A ‘Presponse’ Is Needed When It Comes To The ‘Threat Multiplier’

A ‘Presponse’ Is Needed When It Comes To The ‘Threat Multiplier’

By Shana Udvardy, CFM

 On the day Former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel released DoD’s Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, he spoke to climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ “because it has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we are dealing with today – from infectious disease to terrorism.”

The ‘threat multiplier’ sounds pretty scary.  So we may be asking ourselves, is the nation prepared for the heat waves, droughts, rising sea levels, heavier and more frequent rainfall, flooding, and the Superstorm Sandy’s that will come in the face a changing climate?

SmarterSafer.org argues that we can do more to be a more resilient nation.  Today the SmarterSafer Coalition released a new report “Bracing For The Storm:  How To Reform U.S. Disaster Policy To Prepare For A Riskier Future”.  

The Bracing For The Strom report calls for smarter national “presponse” policies and strategies to ensure our nation is becoming more resilient to a riskier future.  SmarterSafer’s use of ‘presponse’ is a keen play on words to emphasize the need to prepare in advance for the disasters that we know will come more frequently and intensely rather than responding to disasters after the fact or “budgeting before a disaster strikes to plan for and mitigate known risks.”

SmarterSafer is a unique coalition in the nation’s capital where both the left and right come together to advocate smart and strategic national policy solutions to natural catastrophes to ensure public safety and to protect the environment.

The Bracing For The Storm report is particularly timely for a few reasons.

First, this past March, we saw a deluge of news articles on the impacts of climate change.  A highlight of articles includes: 1) March easily set the record for hottest March ever recorded; 2) the 2015 Arctic sea ice maximum annual extent is lowest on record; 3) Antarctica hits highest temp recorded—63 F; 4) warmer ocean water is making the Antarctic glacier vulnerable to significant melting; 5) the Nation’s surface temperatures rising nearly twice fast as rest of the world; and 6) Global warming is now slowing down the circulation of the oceans — with potentially dire consequences.  Given this confluence of data on the future projections of climate impacts, it’s a crucial time to provide critical thought on what the nation can do to be more prepared.

Second, the report is timely because as environmental organizations recently argued, the first 100 days of Senate and House Republican control of Congress has not only failed to take climate action but has also rolled back key environmental legislation.  While the focus of the report is not climate mitigation but the other side of the climate ‘coin’, that is adaptation, a somewhat similar call for action on preparedness and disaster risk reduction can be made.  SmarterSafer argues that Congress must do more to take strategic action on disaster and flood risk management.  While the news isn’t all bad, for example the US House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure recently got part of the ball rolling with a review of federal disaster policies and a release of a Progress Report on Hurricane Sandy Recovery Efforts, a more urgent, comprehensive and strategic approach is needed.

Bracing For The Storm targets the U.S. national policy disaster risk management issues at hand: disaster frequencies are increasing, as are the associated costs that are coinciding with an increasing federal burden at the taxpayer’s expense. SmarterSafer provides smart national policy recommendations for Congress to lead on.

In the six-part ‘Blueprint for Reform’ SmarterSafer provides key areas where Congress and the Administration can take action (see Figure 1).

What is inspiring about the blueprint is that it includes policy solutions that are not only practicable, but also fiscally sound.  Providing financial incentives for mitigation on the front end, encouraging smarter and safer building, expanding the use of natural defenses, improving across the board disaster coordination, ensuring flood insurance reflects risk, and encouraging private insurance competition combined will provide savings to the government coffers and safeguard communities and the natural areas they depend upon.

The report also describes case studies of communities (Dauphin County, PA, Jersey Village, TX, and Biloxi, MS) who understand that they cannot rely solely on the federal government and are already taking action to be more resilient to future storms.  But much more ‘presponse’ work at the ground level is needed.  Georgetown Climate Center has an “Adaptation Tool Kit: Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Land Use” and recommendations on how to overcome barriers to change in their “Preparing for Climate Impacts: Lessons Learned from the Front Lines” report which can help communities like these who are looking to act more aggressively to be resilient.

While local and state leaders can take plenty of actions on their own, Congress and the administration must take action to incentivize mitigation at the local level and facilitate the coordination of local, state, and federal preparedness and risk reduction strategies.

It’s time to face climate reality head on.  The ‘presponse’ strategies outlined in ‘Bracing For The Storm’ provide a blueprint for key reforms that both Congress and the administration can act on immediately.  By doing so, we can answer the question as to whether we are prepared for the next Superstorm Sandy with an affirmative, ‘yes we are’.

Shana Udvardy, CFM

Udvardy Consulting

(e) sudvardy@gmail.com (m) +1.202.805.0075 @udvardys