The interplay of contaminated sites, climate change, and disadvantaged communities are a growing concern worldwide. Worsening extreme events may result in accidental contaminant releases from sites and waste facilities that may impact nearby communities. If such communities are already suffering from environmental, economic, health, or social burdens, they may face disproportionate impacts. Equitable resilience planning to address effects of extreme events requires information on where the impacts may be, when they may occur, and who might be impacted. Because resources are often scarce for these communities, conducting detailed modeling may be cost-prohibitive. By considering indicators for four sources of vulnerability (changing extreme heat conditions, contaminated sites, contaminant transport via wind, and population sensitivities) in one holistic framework, we provide a scientifically robust approach that can assist planners with prioritizing resources and actions. These indicators can serve as screening measures to identify communities that may be impacted most and isolate the reasons for these impacts. Through a transdisciplinary case study conducted in Maricopa County (Arizona, USA), we demonstrate how the framework and geospatial indicators can be applied to inform plans for preparedness, response, and recovery from the effects of extreme heat on contaminated sites and nearby populations. The indicators employed in this demonstration can be applied to other locations with contaminated sites to build community resilience to future climate impacts.

Building community resilience requires centering equity in resilience planning processes. Tools and resources for strengthening community resilience need to address equity in both their content and the process for using them. This is especially so for communities living in proximity to contaminated lands that face compounding hazards (i.e., environmental, disaster, and climate-related); legacies of institutional or structural disenfranchisement; challenges with inclusion of minority populations in planning; and constraints on doing data-intensive planning and management in under-resourced and underserved jurisdictions. A research team from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is developing a new resource, the Equitable Resilience Builder, which will serve communities with intersecting social and environmental vulnerabilities, in pursuit of creating resilience plans and developing the intra-community connections to implement them. This article details how the team used human-centered design to develop the Equitable Resilience Builder. Our objective in doing so is to share the evolution of equity in the project and demonstrate key inflection points in the discovery, synthesis, and ideation phases of human-centered design. The team was able to expand their understanding of what it means to undertake resilience planning in an equitable way during engagements with state, local, tribal agencies, foundations, non-governmental organizations, and academia and through participatory workshops. It developed design principles for how the tool might use storytelling and other techniques to address emotions and trauma, ensure local voices are heard, and encourage relationship building. This article offers lessons learned for others seeking to address resilience and equity in climate risk management, particularly when working with communities in proximity to contaminated lands.

The prevalence of food insecurity is much higher in East Africa than in other parts of the world. Climate change and associated variability are important contributors to food insecurity in the region. Using primary data collected in 2018/19 from Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, this study examines the links between the prevalence of household food insecurity (the access to food dimension) and vulnerability to climate change in East Africa. The Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) was constructed to measure the prevalence of household food insecurity, and an ordered probit econometrics model was used to investigate the factors affecting the prevalence rates. The aggregate results show that 52% of the total sampled households in the region were food-secure; 15% and 26% were mildly food-secure and moderately food-insecure, respectively; and the remaining 7% were severely food-insecure. The ordered probit results suggest that exposure to climate change extremes and crop losses caused by these extremes significantly contribute to the prevalence of food insecurity across countries in East Africa. The results also indicate that households' adaptive capacity plays a significant role in reducing the prevalence of food insecurity. The demographic/human, social, financial, physical, and natural assets/capital of the household also play a significant role in reducing household-level food insecurity in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.

The COVID-19 pandemic and climate change are complex existential threats, unpredictable in many ways and unprecedented in modern times. There are parallels between the scale and scope of their impacts and responses. Understanding shared drivers, coupled vulnerabilities, and criteria for effective responses will help societies worldwide prepare for the simultaneous threats of climate change and future pandemics. We summarize some shared characteristics of COVID-19 and climate change impacts and interventions and discuss key policy implications and recommendations.

This study explores how decision makers invest in adaptation to protect against flood risks in response to a) different framings of flood risk information, and b) after experiencing losses from a hypothetical flood event. An incentivised economic lab experiment is conducted on a sample of students in Bilbao (Basque Country, Spain). A 2 × 2 between-subject design is used to measure investment behaviour with and without exposure to a flood risk map and after exposure to impacts framed as economic losses versus number of persons affected. Experience is measured through a 2-period repeated game within-subject design. Flood risk maps and impacts framed as number of persons affected were conducive to more experiential forms of decision-making, while decisions based on impacts framed as economic losses were more cognitive in nature. Those that saw text-only framings used a combination of cognitive and experiential factors for making decisions. While exposure to maps evoked more affect-driven responses, they were associated with lower ratings of positive affect and self-efficacy, and resulted in lower investments in protection compared to text-only framings. Greater experiential processing was found for impact framings based on persons affected, but they were not especially effective at increasing personal relevance of the issue or in driving investments. Individuals who experienced losses from a hypothetical flood event had greater ratings of negative affect, and made subsequent decisions that were more affect-driven in nature. In contrast, individuals who did not experience losses had greater ratings of positive affect, and made subsequent decisions based on primarily cognitive factors. Investments in protection reduced for those who did not experience losses, and remained the same for those who did experience losses. Results suggest that changes in adaptation investments between decision points may be dependent on both the experience (or lack thereof) of losses, as well as the extent to which individuals were risk-averse or risk-taking in previous investment decisions.

The 2015 El Niño-triggered drought in Southern Africa caused widespread economic and livelihood disruption in South Africa, imposing multiple physical and health challenges for rural populations including people living with HIV (PLHIV). We examined the economic, social and demographic impacts of drought drawing on 27 in-depth interviews in two cohorts of PLHIV in Hlabisa, uMkhanyakude district, KwaZulu-Natal. Thematic analysis revealed how drought-enforced soil water depletion, dried-up rivers, and dams culminated in a continuum of events such as loss of livestock, reduced agricultural production, and insufficient access to water and food which was understood to indirectly have a negative impact on HIV treatment adherence. This was mediated through disruptions in incomes, livelihoods and food systems, increased risk to general health, forced mobility and exacerbation of contextual vulnerabilities linked to poverty and unemployment. The systems approach, drawn from interview themes, hypothesises the complex pathways of plausible networks of impacts from drought through varying socioeconomic factors, exacerbating longstanding contextual precarity, and ultimately challenging HIV care utilisation. Understanding the multidimensional relationships between climate change, especially drought, and poor HIV care outcomes through the prism of contextual vulnerabilities is vital for shaping policy interventions.

South Korea's population is declining and its composition changing, associated with lowest-low fertility rates and rapid aging (super aging). When estimating changes in future exposure to extreme heat events (EHE), events that are predicted to be intensified due to climate change, it is important to incorporate demographic dynamics. We analyze business-as-usual (BAU) population and climate scenarios-where BAU refers to no significant change in current processes and trends in either domain-from 2010 to 2060 for South Korea. Data for both BAU scenarios are spatially linked and used to measure and identify national and sub-national and age-group specific EHE exposure. The results reveal an increasing exposure to EHE over time at the national level, but this varies widely within the country, measured at the municipal level. The most intensive exposure levels will be in the decade ending in 2040 driven by high estimated severe EHE. Sub-nationally, Seoul will be the most vulnerable municipality associated with super aging, while severe EHE not demographic factors will be relevant in Daegu, the second-most vulnerable metropolitan area. By 2060, national estimates suggest the older population will be up to four times more exposed to EHE than today. While the population of South Korea will decline, the rapid aging of the population ensures that specific regions of the country will become exceedingly vulnerable to EHE.

Adoption of improved varieties is an important strategy to adapt to the negative implication associated with climate change and variability. However, incomplete data on varietal release and adoption is often the reality in many countries hindering informed decision-making on breeding and varietal dissemination strategies to effectively adapt to climate change. In taking the example of potatoes in India, we analyze the extent to which the potato sector is resilient to climate change. We do so by comparing state-level climate change projections with adoption of high resistant and tolerant potato varieties to major abiotic and biotic stresses. Release and adoption data was collected in 2016 in six expert elicitation workshops conducted with 130 experts from the potato value chain in Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. We found that from the total of 81 releases, 45 improved varieties are adopted in India and that in each state high resistant and tolerant varieties are cultivated providing some degree of varietal resilience. Early maturity has been the most important and heat tolerance is the least important trait. Comparing climate projections with adoption rates of high resistant and tolerant varieties, we found that Gujarat is relatively most resilient. In other states we found some mismatches between climate projections and adopted specific varietal traits. Our results allow policy-makers and breeders to better prioritize investments into breeding for specific traits and dissemination strategies.

Estimates of future climate change impacts using numerical impact models are commonly based on a limited selection of projections of climate and other key drivers. However, the availability of large ensembles of such projections offers an opportunity to estimate impact responses probabilistically. This study demonstrates an approach that combines model-based impact response surfaces (IRSs) with probabilistic projections of climate change and population to estimate the likelihood of exceeding pre-specified thresholds of impact. The changing likelihood of exceeding impact thresholds during the 21st century was estimated for selected indicators in three European case study regions (Iberian Peninsula, Scotland and Hungary), comparing simulations that incorporate adaptation to those without adaptation. The results showed high likelihoods of increases in heat-related human mortality and of yield decreases for some crops, whereas a decrease of NPP was estimated to be exceptionally unlikely. For a water reservoir in a Portuguese catchment, increased likelihoods of severe water scarce conditions were estimated for the current rice cultivation. Switching from rice to other crops with lower irrigation demand changes production risks, allowing for expansion of the irrigated areas but introducing a stronger sensitivity to changes in rainfall. The IRS-based risk assessment shown in this paper is of relevance for policy making by addressing the relative sensitivity of impacts to key climate and socio-economic drivers, and the urgency for action expressed as a time series of the likelihood of crossing critical impact thresholds. It also examines options to respond by incorporating alternative adaptation actions in the analysis framework, which may be useful for exploring the types, choice and timing of adaptation responses.

As extreme weather events have become more frequently observed in recent decades, concerns about exposure to potential flood risk have increased, especially in underserved and socially vulnerable communities. Galena Park, Texas, is a socially vulnerable community that also confronts escalated physical vulnerabilities due to existing flood risks from Buffalo Bayou and the Houston Ship Channel as well as proximity to industrial facilities that emit chemical pollution. To better understand the underlying risks that Galena Park is facing, this research assesses and visualizes the existing contamination hazards associated with the chemical facilities within Galena Park. Through this process, we (1) compute the environmental, health, and physical hazards associated with industrial facilities, (2) spatially geocode the points of contamination sources and flood exposure, and (3) increase awareness of existing risk by visualizing and distributing related information using an ArcGIS Dashboard. The results indicate that there are 169 points of location from 127 industrial facilities, and 24 points were inducing potential chemicals. In total, 126 chemicals have potential physical, health, and environmental hazards. On average, each facility has 2.4 chemicals that could cause potential hazards with a range of zero to 57 chemicals. When examining the specific physical, health, and environmental risks associated with the chemicals, on average each facility has 14.6 types of risks associated with it. This includes, on average, 9.8 types of health hazards, 1.53 physical hazards, and 2.3 environmental hazards per facility. When analyzing the spatial relationship between the chemical exposure and the current flood risk using the Dashboard, it is noticeable that most of the industrial facilities are located in the south of Galena Park, near Buffalo Bayou, where a variety of industrial facilities are clustered. Through this study, we spatially mapped the existing risks in Galena Park that are not readily available to the community and risks that are not currently tangible or visible. The utility of ArcGIS Dashboards affords the opportunity to translate massive databases into digestible knowledge that can be shared and utilized within the community. This study also takes another step toward building community resilience by providing knowledge that can be used to prepare for and respond to disasters. Visualizing unseen risks and promoting awareness can enhance risk perception when supported by scientific knowledge. Further investigation is necessary to enhance preparedness behaviors, identify proper evacuation techniques and routes, and build community networks to comprehensively promote resilience to multi-hazard circumstances.

The aftermath of extreme flood events can be particularly devastating for residential communities in proximity to flood-prone petrochemical facilities, as they are likely to experience multiple impacts from a single flood event. Hazard impacts could be from flood inundation to their properties, and floodwaters carrying contaminants from nearby facilities into their homes. While property acquisition or buyouts have been effectively used as a flood mitigation strategy, current buyout selection processes only factor in flood exposure, thereby ignoring other hazards such as exposure of properties to potential chemical substance transfer. In this paper, we identify properties that are eligible for flood buyouts but are also at a high risk of contaminant transferal during extreme flood events. We apply a benefit-cost analysis methodology to assess the economic viability of buyouts and proximity metrics to prioritize buyouts of contaminant-prone properties in Galena Park, Texas. Results indicate that, in selected flood-only property acquisition scenarios, cumulative avoided flood losses exceed the cost of property acquisition. However, although with lower cost-benefit values, a selection criterion that factors a combination of flood and contaminant-prone properties as buyouts results in multiple properties being removed from harm's way. Our findings emphasize the potential economic benefits of applying a multi-hazard selection criterion in dealing with flood property buyouts, especially in socially vulnerable communities with high exposure to both flooding and contaminant transfer.

Climate change threatens the sustainability of food production among farmers in Kenya who depend on rain-fed agriculture. To minimize the negative impacts of climate change, farmers have sought to adopt different adaptation strategies. This study investigates factors influencing farmers' choice of climate change adaptation strategies and associated effects on their food security in Kenya using data collected from 540 farmers from six counties. A multivariate probit, censored least absolute deviation (CLAD), and propensity score matching (PSM) models were employed to identify the determinants in the farmers' choice of climate change adaptation strategies, the number of adaptation strategies adopted, and the effect of climate change adaptation strategies on their food security, respectively. Results show that planting drought-tolerant crop varieties (55%), growing diversified crops (34%), growing early maturing crops (22%), and diversifying the sources of household income (18%) were the four major adaptation strategies used by the farmers in the study area. Younger farmers and those with higher education levels are more likely to use these climate change adaptation practices. The number of adaptation strategies used was positively associated with male farmers, education level, family size, land size, farm income, extension contact, training, and information access. The farmers who adopt one adaptation strategy have higher food security status (approximately 7-11%) than those who do not. If they adopt two adaptation strategies, their food security status increases by approximately 11-14%; if they adopt three adaptation strategies, their food security status increases by nearly 12-15%; and if they adopt four adaptation practices, their food security status increases by about 14-18%, compared to those who do not adopt any strategy. Thus, the farmers' climate change adaptation practices have positive food security effects in Kenya according to the number of adaptation strategies adopted.

Evidence has conclusively revealed that environmental justice communities experience poor environmental conditions compared to more affluent majority communities. However, there has been little research evaluating the health impacts of immediate proximity to industrial pursuits and flood events on a population compared to others living within the same community who are only marginally removed from these locations. This cross-sectional study (N = 130) utilized three approaches to assess health outcomes (1) the 12 item Short Form Health Survey, which creates a general physical component score, (2) self-reported noncancerous chronic conditions, and (3) self-reported diagnosis of twelve different cancers. Three risk levels were spatially created using a 5-scale ordinal score for each residential parcel based on the corresponding flood probability level and proximity to facilities which report to the United States Environmental Protection Agencies Toxic Release Inventory. Analysis revealed that general physical health scores were significantly lower (P-value < 0.001) in the medium and high-risk locations, Similarly chronic conditions witnessed a non-significant twofold increased risk in the highest-risk locations compared to the lowest (POR 1.91; 95 % CI 0.82-4.39) and a non-significant increased risk of cancer diagnosis (POR 1.51; 95 % CI 0.38-5.99). This research underscores the importance of place and health outcomes even within relatively geographically compact communities. Public health and urban planning interventions and designs should take into account fine grain approaches to respond to community needs while still being mindful of limited resources.

The goal of this paper is to analyze how and with what results place-based climate service co-production may be enacted within a community for whom climate change is not a locally salient concern. Aiming to initiate a climate-centered dialogue, a hybrid team of scientists and artists collected local narratives within the Kerourien neighbourhood, in the city of Brest in Brittany, France. Kerourien is a place known for its stigmatizing crime, poverty, marginalization and state of disrepair. Social work is higher on the agenda than climate action. The team thus acknowledged that local narratives might not make much mention of climate change, and recognized part of the work might be to shift awareness to the actual or potential, current or future, connections between everyday non-climate concerns and climate issues. Such a shift called for a practical intervention, centered on local culture. The narrative collection process was dovetailed with preparing the neighbourhood's 50th anniversary celebration and establishing a series of art performances to celebrate the neighbourhood and its residents. Non-climate and quasi-climate stories were collected, documented, and turned into art forms. The elements of climate service co-production in this process are twofold. First, they point to the ways in which non-climate change related local concerns may be mapped out in relation to climate change adaptation, showing how non-climate change concerns call for climate information. Secondly, they show how the co-production of climate services may go beyond the provision of climate information by generating procedural benefits such as local empowerment - thus generating capacities that may be mobilized to face climate change. We conclude by stressing that "place-based climate service co-production for action" may require questioning the nature of the "services" rendered, questioning the nature of "place," and questioning what "action" entails. We offer leads for addressing these questions in ways that help realise empowerment and greater social justice.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a new discursive regime that encompasses global environmental change challenges and sustainability sciences, including adaptation to climate change. Co-production of knowledge has become a key, intrinsic component in both sustainability sciences and adaptation research. In this review article, we investigate if and how the SDG agenda is included in the application of participatory approaches and co-production of knowledge for climate change adaptation. We review findings from such processes in projects whose objective is to foster adaptation in the context of SDGs and to categorize the methods employed to forward co-production. We investigate 1) whether and how co-production approaches localize SDG targets and address tradeoffs and synergies, 2) whether they focus on power asymmetries and political dimensions in such participatory processes, and 3) whether and how the literature show that the SDG agenda contributes to a shift in the role of researchers towards a more interventionist approach to co-production. Our results show that there is little evidence that the SDG agenda contributes to a shift towards more interventionist or transformative approaches within climate change adaptation. Further, we have a identified a missed opportunity in the exclusion of "social" SDGs (SDG 5 and 10) in the discussions of adaptation and co-production and SGDs. Most importantly, we find that participatory efforts, including the co-production of knowledge, for localizing SDG goals and resolving tradeoffs and benefits, are the most salient aspects that tie the three co-production - adaptation - the SDG agenda together. Such participatory localizing processes have a great potential in facilitating long-enduring empowerment and legitimacy in adaptation efforts.

The National Coastal Property Model (NCPM) simulates flood damages resulting from sea level rise and storm surge along the contiguous U.S. coastline. The model also projects local-level investments in a set of adaptation measures under the assumption that these measures will be adopted when benefits exceed the costs over a 30-year period. However, it has been observed that individuals and communities often underinvest in adaptive measures relative to standard cost-benefit assumptions due to financial, psychological, sociopolitical, and technological factors. This study applies an updated version of the NCPM to incorporate improved cost-benefit tests and to approximate observed sub-optimal flood risk reduction behavior. The updated NCPM is tested for two multi-county sites: Virginia Beach, VA and Tampa, FL. Sub-optimal adaptation approaches slow the implementation of adaptation measures throughout the 100-year simulation and they increase the amount of flood damages, especially early in the simulation. The net effect is an increase in total present value cost of $1.1 to $1.3 billion (2015 USD), representing about a 10% increase compared to optimal adaptation approaches. Future calibrations against historical data and incorporation of non-economic factors driving adaptation decisions could prove useful in better understanding the impacts of continued sub-optimal behavior.

COVID-19 has revealed how challenging it is to manage global, systemic and compounding crises. Like COVID-19, climate change impacts, and maladaptive responses to them, have potential to disrupt societies at multiple scales via networks of trade, finance, mobility and communication, and to impact hardest on the most vulnerable. However, these complex systems can also facilitate resilience if managed effectively. This review aims to distil lessons related to the transboundary management of systemic risks from the COVID-19 experience, to inform climate change policy and resilience building. Evidence from diverse fields is synthesised to illustrate the nature of systemic risks and our evolving understanding of resilience. We describe research methods that aim to capture systemic complexity to inform better management practices and increase resilience to crises. Finally, we recommend specific, practical actions for improving transboundary climate risk management and resilience building. These include mapping the direct, cross-border and cross-sectoral impacts of potential climate extremes, adopting adaptive risk management strategies that embrace heterogenous decision-making and uncertainty, and taking a broader approach to resilience which elevates human wellbeing, including societal and ecological resilience.

Debate regarding the relationship between socioeconomic development and natural disasters remains at the fore of global discussions, as the potential risk from climate extremes and uncertainty pose an increasing threat to developmental prospects. This study reviews statistical investigations of disaster and development linkages, across topics of macroeconomic growth, public governance and others to identify key challenges to the current approach to macro-level statistical investigation. Both theoretically and qualitatively, disaster is known to affect development through a number of channels: haphazard development, weak institutions, lack of social safety nets and short-termism of our decision-making practices are some of the factors that drive natural disaster risk. Developmental potentials, including the prospects for sustainable and equitable growth, are in turn threatened by such accumulation of disaster risks. However, quantitative evidence regarding these complex causality chains remains contested due to several reasons. A number of theoretical and methodological limitations have been identified, including the use of GDP as a proxy measurement of welfare, issues with natural disaster damage reporting and the adoption of ad hoc model specifications and variables, which render interpretation and cross-comparison of statistical analysis difficult. Additionally, while greater attention is paid to economic and institutional parameters such as GDP, remittance, corruption and public expenditure as opposed to hard-to-quantify yet critical factors such as environmental conditions and social vulnerabilities. These are gaps in our approach that hamper our comprehensive understanding of the disaster-development nexus. Important areas for further research are identified, including recognizing and addressing the data constraints, incorporating sustainability and equity concerns through alternatives to GDP, and finding novel approaches to examining the complex and dynamic relationships between risk, vulnerability, resilience, adaptive capacity and development.

Climate hazards threaten the health and wellbeing of people living in urban areas. This study characterized reported climate hazards, adaptation action, and barriers to adaptation in 124 Latin American cities, and associations of climate hazards with urban social and built environment characteristics. We examined cities that responded to a global environmental disclosure system and that were included in the Urban Health in Latin America (SALURBAL) Project database. The cities studied reported a median of three climate hazards. The most reported hazards were storms (61%) water scarcity (57%) extreme temperature (52%) and wildfires (51%). Thirty-eight percent of cities reported four or more distinct types of hazards. City size, density, GDP, and greenness were related to hazard reports, and although most cities reported taking actions to reduce vulnerability to climate change, 23% reported no actions at all. The most frequently reported actions were hazard mapping and modeling (47%) and increasing vegetation or greenspace coverage (45%). Other actions, such as air quality initiatives and urban planning, were much less common (8% and 3%, respectively). In terms of challenges in adapting to climate change, 35% of cities reported no challenges. The most frequently reported challenges were urban environment and development (43%) and living conditions (35%). Access to data, migration, public health, and safety/security were rarely reported as challenges. Our results suggest that climate hazards are recognized, but that adaptation responses are limited and that many important challenges to response action are not fully recognized. This study contributes to understanding of local priorities, ongoing actions, and required support for urban climate vulnerability assessment and adaptation responses. Findings suggest the need for future research documenting local perceptions of climate hazards and comparison with documented climate hazards.