Climate Adaptation: The State of Practice in U.S. Communities

Posted on: 11/23/2016 - Updated on: 2/27/2020

Posted by

CAKE Team

Published

Abstract

Communities in the U.S. are undertaking a rich array of climate adaptation actions that are making them more resilient to climate impacts. These actions provide models and lessons that can immediately help other communities better protect themselves from climate risks like flooding, heat waves, wildfires, and severe storms. In aggregate, these activities demonstrate that more U.S. communities are attempting to prepare for climate risks than previously thought (Melillo et al., 2014).

Within this report, we document our findings, profiling a single activity or small subset of adaptation activities undertaken in each of the 17 communities, paying specific attention to findings that hold across multiple case study communities. While this analysis did not aim to comprehensively assess all of the adaptation activities unfolding in each of the case study communities, we believe results from this analysis provide useful information for community-based champions of adaptation action and adaptation professionals looking to design locally appropriate vulnerability reduction activities. After two years of research on the state of community-based adaptation and the particular actions taken by these 17 communities, we found that communities have many of the tools needed to plan for and respond to climate change; they just need to get started.