Resilient Coastal Governments and Communities
The Need
Limited funding sources exist worldwide to help communities build capacity to respond to public health and on-the-ground impacts of climate change. Many existing climate resilience-focused funding sources lack flexibility, focus support on infrastructure and capital projects, and often do not allow for the allocation of funds to early phases of planning. Developing and implementing solutions will require joint action and collaboration at the community level and across jurisdictions, agencies, and partners, highlighting a need to increase funding for inclusive, science-based coastal resilience planning and piloting.
Our Solution
There is an opportunity to pilot and implement public-private partnerships and blended funding mechanisms to support coastal resilience planning and projects at all scales, from local to national.
Coastal Quest is working with partners to build the capacity of community groups and local government to fund and plan for community-driven coastal climate resilience.
Click below, to learn more about how we are doing this in each of these regions:
Climate Resilient Communities in Central and Southern California
Los Angeles and Ventura County’s Santa Clara River runs over 100 miles from the mountains to the coast within an hour’s drive of 18 million people. Among many things, the river supports drinking water, critical habitat, top producing agriculture, and natural flood risk reduction. However, communities surrounding the river face a changing climate with devastating fires, including the 2017 Thomas Fire. To support and build local capacity, Coastal Quest is partnering with communities and local agencies to reduce fire risk, better understand post-fire water quality, and increase climate resiliency for both people and nature. To date, we have partnered with local fire safe councils to apply for fire prevention funds to support a regional wildfire collaborative that will help educate and reduce the risk of wildland fires. We are assisting stakeholders to establish a governance structure to remove the fire-prone invasive weed, Arundo donax, resulting in local workforce development, increased water quality, more durable restoration sites, and increased fire resilience.
