New INC Report: Playbook 1.0: How Cities Are Paying for Climate Resilience
This report by Innovation Network for Communities and Climate Resilience Consulting identifies eight distinct strategies cities are using to pay for large-scale climate-resilience projects, mostly to address sea level rise and flooding. These strategies amount to an initial approach—Playbook 1.0—for deciding who will pay what and how city governments will generate the needed revenue. Our analysis is based on a close look at how eight US cities in seven states have been organizing the funding needed to implement their ambitious climate-resilience plans. They are among a small number of cities that have gotten this far.
Each of these cities has had to find its own way to public and private financial resources, because there is no system in place for solving the problem of how to pay for climate resilience—no cost-sharing arrangements, for instance, for resilience infrastructure across local, state, and federal levels of government. The cities are involuntary pioneers faced with growing climate hazards and exposure that require more money for resilience.
Examining these cities’ pathways revealed common strategies that, while only reflecting the leading-edge of urban climate-resilience financing practices, quite likely foreshadow what other cities already or may do. These strategies form the content of Playbook 1.0. But the pathways also suggest the limits of what cities are able to do, with important implications for the continuing evolution of the urban playbook for climate-resilience finance.
Playbook 1.0 Strategies;
- Generate Local Revenue. Producerevenue for government climate-resilience public infrastructure by taxing local property owners and charging utility ratepayers.
- Impose Land-Use Costs. Adopt land-use and building regulations and policies that place undetermined future resilience-building costs on property owners and developers, rather than on government.
- Embed Resilience Standards into Future Infrastructure Investments. Ensure that all future capital spending for public infrastructure will be designed to strengthen climate resilience as much as possible.
- Leverage Development Opportunities. Link resilience-building projects with real estate development opportunities to generate public-private partnerships that invest in both public infrastructure and private development.
- Exploit Federal Funding Niches.Identify resilience-friendly federal funding streams and develop projects that fit pre- and post-disaster program requirements.
- Tap State Government. Mine existing state programs, or seek to modify them, to obtain funds for local climate-resilience efforts.
- Develop Financial Innovations. Explore the use of innovative mechanisms for generating public and private revenue for climate-resilience projects, including district-scale financial structures.
- Pursue Equity in Resilience. Factorsocial and economic equity into funding and financing actions by serving economic development, housing, and other needs while investing in climate resilience.
