Last week, Travis County announced that the Austin-San Antonio region has been selected for a two-year program to facilitate the region\u2019s climate change resilience efforts. <\/p>\n
\u201cGovernment boundaries may define jurisdictions, but they don\u2019t define the lives of our residents \u2014 people don\u2019t care who is responsible, they care that we get it done,\u201d said Travis County Commissioner Ann Howard in a press release. \u201cWe saw that spirit in action during the July Fourth floods, when emergency teams from across the region and country came together without hesitation. Our region is vulnerable, and it\u2019s our shared responsibility\u2026 to act with urgency before the next disaster strikes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Climate Resilient Communities Accelerato<\/a>r is a two-year program led by national nonprofit The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, with the goal of bringing together local governments, the private sector and neighborhoods to collaborate on a \u201cregional roadmap of resilience\u201d that, hopefully, results in tangible action.<\/p>\n \u201cResearch demonstrates Central Texas is in desperate need of community-based resilience planning efforts,\u201d said Thomas Ptak, Associate Professor at Texas State University, in a press release announcing Austin-San Antonio\u2019s selection. \u201cWhile large urban areas are well resourced and have established robust climate policies and strategies, residents located in peri-urban areas and smaller cities such as San Marcos are increasingly vulnerable due to a lack of resources and formal plans to develop and enhance resiliency.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The City of Austin piloted its own resilience hubs<\/a> in response to winter storms a few years ago that were focused on providing basic supplies and food during cold-weather events. San Antonio has a \u201cClimate Ready Neighborhoods\u201d program that links communities with resilience training, resources and funding to build resilience block-by-block. <\/p>\n \u201cBecause we know that it can take a minute for the government to respond, the more we can be prepared \u2026 at the neighborhood level, the better off we are, said Kate Jaceldo, the City of San Antonio Office of Sustainability\u2019s climate adaptation manager at a resilience event in August.<\/p>\n But the \u201cwell-resourced\u201d part is faltering. As both cities<\/a> tighten their purse strings<\/a> in response to a federal administration that is hostile to climate funding, they are looking to pursue private partnerships. The community model\u2019s success is evidenced by how neighbors came together<\/a> ad hoc to recover after the deadly Hill Country flooding in July, but the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions is focused on bringing the private sector into the mix as well, as are Austin and San Antonio.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe direction that we took it at the city over a couple of years was focusing on rec centers and community centers and libraries, in places where the community felt safe and were open to the public,\u201d said Zach Baumer, director of Austin Climate Action and Resilience in an Environmental Commission meeting last week. \u201cBut that work is transitioning to be more community-focused, where it goes far beyond just what the city offers. When you look at our facilities, we don\u2019t really get within walking distance to everybody\u2019s house. But if you start looking at churches and businesses and grocery stores and all sorts of things, you really do get to that point.\u201d<\/p>\n The center touts its \u201ctrack record of effective business engagement to bring more private sector leaders to the table,\u201d in a press release. They point to an accelerator in Colorado\u2019s North Front Range, a region spanning Fort Collins and Denver, that brought together the local electric utility and business leaders from engineering, finance, health care, technology and more to create a regional roadmap focused on wildfire and heat resilience. That effort highlighted the importance of resilience hubs and microgrids<\/a> (which Colorado state government invested $2.1 million in during the second year of the program). It also resulted in a partnership between AT&T and the City of Longmont<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In a press release, Margo Weisz, Executive Director of the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute, endorsed bringing in business, urging that though the institute is developing neighborhood-based resilience hubs around the state, \u201cwe are not currently working with private sector partners in the Austin\/San Antonio region. There is innovation in the region that could be harnessed by the opportunity to bring the private sector in through the Accelerator\u2019s multi-stakeholder effort.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0Austin Monitor\u2019s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available\u00a0here<\/a>, and our code of ethics is explained\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, Travis County announced that the Austin-San Antonio region has been selected for a two-year program to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[4253,192,79,132175],"class_list":{"0":"post-239349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-travis-county-commissioners-court"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}