Climate Change and City Resiliency

Karen:

Good day, everyone. I'm Karen Bonadio, Director of Alumni Relations and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's alumni talk policy webinar on climate change and city resilience. The alumni talk policy webinar series features HK's alumni and panel discussions about pressing public issues. While we cannot meet in person, technology allows us to convene virtually and we appreciate your patience as we navigate this event remotely. This webinar is being recorded and post captioning is available and can be turned on at the bottom of your screen. I'm happy to introduce the moderator, Sanjay Seth MPA 2019, Climate Resilience Program Manager, City of Boston who will kick off today's important and timely discussion. Thank you.

Sanjay:

Great, thank you. Hi, folks. Thanks for joining us today. As Karen said, my name is Sanjay Seth, MPA 2019, MUP 2019. And I serve as the climate resilience program manager for the city of Boston where I manage the Climate Ready Boston program, which is our city's initiative to prepare for the effects of climate change. I have the pleasure of moderating this conversation and introducing the rest of our panel today. Our panel represents perspectives from Boston, New Orleans, Miami and a range of international cities.

Sanjay:

We're joined today by Ella Delio, MPA 2004, who is president of the EMME group and a board member at the Environmental Grantmakers Association, as well as formerly serving as the director for environmental programs at the Greater New Orleans foundation. Thanks for joining us, Ella. We're also joined by Jane Gilbert, MPA 1994, who is the chief heat officer for the City of Miami, and managing principal at Resilience Consulting, LLC. Lastly, we're joined by Carlos [inaudible 00:01:49] MC MPA 2002, who is an international consultant for the United Nations.

Sanjay:

Before we begin our panel, I'll offer a bit of framing today in the middle of an ongoing COP26 discussion in Glasgow, on global climate action. We're here to talk about cities and the role that local governments and stakeholders play in addressing the climate crisis. Our conversation today will be focused on climate resilience, which is really about understanding how can we best protect our residents, businesses and others from the increasing effects of climate change, including sea level rise, coastal storms, extreme precipitation, extreme heat and other risks. And for some folks who are newer on the call to climate resilience, when we refer to climate resilience, what we're referring to is whether someone is exposed to the risks associated with climate change, such as living in a floodplain or a hotspot, whether someone's vulnerable to small changes in the climate, such as elderly residents, people who are sick or outdoor workers, and what adaptive capacity each person has to protect themselves and their families, such as being able to afford air conditioning.

Sanjay:

Exposure, vulnerability, adaptive capacity, that's what we mean when we talk about climate resilience. And developing climate resilience policies that holistically look at all three of these concepts is, in my opinion, how you deliver equitable climate resilience. So we'll get into all this today. And I'd like to go straight to our panelists, and I'm looking forward to our conversation today. We're going to kick off with a quick lightning round to introduce this topic to the audience. So the first question to our panelists, and I'll go with Jane, then Ella, then Carlos, what does climate resilience mean to you? What does a resilient city look like and feel like to you?

Jane:

Thanks, Sanjay. And that was a great framing. Climate resilience is very much what you explained. It's really the ability for a city and its residents, its communities, its businesses to survive and thrive in the face of the changing and increasing shocks and stresses associated with climate change. In Miami, those are certainly sea level rise and increased flooding risks related not only to sea level rise ut precipitation changes, groundwater levels rising are increasing threats of tropical storms and hurricanes, and extreme heat and actually vector borne diseases. That is overlaid with, we have a majority of our population that's struggling to make ends meet financially, a lack of safe and affordable housing and many other vulnerable populations in terms of health disparities.

Jane:

So a climate resilient city prioritizes looking at those most vulnerable populations, and making sure that they have the physical infrastructure as well as social adaptive capacity to survive and thrive in the face of these. And we've seen a big difference in just the social capacity of a community for instance, in the earlier heatwave in Chicago, can make a difference on a community's ability to withstand the changes of climate threats.

Sanjay:

Great, thank you, Jane. Yeah, balancing the social and the physical and not just focusing on one or the other is important to climate resilience. Next, we're going to go to Ella. Ella, same question to you. What does climate resilience mean to you? What does a resilient city look like to you?

Ella:

I think Jane and you, Sanjay. So hello, everyone. First of all, good afternoon, in the East Coast, good morning, and everywhere else. But what you said, Sanjay and Jane, perfectly captures it. I'll deal more on what a resilient city means to me, or it looks like to me. So I think a resilient city is somewhere where from the neighborhood level until the city level, there are programs, policies, initiatives that are being done to help communities or the city adopt and thrive through climate effects. In my role as the director for environmental programs, we made sure that we invested and gave grants from the grassroots organizations of residents that are organizing on the block level, up to supporting policy, development and programs of the city, even state level.

Ella:

So I think that's really important, having sort of like that sort of micro and macro involvement. So all of those sort of weave together to sort of produce a more resilient city. And I'll give one example, we organized with the Greater New Orleans Foundation, which is the Community Foundation in New Orleans, we organized a festival. New Orleans loves festivals so we called it the Waterfall Fest, which is around how do we adapt to the increasing rainfall and severity of storms. So Waterfall Fest. And we had an academic there from one of our universities here, Dillard University, visit the festival. And he came to one of the tables, exhibit tables and one of the community member's was explaining to him how rain gardens, bioswales and rain barrels would help reduce flooding in their neighborhoods, just the mechanics of it. And he was like, wow, the fact that a resident can can do that and is involved and engaged in that, that was so powerful for him in academics. So that I would say is what a resilient city looks like, when you have that sort of bottom to top involvement.

Sanjay:

Excellent. Thank you all. Yeah, from the block level to the state level, from academics to residents, getting everyone involved is critical to the work. And Carlos, to you now, same question. What does climate resilience mean to you? And what does a resilient city look like and feel like to you?

Carlos:

Hi, hello, everybody. Thank you. When working with [inaudible 00:08:18] usually there are three complementary aspects that we consider, resilience, adaptation and mitigation. So resilience is building the capacity to minimize the impact of climate change, more severe and frequent events, weather events, for example. And to return to normalcy in the shortest possible time. Adaptation is making the necessary changes to be able to not only lead but also prosper under the new conditions resulting from climate change. If I have some time, I'll talk later about the entire region in Peru that is trying very hard to adapt themselves to [inaudible 00:09:06] with about 20% less water than what they have now because of glacier melting. And they are changing and adapting to that.

Carlos:

Finally, it's important to stop aggravating the problem. Stop doing [inaudible 00:09:25] and uninformed decisions and bad investment. So to me, an ideal well prepared society that minimizes the potential impact of climate change, makes the necessary changes to adapt to the new conditions and stops aggravating the problem. So all of those things have to be done, and with the participation of all the sectors of society. That's to me, what we try to achieve.

Sanjay:

Excellent. Thank you, Carlos. And yeah, I think what you lift up especially is, there's this question of, at least in the United States, how climate change amplifies systemic inequality and racism, environmental justice and health disparities. And when you think about resilience, not everyone experiences climate change equally, or will experience climate change equally. So we have probably one of the best opportunities to address the chronic unfairness in access to affordable housing, dignified and stable employment, safe and reliable transportation, and intergenerational wealth building opportunities as we help prepare our communities for all the threats like climate change.

Sanjay:

So we're moving to our next question, which is really about how do we actually get this work done? A recent climate central report showed Boston and Miami tied at 6th for cities in the United States for areas with the highest Urban Heat Island intensity, meaning how the city is built, and how it stays hot, it gets hot and stays hot in a way that affects residents health. And New Orleans was by far the highest in the country. So first, we'll turn to Jane. You are our country's first chief heat officer, and there's not necessarily a template for you to follow even if there's a lot of work ahead. So can you share a little bit with us, how did your role come about? And how have you approached doing the work of protecting residents from extreme heat?

Jane:

Sure, thank you. I think heat came as an elevated concern later than our other climate threats. Miami is known internationally for its threat to sea level rise and hurricanes. But when I was chief resilience officer for the City of Miami, we did a lot of neighborhood by neighborhood outreach to unpack what people's biggest concerns were related to climate change, and what types of ideas they had of what we could work on together to build our resilience. And heat came up a lot in those conversations. And then last year, a coalition of community based organizations did a series of focus groups and surveys in our most socio economically vulnerable neighborhoods throughout the county, and heat was one of the top two concerns, heat and displacement, actually.

Jane:

So the mayor heard that, our new county mayor, and Miami-Dade County was the first community partner for the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center. And our mayor was in a conversation with Adrienne Arsht about extreme heat internationally. And really, the idea of a chief heat officer was born out of that conversation. Since then, my role started in June, which is our heat season. And so I wanted to hit the ground with really expanding public awareness through traditional and social media, in various languages, working with our National Weather Service on our daily hazard reports, working with our parks and libraries, our most public facing institutions for in face education, our summer camps, etc. And even our own county outdoor workers, making sure they had the information they needed to be protected.

Jane:

At the same time, we did just a big survey of interviews across stakeholders, our university, community based partners, health care sector and within different departments within the city and our city partners. And created a heat health toolkit which we've now come out with, which is really going to serve as our foundational framework for heat-health task force that's going to start two weeks to do planning across the big areas. A chief heat officer, many cities have been addressing, Boston included, Phoenix, LA, Seattle now are addressing and have been addressing heat, New York. But to have someone who wakes up every day and that's their sole job, and is charged with working across departments and across sectors to address interventions, is really the difference that a chief heat officer can bring.

Jane:

And so our whole planning process is actually hosted out of our community based foundation. So that ties to the philanthropic connection that government has, because they're an ideal convener as a trusted convener, between government, private sector, community based organizations, the community at large to address these different areas. Whether it's emergency management, housing, our urban heat islands, etc, we're going to bring the expertise and stakeholders in each of those areas together and identify actions we can do in the next three years really to address this work.

Sanjay:

Thanks, Jane. Yeah. You've talked about emergency management, you've talked about housing, workforce, the amount of things that heat touches is really immense. And the role of foundations and philanthropy is critical both in Miami and in Boston especially. Our work with our foundations is critical to moving our work forward, in addition to the state and other partners. So turning to Ella, who can give us even more on philanthropy. Let's dig into that a little bit. Ella, can you take us more into what you've seen in the role of philanthropy. How do you personally view the role of philanthropy in climate action? And what have you seen work best in terms of the roles that philanthropy can play in moving the work forward?

Ella:

Sure. Thanks, Sanjay. Well, first of all, when I started at the foundation, I think one of the roles that philanthropy is good that playing is sort of just helping, I guess, normalize or sort of introduce innovative and equitable solutions to climate resilience. When I started in 2014, when you talk about green stormwater infrastructure here in New Orleans of all places, they just thought of parks. That's it. That was in the documents in our master plan. And what we did as a foundation with the support of our partners [inaudible 00:16:43] Foundation on the national level, was sort of help educate various stakeholders in our city, from city government officials, to community leaders, to nonprofit leaders about just living with water and how other cities, we brought them to Philadelphia, to Milwaukee and Austin to just show them how other cities dealt with green stormwater infrastructure. Sort of how do you finance it, how the city government sort of implement policies and enforce it.

Ella:

So all these things. And that started the process of just putting that concept of green infrastructure in our city. At that time, one of the people that we brought to those cities was council member, LaToya Cantrell, and now she has been our mayor for almost four years and up for reelection this month. And sort of that trip, I would believe helped pass our first stormwater regulations here in New Orleans, in terms of requiring new development and redevelopment to take on one inch and a quarter of their rainwater on their property. So I think that's one role that local philanthropy can play, sort of getting the first movers at the beginning. And now, basically almost all projects in New Orleans, the construction projects, have a resilience component in it, which is amazing.

Ella:

So second role, I would say, like Jane mentioned, the convening role. That's definitely a role that local philanthropy has played, convening various players that normally would not get together. But I would even sort of push that a little bit farther and say, I think recently, I would say sort of in the last five to seven years, I think philanthropy has been more courageous in not just convening people, but lifting up the power of those most impacted on that table. Not just having them at the table, but actually lifting up their voices, so that those in government and those in business realize the power of those most impacted, communities of color, community based organizations.

Ella:

Here in Southeast Louisiana, we sort of in a way, the Greater New Orleans Foundation, sorry, my previous employer, did that by sort of just putting together a coalition of community based organizations that were serving communities of color in the coastal areas, as well as environmental organizations so that they would have more power when meeting with state government, with county government here with regard to the coastal issues that most impact their lives. And then lastly, I would say one of the best ways that philanthropy has moved forward climate resilience solutions is just learning from each other.

Ella:

Since Katrina, many cities and states have come to us to just ask for advice. Even with wildfires, people from California, from the West Coast would call us and say, how did you do this, after Katrina, in terms of the recovery, the rebuilding. And so we realized, so we would field these calls and sort of, there's really something to be said about learning from each other. Even for us, because every year we still have our hurricanes, we just had Ida. So we basically started this initiative called When Waters Rise, which is basically a convening of local funders and even national funders nationally, to discuss, what are funders roles in contributing to equitable disaster recovery, rebuilding and long term resilience.

Ella:

One thing we've realized is, the billions of dollars, millions of dollars that go to disaster recovery, mostly go to just the recovery efforts and not really getting to the root cause of why there is a disaster So one of the things that we espouse to funders, don't just invest in sort of the immediate recovery, put a percentage of your funds to the sort long term resilient solutions. And obviously as we said, sort of just making sure that there's always the equity lens when you start your investments from the beginning. I think that's one big lesson for Katrina, you mentioned, sort of the intersectionality with the social issues and the racial issues that existed before the hurricane happened. So we've had those convenings with the regions across the nation, from Miami, to New York, to New Jersey, to California, and I think that's helped even for us here in New Orleans to learn how to better respond to disasters and rebuild more equitably and sustainably.

Sanjay:

Excellent. Thanks, Ella. One thing that stood out for me in what you shared is this idea of courageous convening, not just convening for its own sake, but convening with a mission. Convening to lift up communities, convening to share knowledge and help people think, you're kind of an instigator, what's that first step they can take that leads them in a new direction, like thinking beyond parks in terms of green stormwater infrastructure.

Ella:

I love that word, instigate.

Sanjay:

And just make sure we have Carlos in the conversation, Carlos this is a good transition, I think, thinking about sharing learning between cities. I think Boston depends clearly on our relationships with our partner cities, New Orleans, New York, and Seattle, elsewhere to share knowledge. And since the announcement of Jane, our panelist, as chief heat officer, many other cities are also considering this. And there's this kind of network of folks working in this space. And I know you're aware of many cities that are engaging this with your role within the United Nations and with other cities, to help spread best practices and share knowledge. So given your experience, it'd be good to hear which cities you've worked with internationally, that you think are particularly good, doing a good job, or really good at sharing knowledge or taking in lessons from other cities. Can you take us into some of the examples that you're most proud of or that you think are good for our audience to hear about?

Carlos:

Well, thank you very much. Maybe I will talk about this, not only one, but five cities that are working together to adapt themselves to climate change in an effort that really was very rewarding to me to see the changes, all the work that they did. So this is in a region in Peru, southern part of Peru, Arequipa. Just to give you some background, Peru is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change because of the lack of rains and the dependency of the country in water from the glaciers. It doesn't rain in Peru very much so all the water comes from the Andes.

Carlos:

Arequipa is a region in the south. The area is extremely arid and relies on the Andean rivers for water supply. Agriculture is the main economic activity in that region. Unfortunately, over the past 50 years, the ice crust of the Coropuna Volcano, which is the one providing water to the region, has disappeared. About 54% of that in volume during the last 50 years. So the region is already facing really serious problems, lack of water for consumption, for agriculture, flash floods due to the melting of the glacier, increase of poverty due to the impact to their livelihood. So it's a really, really difficult thing.

Carlos:

So what we did was, using historical data, we tried to study the process of melting of the glacier and we estimated what will be the water availability in 50 years from now. And we found that will probably be almost about 20% less water 30 years from now. So comparing that with the future water availability with the water demands of the cities, so we have a real evidence base of the adaptation needs, how much we need. In the future, we are going to have this much less water and we need to adapt to that. So they started working together, around five municipalities using the results of those studies, incorporated climate change adaptation into their development programs. How the cities will develop in the next 30 years to use only the available water, that they now that will be available in 30 years.

Carlos:

The Ministry of Agriculture prepared the guidelines on climate change adaptation for agriculture, including instructions for sustainable water use and cultivation of drought resilient crops. And we wanted to reach a long lasting impact. And we worked with the Ministry of Education, using the information provided by the studies, with the Ministry of Education, we prepared textbooks to introduce climate change adaptation into elementary schools. We trained the teachers, and now climate change adaptation is taught in a very public school. Also, the government of Arequipa looked at the strategy, the climate change adaptation strategy that we developed as law to ensure that the climate change awareness and considerations are incorporated in every decision making process.

Carlos:

And I think one of the best things was that we put technology transfer and capacity building as a priority in the project. So as a result, five other regions in Peru are replicating the process just using the experience with the local people, using the experience of what Arequipa did. So what we can learn from this? First thing, this was a joint there for by all the sectors of society, and this is the way that things. It wasn't only one agency working, it wasn't only one group, it was everybody, all the ministries, everything. And the people. Secondly, there was a clear understanding of the program. So we can set up evidence based goals and measure them. We knew the size of the problem and we could be very specific one that. And third, the technology transfer and the capacity building to promote replication and sustainability of these efforts. So those are the three main lessons that I got from this.

Sanjay:

Excellent, Carlos. It's great to hear about regional coordination between cities, thinking about integrating this into education and curriculum and law and actually having measurable outcomes, to really make sure that you're achieving your goals especially when it's something like water where there's no plan B for that. So we're going to move into one more structured lightning round before having open panel questions. So the next question, this is an opportunity to kind of share what you think our audience really needs to be focusing on, some of the hardest problems are the greatest opportunities. So to each of our panelists, starting with Jane, then Ella, then Carlos, what is the greatest challenge or opportunity in climate resilience that cities have to have consequential action on adaptation and resilience? And Jane, that's to you first.

Jane:

Sure. Well, when we talk about the priorities of being both carbon mitigation and climate resilience and economic opportunity, and our most vulnerable, I think figuring out how to finance both housing retrofits and new, safe and affordable housing is one of the biggest priorities that any city faces. It also is a great opportunity for government, private sector, community based organizations, philanthropy to collaborate on solutions and also generate good jobs and address some of these social determinants of health. Because housing is where it starts.

Jane:

Certainly, the whole area of infrastructure finance is a very interesting area and needs to be addressed. Whether it's with federal support, or private sector support, state level support, we're going to need a massive shift in how our built infrastructure, our transportation infrastructure and our stormwater infrastructure is designed, and built. And they're aging in many of our areas, at least here in the US. And I can only imagine it's even more challenging in the cities that Carlos is working with. So I really think that addressing housing first as an infrastructure, but our overall infrastructure, financing and delivery is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity.

Sanjay:

Yeah, agreed. Home is where it happens, especially with climate resilience. So you're exactly right, Jane. And Ella, to you.

Ella:

Sure. No, I agree with Jane, definitely with housing. But here in New Orleans, since I started in the planet resilience world, one big opportunity, and it is also a challenge, is really sort of the workforce development component of climate resilience. Here in New Orleans, 52% of African American men are underemployed or unemployed. So that's been sort of one of the key issues that our foundation has been focused on. Not just in the environmental field but also our other sort of programs, how do we help sort of improve that figure and really get more jobs on the ground, especially in communities of color?

Ella:

So what we did was we actually started with sort of the numbers. Like how many jobs? New Orleans, as Sanjay and Jane know, has been fortunate and getting some federal funding for our climate resilience projects here in terms of stormwater and streets. And we computed, with the help of BW research partnerships in San Diego, in Boston, how many jobs would come out of these projects. And not just how many jobs, but which jobs. What type of jobs would come out of it, so that could inform the training needs that universities and colleges would offer to our city residents. And what we found out is that the projects over three years would produce 1100 jobs.

Ella:

And then specifically, we identified what are the bottlenecks in terms of jobs. We identified supervisors, crew heads as sort of the bottleneck, so that sort of we're prepared to sort of fill in those jobs once the project's really go full blast. So that's been a really big opportunity for us here. And it's a challenge because basically, we have to get the various organizations involved in the workforce part as well as the city and state because incentives are also provided by the state for our workforce, have to get together and sort of create that sort of seamless system to make all of that work. Sort of make sure that there's enough people to get trained for the [inaudible 00:34:05] provided that we have the right content to train them. So all of that is happening right now here in New Orleans, and we're really excited about it.

Sanjay:

Thanks, Ella. It's good for folks to know that addressing the impacts of climate change is good for the economy, and it's an opportunity to protect our workforce and actually have a more inclusive workforce. And I think you just have to be, as you said, really intentional about working with community colleges, developing pipelines and knowing what jobs. And I want to turn it over to Carlos now for this lightning round. Your answer to the greatest challenge or opportunity for cities in getting this work done. We've heard housing and workforce and infrastructure finance, what else do you want to add to the conversation?

Carlos:

Yeah. First, the opportunity. Climate change affects everyone. No people of one party or only the experts, or the rich or the poor, everybody is affected by this and everybody benefits from reducing the impacts of climate change. So this is a great opportunity to bring everybody to work together. When everybody benefits, it is easier to bring everybody to work together with a common goal, for a common cause. The challenge is precisely to bring everybody to work together, and to forget their personnel, political interests, this is the thing. And the only way to achieve that is with proper information, with evidence based solutions. So stating that there is a problem is not enough.

Carlos:

We have to propose concrete solutions that have to explain clearly what the benefits for everybody, because everybody benefits. And that has to be clear what the benefits are, what the process is going to be, and what the roles and responsibilities of every sector of society. So everybody has a role, everybody has something to contribute, and something to a benefit. So that has to be clear, and you get engagement from everybody. And probably as you saw in the example that I presented, to me, one of the best investment is in education. If children have this concept in their formation, it will be so much easier to work in the future. Than now, most of the people in charge, sometimes they don't even care about these things. So it's investing in creating this as part of the culture, the education of everybody is the best investment I think.

Sanjay:

That's excellent. Thank you, Carlos. Yeah, it's an all hands on deck approach, including the generations coming up right now. So we're moving into our last question before Q&A, and this is open to all panelists in any order. But given the billions that are currently planned to be spent on climate resilience, this is very US centric, but in the upcoming infrastructure legislation as well as a wide range of philanthropic work, and many other supports in this area, state level supports, city investments, this is an experienced panel, and what should our audience know about what does or doesn't work when you fund climate resilience investments and when you build capacity in cities? What have you seen work or fail when it comes to how we fund finance and build the capacity to get this work over the finish line?

Jane:

Well, I'll start. I'll just give an example of a federally funded initiative that we've been going through here from the Army Corps of Engineers recently, where they're doing a study of how to protect our city from storm surge. And one, the challenge was defining the task too narrowly. So we have water coming from all sides. We have water coming from the sea, from the ground, from precipitation and from the Everglades. And the proposed design was a wall. So when infrastructure investments defining the, when FEMA says we're going to protect you against this, it needs to define it more broadly as to how you're going to address that solution.

Jane:

Secondly, they didn't do enough community engagement. Any infrastructure project should be required to have robust community engagement from the get go so that you get the buy in. And they need to do it in a way that one, is going to enhance ecosystem services not detract from them. We need a shift in thinking of how we design our infrastructure, whether it's a house, or it's a stormwater system, or it's an emergency management facility, it doesn't matter. We need to reduce greenhouse gases, be more environmentally sustainable, as well as be more resilient in our design.

Jane:

So I think as we think about these infrastructure investments, whether they're in transportation or housing or stormwater, they really need to prioritize engagement, prioritize thinking more holistically about what you're trying to achieve. So that you're protecting the environment, you're addressing that inclusive economic opportunity that it could be maximizing that, and delivering on the resilience protection. So those are my thoughts, and they're not easy to do. At the local level, it's a shift of thinking of how we procure projects, how we actually implement them. But part of the constraints comes from the funding sources at the federal level. And if we're constrained on that level, it also makes it more difficult.

Ella:

I'll add on. Jane focused on the infrastructure investments, I'll talk a little bit about capacity building in cities. I think one thing I've learned is definitely, I think it's important to have a strong resilience, sort of, not necessarily a department, but sort of resilience infrastructure in the city. Whatever works for that city, because I'm sure it's different for each city. Because once that's weakened, it exudes just uncertainty in the whole city amongst other stakeholders, nonprofits, community leaders. Like what's happening? Sort of turnover or decrease in staff. And I know that this is a new concept, the fact of having the resilient infrastructure in cities is sort of relatively new this past decade. But how do we sort of, I guess, cracking the nut of how do we make sure they are that strong in each city? So that's one.

Ella:

The second thing is, just because of the nature of government. Naturally, leaders change, staff leave. I think, sometimes when you build capacity and you make investments in certain people and those people leave, then sometimes your left in the [inaudible 00:42:09] And this is a lesson from a local funder or local philanthropy perspective. So how do you make sure that that's continued? And I think, obviously, that's the infrastructure, what I talked about first helps. But the second thing that helps is sort of this civic infrastructure outside of government that holds city government accountable, and makes sure that sort of what was promised what was important before stays, important. Whether that's racial equity, centering racial equity, sort of focus on workforce.

Ella:

And that's different for each city, sort of what's most important. Obviously, racial equity and equity in general is important across the board. But sort of having that civic infrastructure on the ground, which is normally community based that sort of hold the leaders accountable, I think that's important. And we have that. We actually sort of started that here in New Orleans. It's called the Climate Action Equity Advisory Group. We started that right before our current mayor started, and we didn't know that she was even going to be mayor then when we started that. But we knew, that was Mayor Landrieu's time, we were like, okay, we need to make sure that there's that sort of accountability arm [inaudible 00:43:27] that the next government and the next government after that will make sure that equity is sort of centered in our climate action work.

Sanjay:

Thanks, Ella, and Jane. Carlos, we have about a minute before we move to Q&A, but do you have any reactions to this question of things that have particularly worked well or not worked well when it comes to financing, funding and capacity building?

Carlos:

I have worked in many places, of course, and I cannot tell you how much money and funding I have seen wasted in many cases because of the way things were done. A lot of political decisions without any real understanding of the problem, responding to the current problem now, the current trend now, or whatever. So what we really need is to have comprehensive strategies with very clear roles, and something that we can measure and see whether we are making progress [inaudible 00:44:48] We have to stop working on isolated activities, which is common in everything.

Carlos:

So, there is a new administration, they start, I like this area and they start working on that area, I like these other things and they start working on other things. Or some donor is asking me to work on this thing, isolated things that are not addressing the whole issue. And it's impossible to say whether you are advancing or just wasting money, you don't see results. There are so many projects in which there is an evaluation process that evaluates only implementation. So you were supposed to do this, yes, check, check these many things, check, check. We should move from there and start evaluating impact, whether that made a difference or not, whether I should repeat that or not. And that is not something that many people do.

Carlos:

So there are many things that we need to change. But basically, and the most important thing is to start from understanding the problems and setting goals that we can measure, that we can say in 10 years or 15 years or whatever, yeah, we reached that thing. And in the process, we have to have monitoring mechanisms that will tell us we are making progress or not. We should change this, this is not working. That we [inaudible 00:46:20] continue repeating the same mistakes or just responding to [inaudible 00:46:25] interests or trends or things like that. So moving from political decisions and informed decision, just reactions or isolated actions, to comprehensive strategies with long term goals. Very clear and measurable goals.

Sanjay:

Excellent. So we heard from Jane, clear scoping, community engagement, know what problem you're trying to solve and make sure the funding stream actually is open to solving the problem that each unique city has. From Ella, continuity of knowledge across administrations, across individual staff members and thinking more broadly about maintaining capacity and commitment throughout. And from Carlos, how do we actually know that we've achieved our goals? Like with mitigation, you know how many tons of carbon you've moved, and we need as clear of goals and as measurable of goals whenever we're talking about resilience. So thank you all for sharing your perspectives and taking the time to be on this panel today.

Sanjay:

We're opening up to questions now from our audience. And please note, this webinar is being recorded and will be posted later online. And to ask a question, you can use the raise hand function. And Rachel [inaudible 00:47:46] will notify you when it's your turn to speak. There might be a short time lag. So please be sure to take yourself off mute and turn your video on when prompted. We'd appreciate if you're asking a question, if you can state your name, your HTS degree or affiliation and the year. Before you ask your question, and I'm advised to say, please remember that all questions must end in a question mark. So with that, do we have any questions from our audience? And we'll take a minute because I think there's a little bit of a lag.

Sanjay:

Okay, great. I got a texted question. So as we've talked about a little bit today, doing this work is very much kind of in all of government or all hands on deck thing. It's not that one thing that a single sector, a single department, a single person can really take on themselves. And this is again open to all panelists, but can you share a little bit about what things that you've seen, we've heard from Ella a little bit about an organization that kind of helped keep things going between different mayoral administrations in New Orleans. What are ways that we have seen work well for implementing in all of government or even in all hands on deck approach?

Jane:

In Miami, greater Miami, I'm very proud of the way we approached our resilience strategy development and now in its implementation phase. Because we were unique in Rockefeller Foundation's 100 resilient cities in that we were three cities, actually two cities in a county, and multiple other partners that created a unified resilience strategy, our resilient 305. So the Miami Foundation is a full partner in that, in both the development and the implementation of that. And as that goes, my heat strategy, for instance, will fall under the governance of that. There are actions in that strategy that are being led by the county, by cities, by our healthcare sector, by our universities, by our community based organizations, it's really all hands on deck strategy and people owning it.

Jane:

And we do an annual reporting, we do an annual bootcamp to educate. We have 34 cities within the Miami-Dade County. So we do an annual sort of education with the city leaders about where things are and training on different tools and new opportunities that they would have. And so it's not perfect and it's under resourced, but it is a vehicle through which we get that cross sector and cross department collaboration. I couldn't agree with Ella's point earlier about having some office within your jurisdiction that is charged to work across departments and other partners on addressing both resilience and sustainability. It's critical to have that as an established administration office, not a political appointment.

Sanjay:

Thanks, Jane. Carlos, Ella, any reaction to that question? Or we can move on to the next question. But if you have anything, you want to jump in on there.

Carlos:

No, completely agree. As I said before, climate change affects everybody. So this is a cross cutting issue. And it cannot be taken just by a small agency sometimes without enough budget or people and be in charge of all these very, very complex problems. So if we are able to articulate the benefits to everybody, to every sector, we can get the engagement. And the important thing is to have them taking ownership of decision. So what we have done in many cases is to have every sector of the society to have their own unit for disaster [inaudible 00:52:27] or climate change, working for their sector.

Carlos:

So it's clear for them how they are benefiting. And to have a leading agency with a coordinating role that works with all of these units in each sector, making sure that they are aligned, that they collaborate with each other, and they have a common objective. So that really works wells. And then you have everybody engaging and working, understanding clearly what the benefit to each of them is. So I remember we did something like that in Mozambique, and we established the coordinating ministry for disaster related climate change adaptation, that role, to coordinate the work of all the sectors.

Sanjay:

Excellent. Yeah. And that's a great point, Carlos. We have a question, live question from [Pallavi 00:53:25]

Speaker 6:

Hi. Thanks, Sanjay. I was hoping either of the panelists kind of addressing where we in Boston, I'm going to talk about Metro Boston, broadly speaking, can take advantage of regional collaborations or regional governance. And knowing that we have a lot of different municipalities who have their own initiatives going on Boston, Cambridge, Waltham, Watertown, each municipality is limited in some ways in terms of what they can make happen at a regional level. So I was wondering if any of the panelists could speak to a governance model that might be helpful for us to bring different municipalities together to invest in regional infrastructure. And if that is something that either the philanthropy sector has thought about in terms of investing, or given that it's a political question rather than a technical capacity building question, I'm wondering if others have thoughts as well. Thank you.

Sanjay:

Great, thank you. That's my favorite topic. But to avoid hogging the mic here, I'll pass this to my fellow panelists first. Questions around regional governance, regional collaboration on climate work. And for context, Boston has weak counties, Miami-Dade County's a strong county that can do certain work. So some cities have different regional planning contexts. But any thoughts from our panel on approaches to regional climate action, on resilience that can address some of the disparities between governance capacity, finance and other things between metro areas?

Jane:

I can just share that yes, we have a strong county government so it's a little different within our municipalities. However, within Southeast Florida, the four counties, Palm Beach, Broward, Miami Dade and Monroe, in 2010 formed a southeast Florida climate change compact. And the idea of that, and it was funded by the Kresge Foundation initially, has grown. It still has philanthropic support, but it's also the counties are actually contributing from their budgets to keep it going. The idea is that we want it to have unified climate change projections, sea level rise being the first one, but precipitation, heat, all of those, we wanted to have unified. So we're all working off the same page. If you're doing a highway, you need to have the same projections on sea level rise as you're going from one county to the next, or a seawall etc.

Jane:

But what's happened since then is, many resource sharing opportunities through the region of looking at our groundwater predictions or co-financing on a study, economic impact study, or on an infrastructure financing opportunity. Looking at common legislative priorities at the state and federal level. I'm speaking at a workshop that's focused on heat with the compact next week, giving the rest of the counties and 105 municipalities in that region, the tools and resources that I've learned to date, and others in the heat field. And it's really to give that sort of shared capacity building across municipalities. That has since grown to similar regional compacts in the Tampa Bay area and in the Orlando area. And I think they're now forming one in the Jacksonville area of Florida. So it's definitely grown. And there are other areas internationally that we've shared the model with, actually.

Sanjay:

Excellent. Thanks, Jane. And I think we have one more question from our audience. Sorry, Ella, I saw you unmute? Were you going to add something?

Ella:

Go ahead. [inaudible 00:58:17]

Sanjay:

We're almost [inaudible 00:58:20] We're going to squeeze in one more question. Thank you for your question. Another friend. All right. Hi, Julie. Do you want to introduce yourself and ask your question?

Julie:

Thank you very much. Julie Wormser with the Mystic River Watershed Association, and we are wannabes of the Southeast Florida. I'm a compact, we are also doing regional work. My question is different though, is that just as we delayed working on climate resilience because we wanted to prevent climate change, and we didn't want to think about plan B, I feel like we're doing the same around resilience and then planning for actually not pulling it off in terms of climate refugees and manage retreat. Are you able to have that conversation at all at the urban level?

Sanjay:

Great. Thanks for that question, Julie. So what I hear is, resilience is a conversation we're having now. And is there a conversation about worst case scenarios where you might need to retreat in certain areas or think about different approaches to adaptation? Ella, do you have any thoughts?

Julie:

As well as when we do it well, and we actually have to welcome refugees better than folks are.

Sanjay:

And so there's, Carlos, maybe an international migration perspective as well we could discuss. Thanks, Julie. Ella.

Ella:

Sure. No, Julie, that's something that we here in Louisiana have been discussing for, I would say, seven, eight years, in terms of managed retreat. In fact, I believe we got a grant from HUD to sort of test out the managed retreat for an island called Isle de John Charles in Terrebonne Parish. So that's ongoing right now, it's a very difficult process. And there have been a lot of heart aches through it, including my own heart. So yes, we are in that conversation. I think there's our coastal protection and restoration planning, we are already seeing places in terms of their flood risk, and in terms of where people can move potentially within the state, if sort of they need to retreat. So sort of there are, in a way, designated cities that are able to sort of accept sort of residents that wish to sort of move up to higher ground. And planning around that, what do they need infrastructure wise to plan for, to receive a greater population?

Sanjay:

Yeah, that's a great point, Ella, around migration within states, migration between countries. There's going to be a wide range of these depending upon the pace at which we get our resilience work done. And, Carlos, before we close out today, was there anything you wanted to add to the conversation on migration or Jane?

Carlos:

Well, maybe by coincidence. Now I am directing a project with IOM, the International Organization for Migrations in Burundi, in Africa. And we will conclude the project next month. Burundi is by the Tanganyika Lake. It's a small country next to a huge lake. And during the last five to seven years, the lake has been rising continuously and this year, entering into the city 100 meters or more. It's just incredible. As a result, we have thousands of domestically displaced people that we have to deal with. 87% of all of the displaced population in Burundi has been displaced because of the impact of a string of natural events.

Carlos:

So there is a clear connection there. Ad I was talking with the IOM there and telling them our role cannot be just to take care of these displaced people. Because if we do that, next year, we will have to do the same, and next year, we will have to do the same. What we need to try is to reduce the number of displaced people and hopefully, to eliminate the need to have displaced people. And for that we have to mitigate to reduce the impact of these events. It's very complicated. We have estimated that in the next 30 years, the precipitations in Bujumbura, the capital city, will increase about 40%. So, we have to start working now.

Carlos:

And we are doing a national level. So finding the best places, we are going to change national planning, urban planning, land use regulations, everything to try to relocate and promote development in safer areas, and the protect the livelihood. In Burundi, about 90% of the people work in agriculture. You have lots and then you have extended the poverty and perpetrating poverty there. So we have to address this as a real social issue and a development issue and a comprehensive thing. So as always everybody's involved, everyone has to be a having a role. And everything that we do, we have to promote the development, reduce poverty, reduce vulnerability, and promote a better life.

Sanjay:

Excellent. Well, I want to say thank you to our panelists today for joining and sharing your perspectives and backgrounds and experience. I hope our audience had a chance to learn something today. And you can always reach out to us as alums through the alumni network, or just directly. We're all public sector or have been, so our emails are probably online somewhere. But thanks for joining us today. And I don't know if the HKS team has some closing remarks. Karen, I see you.

Karen:

Yes. Thank you to all the alumni who joined today. And thank you, Sanjay, for an amazing discussion with all the other panelists. We hope you enjoyed the discussion today, and we look forward to keeping everyone engaged in the future months. Please save the date for next month's alumni talk policy on Wednesday, December 15th at 3 PM Eastern, for a discussion on transportation and infrastructure. For the most up to date school news and events, please visit the HKS Alumni website or as Sanjay said, please reach out to anyone on the alumni relations staff. Stay healthy and safe everyone. Thank you so much.