
apply the guidance developed by the Equitable and Just National Climate
Platform to trainings and community engagement. Specific guidance includes
letting communities speak for themselves, using townhalls and regional
convenings for communities, and convening stakeholders in a culturally
respectful way.43 In addition to including accessible
outreach, the CMRA website should offer common language translations.
Establishing best practices for accessibility will ensure that disadvantaged
and climate-vulnerable communities are able to understand the information
within CMRA. Continue to improve the CMRA website’s
design and functionality Future
updates to the CMRA website should take user feedback into consideration
through submitted comments and questions. Currently, the feedback mechanism
can be reached by clicking “Contact” at the bottom of the CMRA homepage, and
an email address to which to submit comments is also available at the bottom
of the Contact page. An update should ensure that the contact area is easier
to find by labeling a tab at the top of the homepage “Feedback” or “Contact.”
This page should then include an in-site form, rather than a link to a
separate email address, which would make it easier for USGCRP to receive
feedback and would streamline the process for users to submit comments. The funding
opportunities that the CMRA details should also be more accessible and
visible. On the current homepage, the funding opportunities are listed under
the “Climate-related hazard information” heading and split by risk: extreme
heat, drought, wildfire, flooding, and coastal inundation. To improve this
feature, an update should place a separate “Funding opportunities” tab at the
top of the homepage that leads to a funding database and allow users to
search by risk type, eligibility, application availability, funding amount,
and whether the program is covered under Justice40. This will streamline
funding applications for users and allow those seeking funding to better prepare
their applications using relevant data. Increase funding for climate science tools,
science communications, and adaptation Budgetary
increases for climate science communication and climate service programs are
needed to support local stakeholders’ climate adaptation plans and project
implementation. The Biden administration and Congress should prioritize
increases to NOAA’s Communication Program,44 and NOAA should
be more effective at reaching underserved and disadvantaged communities.
Fulfilling the agency’s FY 2023 request for a $2 million increase in NOAA’s
Strategic Communication and Outreach to Underserved Communities could
mobilize tens of billions of federal dollars and incentivize private
investment in locally led climate adaptation projects.45 Furthermore,
the Biden administration should consider ways to streamline adaptation
financing for communities and augment existing funding streams such as the
Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery. Additionally,
the Biden administration and Congress should expand existing climate science
data programs such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Climate Hubs, the
Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Climate Adaptation Science Centers, NASA’s
Earth Observing System Data and Information System, USGCRP’s working groups,
and NOAA’s Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments, among others. They
should also make additional efforts to communicate the work of these programs
to vulnerable communities. These changes could make substantial improvements
in the lives and livelihoods of Americans, with far-reaching co-benefits. Ensure climate-vulnerable communities can
access and benefit from federal employment and volunteer service programs A
wide range of occupations, from manufacturing and construction to policymaking
and climate science, are critical to increase climate resilience. The Biden
administration should expand workforce development and education programs to
not only ensure that good-quality jobs go to climate-vulnerable communities
but also foster effective local partnerships and encourage the next
generation of climate leaders. The following workforce development and
education recommendations outline how the Biden administration can uplift
good-quality jobs in the climate adaptation sector and center equity and
diversity in climate adaptation efforts. Implement the
Clean Energy Corps The
implementation of the Clean Energy Corps is an important opportunity to
inclusively involve historically marginalized communities in climate science
and clean energy efforts. The DOE launched the Clean Energy Corps in January
2022 after receiving $62 billion in IIJA funding.46 Currently,
the Clean Energy Corps is hiring individuals across the United States within
multiple industries to catalyze the nation’s transition to clean energy. The
Clean Energy Corps should recruit and hire workers from disadvantaged and
climate-vulnerable communities. By doing so, it will include those who are
most impacted by climate change in decision-making and solutions. The Clean
Energy Corps can use CEJST to identify climate-vulnerable and disadvantaged
communities. Workforce pipeline programs, such as the Clean Energy Corps and
Civilian Climate Corps, should result in participants’ placement in
high-quality jobs that provide family-sustaining wages and benefits and allow
for free and fair access to a union.47 Strengthen
partnerships in communities Lessons
learned through long-term work in communities can inform the design and
implementation of federal workforce and community development initiatives.
Existing community-led planning, leadership development, and
capacity-building efforts demonstrate how investments in a climate resilience
workforce can align federal priorities with local resilience needs and
strategies. Collaborations among local and regional nongovernmental
organizations, charitable and community foundations, and states are emerging
across the country to assist vulnerable communities with data and capacity
needs. In
Richland County, Montana, for example, the Communities in Action public
health planning process integrated AmeriCorps volunteers in a local process
that allowed community leaders to pursue and sustain important collaboration
and action.48 In Oregon, Rural Development Initiatives49 and
the Ford Family Foundation50 are training local leaders,
funding community capacity, and securing federal dollars for vulnerable
communities across a wide range of sectors. Within this partnership,
leadership development and local capacity-building efforts are designed to
meet communities where they are and to balance and center community, economy,
and environmental needs. Standing up and nurturing these relationships makes
federal partnerships more effective and durable, ensuring continuity and
lasting benefits. Prioritize
youth engagement Lastly, the Biden administration and
Congress should prioritize youth engagement opportunities and initiatives to
empower the next generation of climate scientists and policymakers. President
Biden’s Executive Order 14008 launched the Civilian Climate Corps through the
DOI to encourage youth engagement in public service and conservation work.
The Civilian Climate Corps received $20 million through the Consolidated
Appropriations Act of 2022,51 and the FY 2023 budget request
included $60 million to expand the program and the related Indian Youth
Service Corps.52 Continued implementation and funding for
these programs are important opportunities for youth engagement. The Biden administration should also create a youth
climate advisory committee within the Office of Domestic Climate. This
committee should be similar to, albeit more robust than, the National
Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) Youth Perspectives on Climate
Change work group that was active from 2016 to 2018. The committee could consider
ways to establish climate change curricula in schools and develop grants and
funding programs in universities, particularly historically Black colleges
and universities and minority-serving institutions. By creating a youth
climate advisory committee and implementing youth professional development
programs, the Biden administration can create the next generation of climate
leaders. Conclusion Without
immediate and significant reductions in domestic and global emissions, the
current climate crisis will become substantially worse in the coming years
and decades.53 The Biden administration is moving in the
right direction, having undone Trump-era policies that restricted access to
climate science data and having taken new, positive steps to increase data
accessibility and support data-driven decision-making. Now is a crucial
moment for the Biden administration to build on this work and ensure data
access when and where it is needed most. Local stakeholders and communities
must have access to federal climate data to increase community resilience and
plan for climate adaptation. The data exist; now is the time to ensure that
the right people can use it to advocate for and empower their communities. Acknowledgments The authors
thank Laurie Schoeman, director of climate and sustainability at Enterprise
Community Solutions-Capital Division, and Mark Haggerty, Cathleen Kelly, and
Shannon Baker-Branstetter at the Center for American Progress for their
contributions to this piece. Endnotes
The positions of American
Progress, and our policy experts, are independent, and the findings and
conclusions presented are those of American Progress alone. A full list of
supporters is available here. American Progress would like to
acknowledge the many generous supporters who make our work possible.
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