Last week, Bloomberg reported that the Rockefeller Foundation may be axing its Resilient Cities program, started only in 2013. The program is designed to help cities address the effects of climate change including by establishing response systems that are well thought through even in the face of incidents which are virtually unprecedented. According to Bloomberg, the effort may be closed as soon as this summer. While the article sardonically bore the label “climate changed,” Bloomberg’s Christopher Flavelle points out just how a large of a gap remains:
The potential shift comes as US cities face increasing pressure from climate change, especially following a string of major natural disasters over the past two years. And it would coincide with a pullback in climate adaptation work by the Trump administration, which has reversed policies designed to prepare communities for global warming.
Meanwhile, there is no clear roadmap, no precise model for many of the bigger crisis-fed decisions individuals and organizations are often forced to make in the absence of protocols and built-response systems of localities. A disaster comes along, and there’s no time to scratch heads and set up an exploration committee. It’s often said that the needs of many people are more important than the needs of just a few, but that does not provide comfort in the face of hard choices; it just adds another piece to the weight of deciding who loses in the race to hold back a wall of water.
[For more on this story by MARIAN CONWAY & RUTH MCCAMBRIDGE, go to https://nonprofitquarterly.org...-even-as-need-grows/]
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