Planning for Climate Change

Planning for Climate Change Lara Whitely Binder Climate Impacts Group Center for Science in the Earth System Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean University of Washington June 19, 2007 Multi-State Working Group Climate Change Workshop Climate science in the public interest

Current NOAA Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessment (RISA) Teams

Preparing for Climate Change: A Guidebook for Local, Regional, and State Governments • Provides detailed description of why and how to prepare for climate change at the local, regional, and state scale • Collaboration between UW Climate Impacts Group, King County, Washington, and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability Content includes

Why Adaptive Planning? • Significant climate change impacts are projected, and the impacts expected within the next few decades are largely unavoidable. • Decisions with long-term impacts are being made every day. Today’s choices will shape tomorrow’s vulnerabilities. • Significant time is required to motivate and develop adaptive capacity, and to implement changes • Increasing evidence that it will cost more to retrofit for climate resilience than to build it in in the first place.

What Is Adaptive Planning? “Adaptation is not one activity or decision, but rather a continuous set of activities, actions, decisions, and attitudes undertaken by individuals, groups, and governments.” -- Adger et al. 2005 …with the purpose of Increasing community and ecosystem resilience to climate change impacts

What Do We Mean By Resilient? Climate resilience involves taking proactive steps to reduce the risks associated with known climate change impacts while increasing your capacity (or an ecosystem’s capacity) to quickly recover from, or adapt to, those impacts that cannot be avoided or anticipated at this time.

Planning for Climate Change • Step 1: Build your capacity to plan for climate change • Step 2: Identify your community’s vulnerabilities to climate change • Step 3: Develop your preparedness plan • Step 4: Implement your preparedness plan • Step 5: Measure your progress and re-evaluate

Step 1: Build Your Capacity • Collect and review basic information on climate change impacts to your region and community • Identify your (preliminary) priority planning areas • Identify key stakeholders for planning, implementation • Build internal and external support for climate change preparedness. • Identify who will do this work and create your climate change preparedness “team” • With your team, identify your goals for building climate resilience and the preparedness planning process

How Do You Prioritize Planning Areas? This question will be answered by balancing many factors: • What are the challenges facing your community? • How many of these challenges are affected directly or indirectly by climate and climate-related events? e.g., drought, extreme heat, extreme precipitation, storm surge, flooding, forest fires • What is your community’s risk tolerance for the projected impacts? • Which impacts could have high financial cost? • (After the vulnerability assessment is complete) Which areas are most vulnerable to climate change?

General Goals in Planning for Climate Change • Improve community awareness of and preparedness for global warming impacts. • Build recognition of a changing climate into policies, regulations, programs, etc. • Reverse trends that increase vulnerability to climate. • Increase the robustness of long term climate-sensitive decisions and investments. • Increase the flexibility of vulnerable managed systems. • Enhance the adaptability of vulnerable natural systems.

Identify Vulnerabilities • Create an inventory of government operations, services, and major infrastructure related to your priority planning area(s) that may be affected by climate change. • Continue compiling best available science on climate change impacts to your priority planning area(s) • Identify how sensitive your priority planning area(s) are to climate and how much flexibility you have to adapt to those impacts (this is your vulnerability assessment) • Continue building support for planning by sharing the results with your internal and external stakeholders

Qualities That Influence Sensitivity • The resource is currently affected by changes in temperature, precipitation, and sea level (i.e., the resource is exposed); • There are limiting factors likely to be affected by climate change (e.g., soil moisture) • The resource is at the southern end of its range; • The resource or system is already under stress; and/or • Demand for the resource is likely to increase with climate change.

Qualities That Limit Adaptive Capacity • The resource is already stressed from natural and human causes in ways that limit adaptation to future climate change (e.g., PNW salmon and degraded habitat; water supply and population growth); • The resource’s ability to adapt is physically limited (e.g., coastal wetlands, reservoirs); • Management of the resource is highly fragmented; and/or • The policies, etc. affecting a resource are inflexible to projected changes (see “red flags”).

Policy “Red Flags” Characteristics of policies governing climate-sensitive resources that can limit adaptability: • Policies that do not allow regular re-evaluation and adjustment in accordance with changing conditions • Policies that require planning based strictly on the past, or pin certain decisions/triggers to certain periods or seasonal patterns • Policies reinforcing trends that increase vulnerability or reduce adaptability (e.g., development along flood plains)

Step 3: Develop Your Plan • Using your vulnerability assessment as a guide, update and finalize the preliminary list of priority planning area(s) created in Step #1 • Identify options for managing climate change impacts in your priority planning area(s) • Prioritize and select your preparedness options • Continue building support for planning by sharing the results with your internal and external stakeholders

General Options for Planning

Developing Strategies with Imperfect Information • Risk and uncertainty are (and always will be) a part of all decision-making exercises • Implement “no regrets” / “low regrets” strategies • “No regrets” (or “win-win”) strategies provide benefits today as well as in the future (e.g., conservation program) • “Low regrets” strategies provide benefits at relatively little cost or risk (e.g., adding 10% more reservoir capacity in anticipation of climate change impacts) • Modeling to consider “what if” scenarios

Step 5: Measure and Re-evaluate • Monitor implementation of your preparedness plan • Watch for developments in climate change science and impacts assessment that may be relevant to your community • Periodically re-evaluate and adjust your plan as needed in light of advances in climate change science, changes in your community, and other factors that may affect your preparedness activities. – SET UP A PROCESS FOR DOING THIS • Maintain support for planning by sharing your results with your internal and external stakeholders

More information on PNW climate impacts and planning for climate change is available from The Climate Impacts Group www.cses.washington.ed/cig Lara Whitely Binder lwb123@u.washington.edu

Planning for Climate Change