Integrating Equity and Climate Resilience into Planning

The climate crisis is reshaping landscapes and known hazards, while the global pandemic has exposed deep economic and racial inequities.

Planners grapple with these risks to design communities that can be safe, resilient, and healthy for the next 50 years. But how can they ensure that equity and climate resilience are not forgotten? Tools to evaluate climate hazards and equity typically are not used for entitlements and are often overlooked.

Presenters suggest adopting health, equity, and climate-adaptation analysis tools already used in California to analyze air quality and greenhouse gas. They recommend including equity evaluations throughout planning and entitlement to ensure that underserved communities participate and that new development addresses community-identified priorities. They identify an innovative solution — geospatial analysis — to generate location-specific analyses of GHG emissions, climate hazards, and health and environmental burdens. Use new knowledge to develop a thoughtful, forward-looking toolkit for planning climate-smart, equitable communities.

Explore strategies to support greater equity, community participation and decision making, and accountability. Improve your ability to evaluate how projects work with residents and incorporate strategies to address climate vulnerabilities and health and economic burdens, with the goal of encouraging projects that truly reflect community priorities.

Learning Outcomes

• Utilize new and existing tools to support an integrated approach to embedding climate adaptation and equity in planning.
• Discover strategies to address equity in both the process and outcomes of planning in order to enhance meaningful participation, inclusive outreach, accountability, and community-centered development.
• Identify how projects can analyze vulnerability and exposure to future climate risks and develop actionable strategies to mitigate these risks for long-term resilience.

The NPC Peer Reviewers assigned this presentation a learning level of Intermediate. For more on learning level descriptions visit our General Information Page.