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Find More Information @ April 2019 Conference Series LLC Ltd 34
6th World Congress on
Climate Change and Global Warming
April 24-25, 2019 | Vancouver, Canada
ACCEPTED ABSTRACT JOURNAL OF EARTH SCIENCE & CLIMATIC CHANGE, 2019 VOLUME 10 | DOI: 10.4172/2157-7617-C1-057
Converging climate
threats and enablers and
barriers to resilience
planning in the United
States: The ecosystems
solution
Robert Ouellette and John F Munro
University of Maryland, USA
T he fourth United States
climate assessment reports
human-induced global climate
change is outpacing national
resilience capabilities thereby
increasing the risk of multiple
catastrophes. While some
communities are incrementally
enhancing their resilience to
climate change; U.S. national
resilience planning, overall, is
not keeping pace with climate
change. The paper explores
the root causes of the growing
national resilience gap and
discusses how and why an
“ecosystems framework” would
enhance systemic resilience.
In this paper discusses climate
change threats to survivability
and sustainability relative to
the risks from other physical-
environmental-social threats
(pandemics, earthquakes,
asteroids, etc.). Identifies
resilience gaps, with a focus on
the legacy paradigm underlying
current resilience planning as
well as the institutional context
in which resilience planning and
programming take place. Authors
will report initial findings from
interviews with key planning and
policy officials that suggest a
deep cognitive chasm between
evolving and converging threats
and the prerequisites of effective
resilience planning. Presents an
alternative to current/legacy
resilience planning models
that is titled “The ecosystems
climate resilience planning
model.” Explores the types of
innovative solutions (enablers
that could result from replacing
conventional resilience planning
frameworks and/or paradigms
with the ecosystem planning
model. Hypotheses concerning
climate change-induced risks
and resilience planning are
discussed. First, policymakers
fail to understand the necessity
for effective climate change
resilience planning. The time
requirements to make and
implement resilience decisions
are underestimated because
of the way climate change is
evolving. Second, policymakers
lack an understanding of (eco)
systems concepts that are
key to an integrated, systemic
approach to resilience. Third, an
endemic lack of understanding
is reinforced by institutional,
organizational and cultural
factors that reinforce fragmented
and disjointed planning. Fourth,
the ecosystems model (we
present) provides a hopeful first
step towards developing a robust
national resilience system.