SCC-CIVIC-PG Track A: Enhancing the Capacity for Environmental and Social Resiliency in Overburdened Communities

Communities of color are often at the frontlines of environmental hazards. Research shows that people of all ages in such communities are disproportionally impacted by environmental hazards, including poor air and water quality. As worsening climate-related disasters, such as extreme heat, drought, floods, and wildfires, threaten communities across the United States, these frontline communities often experience the first and the worst of the impacts.

In urban and rural communities alike, climate change and interrelated environmental hazards negatively affect local economies and people’s physical and mental health. To address these threats to prosperity and human well-being, new approaches are needed that enable communities to envision and build a resilient future. This project will develop tools to address this, specifically methods that empower communities to engage in resilience planning.

The approach is place-based, focused on community values and aspirations, and emphasizes methods for envisioning a resilient future for themselves – more healthy places to live, work, and enjoy recreation. The approach will position communities to identify their own challenges and solutions, thereby improving dialogue with technical experts and policymakers.

The approach is multi-lifespan and intersectional, so that transformations can be sustained across generations. If successful, this research will build capacity in local communities for envisioning resilience and will lead to effective methods that can be employed in many other places.

In 2021, the Washington State Legislature passed the Healthy Environment for All (HEAL) Act, which seeks to address environmental injustice. It does so in part by putting into law that State agencies must create the conditions for “meaningful involvement” with overburdened communities, that is, with people who are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis.

However, the HEAL Act does not say how meaningful public involvement is to take place. To address this gap, the project proposes to develop an Envisioning Resilience Toolkit and test it in community-driven workshops where community members learn how to create the conditions for meaningful involvement. This will be done by envisioning place-based resilience and defining place-based solutions in terms of social, technological, and ecological features.

The Envisioning Resilience Toolkit will be piloted across the state of Washington with the goal of successfully achieving four research and practice outcomes: 1) improved capacity to plan for social and environmental resilience; 2) place-based, multi-lifespan conceptual models of resilience; 3) methods for mutual learning and dialog between community members and stakeholders; and 4) a versatile toolkit, which empowers overburdened communities in their interactions with State agencies.

This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program—Track B. Bridging the gap between essential resources and services & community needs—and is a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.