Actionable Knowledge for Equitable Adaptation in the Built Environment: Supporting Global-to-Local Resilience

Abstract:

Under increasing climate change, adaptive responses are becoming widespread. As resiliency efforts shift from planning to implementation, new challenges are arising especially at local and regional scales. Across contexts, there is a need for actionable knowledge of climate-related risks and options that can meaningfully support choices and learning through time.

In this presentation, I will bring together recent advances towards core challenges in ensuring the resilience of community-level built environments and social infrastructure. First, I will introduce evolving approaches towards context-dependent, equity-oriented indicators for social vulnerability and exposure within built environments. Indicators, attuned to their limits, serve important roles in assessing the effectiveness and equity of investments, as well as progress through time. Second, collaborative efforts are increasingly emerging to support coordination across jurisdictions, agencies, and the public and private sector. Across these efforts, diverse forms of engaged research and knowledge co-production are appropriate, although with the requirement of participatory evaluation of the effectiveness of iterative engagement processes. Third, choices in the near term and the long term interact, with potential for policy dead ends and lock in. Towards such path dependencies, dynamic adaptive pathways for long-term resilience can create flexibility, attuned to deep uncertainties and relevant trigger points and time frames for adjustments.

Across these core challenges and areas of advance, I will draw from different regional case studies, including state-level processes in California and local collaborations in South Florida across multiple climate hazards (e.g., flooding, extreme heat, and fire). Adaptive interventions will range from near-term, low-regrets efforts (e.g., the role of energy poverty reduction in supporting equitable adaptation), through to more fundamental adjustments increasingly considered (e.g., managed retreat). Innovations in actionable knowledge for equitable adaptation must tackle multiple socio-environmental frontiers simultaneously, and advances therefore yield benefits for community resilience to shocks and stressors related to climate, but also far beyond.