Prioritizing Mission Critical Climate Resilience

The federal government has been proactive in continuity of operations (COOP ) planning since at least the 1950s, when President Eisenhower issued executive orders directing various measures agencies should take to be prepared for a possible nuclear war. The need for COOP leads naturally to the question of resilience – how quickly agencies can recover from events beyond their control.

Climate change is a slow-moving tsunami of many smaller environmental impacts. Disasters such as floods and wildfires may be attributable to climate change, but so are months-long heat waves that threaten the electrical grid, or record-breaking winter snowfalls that shut down communities for weeks at a time. This means that the issue of “resilience” itself needs rethinking.

In 2018, the Government Accountability Office issued a report, “Long-Range Emerging Threats Facing the United States As Identified by Federal Agencies,” that identified 26 long-term threats in four categories – including climate change. Following the release of Executive Order 13990, the Federal government has recently invested a significant amount of effort in preparing for the effects of climate change. The Department of Defense in June hosted a climate resilience workshop that addressed ways to enhance adaptation and resilience through collaboration, and an interagency event will build on its success. Meanwhile, second-level effects from emerging threats are beginning to impact many agencies; for instance, commercial insurers are increasingly departing markets that are prone to natural disasters, leaving the government as the insurer of last resort.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify ways to “think outside the box” on resilience, such as ways to respond to chronic physical risks like sea level rise, heat, drought, etc.
• Delineate the drivers that are propelling agency resilience projects and programs, and the kinds of measures that can be adapted for more than one type of climate event
• Review how to develop metrics to determine if performance standards and reporting are sufficient
• Evaluate opportunities to meet EO goals and simultaneously reinforce climate resilience
• Define criteria for prioritizing resilience efforts based on mission priorities