Federal policies and programs shape climate risk across the United States, and the ability of communities, states, and businesses to enhance their resilience. Notable policies and programs that influence building and maintaining infrastructure, economic development, disaster preparedness, ecosystem management, and many other policy areas that influence climate resilience are described below.
The federal government provides funding for state, local, and tribal governments and other stakeholders to implement planning and projects that build resilience to climate hazards. The level of annual funding from the federal government has historically been small compared to what communities need, but the more than $50 billion included in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) represents an unprecedented investment. IIJA has funded programs that provide grants and formula funding to boost the resilience of key infrastructure assets like surface transportation, the electric grid, drinking water systems, and natural ecosystems. For example, IIJA established the Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-saving Transportation (PROTECT) Program to make surface transportation more resilient to natural hazards through support of planning activities, resilience improvements, community resilience and evacuation routes, and at-risk coastal infrastructure. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) also provides significant funding for resilience projects including water and energy efficiency measures, tribal climate resilience efforts, and forest restoration.
These investments in resilience follow recent changes to the 1988 Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Stafford Act), which governs the federal government’s response to disasters and is intended to supplement state and local relief efforts and funding. The 2018 Disaster Recovery Reform Act made changes to the Stafford Act, including the creation of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. This program provides states and communities with a greater level of dependable pre-disaster mitigation funding than previously provided by FEMA. In addition, the 2021 Safeguarding Tomorrow through Ongoing Risk Mitigation Act (STORM Act) established state-based revolving loan funds to provide low-interest loans for communities to implement pre-disaster mitigation projects.
Examples of other federal funding mechanisms that can be used for resilience projects include water and wastewater infrastructure loans authorized by the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 2014 (WIFIA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Forest Landscape Scale Restoration Program, which supports forest restoration activities that can be used to build resilience.
In terms of post-disaster recovery, Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development can be used for rebuilding homes, improving commercial districts, and rebuilding wastewater facilities. Requirements for CDBG-DR funds are not uniform because the program is not created in statute; Congress chooses to appropriate the funds – and stipulate any resilience requirements for them – after disasters occur.
To help communities identify and assess their climate risks, the federal government provides climate data, models, and planning tools, as well as technical assistance to support decisionmaker use of these resources. The U.S. Global Change Research Program was established to develop and coordinate a comprehensive and integral research program, and produces a quadrennial National Climate Assessment. The National Centers for Environmental Information provides “environmental data, products, and services covering the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun to drive resilience, prosperity, and equity for current and future generations.”
Due to the complex nature of climate change projections, it can be challenging for local decision-makers to locate the right data to use, analyze it, and apply it to their local circumstances. The federal government’s regionally-based, climate-focused research programs can help local stakeholders conduct risk assessments. These programs include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments program, the Department of the Interior/U.S. Geological Survey’s Climate Adaptation Science Centers, and the USDA’s Climate Hubs. Moreover, to help people and communities find and use information and tools to build climate resilience, the federal government released the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit in November 2014. More recently, the federal government released the Climate Mapping for Resilience and Adaptation (CMRA) portal, which is designed to work with the Climate Resilience Toolkit, to help people and communities assess their local exposure to climate impacts.
A targeted yet far-reaching tool that the federal government offers to support recovery from disasters is flood insurance, which it administers through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). The NFIP works to support communities in adopting floodplain management strategies and regulations that minimize flood risks and impacts and offers flood insurance rate discounts to communities who do. However, the program subsidizes premiums for those living in high-risk areas and insures repetitive-loss properties, some of which have damage claims totaling more than the value of the property. These practices incentivize building and re-building in risky areas putting homes, property, and people in harm’s way. In 2021, FEMA announced a new pricing methodology for NFIP policies called Risk Rating 2.0 to provide insurance rates that better reflect a property’s actual flood risk by using structure-specific data.
Other areas of federal policy that influence resilience include building codes which the government provides as best practice to local officials that oversee local building and development as well as resilience standards like the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, which requires infrastructure projects using federal funds to be designed more resiliently. Though the federal government does not set and enforce these standards directly, it influences resilience local and state resilience action through the information it provides and the requirements it sets for federal funding.
Recognizing the increasing impacts of climate change, and the disparate range of federal programs and resources addressing resilience, there’s a growing need to coordinate federal efforts and establish an overarching federal climate resilience strategy. Bipartisan proposals have been introduced in the last two congresses that would require the federal government to develop a national climate adaptation and resilience strategy and authorize a Chief Resilience Officer position within the Executive Office of the President to lead the development and implementation of the strategy as well as other national resilience efforts.
The Biden administration has taken a whole-of-government approach to addressing climate change. In September 2023, the Biden administration released a National Climate Resilience Framework that identifies key values, priorities, and objectives to guide and align climate resilience investments and activities. It’s important to note that the framework focuses on climate resilience efforts across all levels of government, with the federal government serving as a partner to help design and implement resilience strategies that meet the needs of each community.