Resiliency Planning
"Climate resilience is the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to hazardous events, trends, or disturbances related to climate. Improving climate resilience involves assessing how climate change will create new, or alter current, climate-related risks, and taking steps to better cope with these risks." Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
Climate resilience is important. Taking a comprehensive approach to managing the negative affects of climate change allows our community to improve despite the stress of new environmental pressures by breaking the issue into manageable pieces. Evaluating risks in this manor emphasizes self-renewal along with adaptation as disturbances lead to innovative changes that build-off of each other to improve the overall sustainability of the system and its structure. We believe the main focus of climate resilience efforts should be to reduce the impacts of climate change on the most vulnerable populations.
There are no completely safe places. There are only places of varying risks and vulnerabilities, and the people’s capacity to prepare and adapt.
Jose Bernardo Gochoco
ICLEI
Resilience in the town
"Arlington is actively engaged in efforts to improve climate change preparedness and resiliency by reducing known vulnerabilities. Efforts through the Hazard Mitigation Plan planning process, as well as the State’s Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Community Resilience Building Workshop have enabled Arlington to better understand its greatest opportunities to improve resilience. Such opportunities include reducing flooding along Mill Brook and addressing heat hazards along Arlington’s major corridors."
Learn more about Arlington's current campaigns and projects here.
how to be resilient
![A venn diagram titled, “Building Climate Resilence” at the top in red. The right circle, colored grey, is labeled “adaptation” and subtitled, “action to manage the risks of climate change impacts” in all caps. Within it are the words, “Disaster management & business continuity, flood protection, Infrastructure upgrades”. The left circle, colored grey as well, is labeled “mitigation” and subtitled, “action to reduce emissions that cause climate change”. Within the circle are the words, “Sustainable transportation, clean energy, energy efficient”. The overlap of the venn diagrams is red. Within it are the words “water conservation, new energy systems, local food, education, Complete communities, urban forest”. [Describer’s note: There are various drawings accompanying these words, but there is not enough room to describe them.]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/886549_ed7efc5af693432db4e475b1ff05220d~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_121,h_93,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,blur_2,enc_auto/886549_ed7efc5af693432db4e475b1ff05220d~mv2.jpg)
Image credit: City of Calgary (CAN) Climate Change Program
Learn about extreme weather and flooding preparation in Arlington by downloading this pdf.
Credit: town of Arlington
We need to prioritise ambitious and transformational projects that can make it cheaper to adapt to climate change and reduce future climate risks and that have a large, measurable impact on reducing vulnerability.
Laura Altinger
United Nations Economic and Social Commission (UNESCAP)
Environmental
Justice
Climate change isn’t just about saving our planet. We all depend on the world, but there are many groups that are more vulnerable: already suffering from climate change. Many may believe climate change to be only our distant, uncertain future, but it is here and people are struggling because of it. The elderly, children, lower income and communities of color are some of the groups affected most by climate change. They are affected by their needs (children breathe more air and drink more water for development) and by their resources available (lower income will have fewer assets). In our world, both inside and out of Arlington, we are not equal. There are people who have less than others. Those people, those neighbors or moms or teachers or grandparents or bus drivers are all affected more than others. In order to combat climate change, we must first make equitable transitions to ensure safety for all. No one is safe in a global emergency. But people who are more vulnerable are less safe. We must make sure everyone can be helped in an equitable manner when considering climate change.