resilience

FutureModes An occasional blog on urban planning and transportation issues Feb.24, 2021

Climate adaptation needs are close to home

By Jo Laurie Penrose, AICP Florida is ground zero for climate change, such as sea level rise, extreme hurricanes and deadly heat. However, we are ground zero for the more personal effects of living on a peninsula with water on three sides.

Looking from a wide viewpoint, it seems like we are not doing much in our state to mitigate or adapt to ongoing climate change. However, planners in all kinds of professions are working hard to take action to keep Florida livable.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ FY 21-22 budget includes more than $200 million for Resilient Florida, a program to provide grant funds to local government for planning and projects to aid in climate adaptation. The program is funded through documentary stamp taxes, based on property purchases in the state. The documentary stamp tax revenues are expected to grow 12.8 percent, then level off to just over 3 percent in the next fiscal year.

The Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection is taking the lead in work on resilience and adaptation. The agency has a strong Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection section. The unit provides grants to coastal areas for resiliency and adaptation projects. We need to be looking more at what local governments, not just those with coastlines are doing to further adaptation and resiliency.

Much of the work to date centered around conducting vulnerability studies to determine where resiliency efforts should be centered. For example, Monroe County has studied road vulnerability, determining that it would cost $1.8 billion to raise the height of the transportation network along the keys.

Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are also being studied around the state. GHG is considered the main source for a warming climate and sea level rise. Several groups around Florida are pulling together to determine how to minimize these emissions.

Local governments have the authority to manage their resiliency through the various elements of the comprehensive plan. Community of Planning Act 2011 contains a short paragraph at SS 163.3164 discussing “adaptation action areas.”

These are sites that are at risk of sea level rise, repetitive flooding and more.

The statute allows local governments to adopt AAA's and consider policies in the local comprehensive plan to improve resilience to coastal flooding. Yankeetown, on the Gulf coast, is utilizing the concepts to limit or restrict development in migration corridors to prevent the construction of structural barriers that could inhibit ecosystem migration.

“Adaptation action area” or “adaptation area” means a designation in the coastal management element of a local government’s comprehensive plan which identifies one or more areas that experience coastal flooding due to extreme high tides and storm surge, and that are vulnerable to the related impacts of rising sea levels for the purpose of prioritizing funding for infrastructure needs and adaptation planning.

Local governments that adopt an adaptation action area may consider policies within the coastal management element to improve resilience to coastal flooding resulting from high-tide events, storm surge, flash floods, stormwater runoff, and related impacts of sea-level rise.”

As noted in the earlier discussion, we have plenty of compacts, coalitions and plans. Climate resilience can be implemented through design and planning but measuring the results is important. And what will happen to those plans if local governments’ revenue loss from the COVID 19 pandemic leads to budget cuts?

One answer to those questions is that we may need to shift from incremental adaptation to transformative adaptation. Incremental adaptation is easy. Identify and choose some small projects and construct those first. For example, planting mangrove seedlings to hold back high tides, or planting sea oats to allow sand to collect and rebuild dunes are incremental.

Those types of adaptation might work for a short time. Transformative adaptation is a shift that is bigger in scale. An example might be a behavioral change, such as driving electric cars instead of fuel-powered autos, to drive down GHG. A transformation could also mean changing technology—an online workforce—or governance.

The drawback to transformative adaptation is that it requires people to do something different that probably will inconvenience them. That brings the discussion to what kind of life we want, and how do we blend the needs of society, the economy and the environment. Business as usual may not work any longer.

Incremental adaptations may be the overarching policy now, but will they work? A local government can only afford to shore up its seawalls so often before the costs outweigh the benefits. Transform the way our behavior and the government policies that could make transformative adaptation easier and with more public benefits.

Many reasons for accelerating adaptation and resiliency efforts. The governor’s focus seems to be that environmental health is a generator for the state’s economy.

We need to have beaches that everyone can enjoy. It seems like that the need for climate adaptation only becomes more pressing as more people want to move to Florida.