Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Wyoming
Colorado is implementing climate change adaptation and action initiatives across agencies and scales throughout the state. However, the integration of climate change into public health is limited and planning, implementation, and evaluation efforts are variable across state-, county-, and city-level endeavors.
The Climate Action & Adaptation Plan for the City of St. Louis emanates from the City of St. Louis Sustainability Plan and Mayor Slay’s Sustainability Action Agenda. The City of St. Louis Sustainability Plan was formally adopted by the City Planning Commission in January 2013. In February 2013, Mayor Francis G. Slay announced his Mayor’s Sustainability Action Agenda. It contains 29 priority sustainability initiatives for implementation by 2018. Included within the Action Agenda was a priority to support Citywide greenhouse gas emissions reductions of 25% by 2020 and 80% by 2050.
Climate change is not only the single greatest public health and environmental threat, it is one of the biggest challenges of our generation. Future generations will judge us on how well we preserved the habitability of our only home — Earth. From local impacts such as worsening air quality and increasing frequency of extreme heat to global impacts like reductions in food supply and sea level rise, the effects will be felt in Denver and around the world. Cities can bend the curve on carbon because they are responsible for over 70 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally.
Supplementing Denver’s Climate Action Plan released in 2015, the 2014 Climate Adaptation Plan offers collaborative strategies to adapt to a future climate with higher temperatures, more extreme weather events, and changes to annual snowpack.
Pitkin County has long been committed to climate action and sustainability to preserve natural resources for current and future generations.
The County recognizes that the changing climate has the potential to significantly affect the environment and the economy. By acting now to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the County can dampen the severity of these impacts.
Hazard mitigation helps to reduce or eliminate potential losses from future disasters. Hazard mitigation planning helps to establish and maintain a process that leads to the implementation of hazard mitigation actions. The State of Colorado is intimately familiar with the impacts of hazards on its residents, visitors, infrastructure, and economy. This 2018 update to the State’s Hazard Mitigation Plan (State Plan) again re-affirms the state’s commitment to continual improvements to its statewide mitigation strategy and program.
The economic, social, and environmental costs of drought can be significant, and vulnerability to drought will likely increase in the future with a warming climate. To promote stronger drought resilience on federal lands, the National Drought Resilience Partnership was initiated in 2016. As a part of this effort, the U.S. Forest Service conducted a series of focused workshops across the country to build the capacity to address the impact of short- and long-term drought on forest and rangeland resources, thus informing land management, restoration, and climate change adaptation.
The Northern Plains region (Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming) has a high diversity of land, including the largest remaining tracts of native rangeland in North America, substantial areas of both dryland and irrigated cropland and pasture, mosaics of cropland and grassland, and forested lands. Livestock production includes beef (cow-calf and yearling operations, feedlots), sheep, hogs, and dairy.
The Southern Plains region contributes significantly to the Nation’s wheat and beef production. Winter wheat is the principal annual crop, with much of it serving dual-use as a cool-season annual forage in addition to grain production. Cattle are raised on extensive pasture and rangelands across the region.
