Planning to be Prepared: Assessing Local Level Planning for Climate Change in the United States.

Abstract

A growing number of U.S. local communities are planning for climate change. In some cases, this is done through the creation of a stand-alone climate adaptation plan; in others, climate change is embedded into things such as hazard mitigation plans. To date, no systematic analysis of the processes used to create or the content of either of these types of plans has been undertaken. This dissertation fills this void by comprehensively evaluating the content and quality of 44 stand-alone climate adaptation plans and 30 hazard mitigation plans for U.S. local communities.

Results show that stand-alone adaptation plans consistently: have strong factual bases; include a variety of adaptation actions; identify numerous types of uncertainty related to planning for climate change; and use between 4-5 uncertainty-reducing techniques during their planning process. Most plans, however, fail to prioritize actions, include limited implementation details, and continue to use uncertainty-reducing techniques within the ‘predict and plan’ model of planning. These differences hold regardless of community size or geographical location. Results also validate previous studies showing that having planners and elected officials engaged in the planning process helps produce higher quality plans. Findings also show that communities are emphasizing research and monitoring and practice and behavior actions in their plans. This contrasts with previous findings that adaptation plans disproportionately emphasize capacity building actions. Results also show that two thirds of the communities with stand-alone climate adaptation plans have also embedded climate change, in some way, into their hazard mitigation plan.

Cumulatively, these results suggest that the first generation of adaptation planning is more comprehensive than originally documented in the literature. However, much more work is needed to ensure that the next generation of planning: embraces flexible uncertainty reducing techniques, more fully engages non-traditional stakeholders and elected leaders, and includes more details related to how identified actions will be implemented. It is also important that communities critically evaluate whether creating a stand-alone adaptation plan or embedding climate change into more institutional planning processes is the “right” approach for them: the dissertation concludes with policy guidance for practitioners struggling with this question.