When extreme weather disrupts communities, small businesses often wind up being the first responders and first casualties. Investing in small business resilience can translate into fewer closures, less unemployment, faster recovery, and stronger local spending after disasters strike.
Two trends are colliding in state finance offices: Emergency, or “rainy day,” funds are shrinking at the exact moment climate-related revenue losses are mounting.
States are seeing their emergency reserves shrink for the first time since the Great Recession. The path forward is a new, two-pronged pro-growth, pro-resilience model that expands the state’s economic base while simultaneously modernizing the financial tools used to protect it.
Two trends are colliding in state finance offices: Emergency, or “rainy day,” funds are shrinking at the exact moment climate-related revenue losses are mounting.
States are seeing their emergency reserves shrink for the first time since the Great Recession. The path forward is a new, two-pronged pro-growth, pro-resilience model that expands the state’s economic base while simultaneously modernizing the financial tools used to protect it.
An adaptation-minded property insurance system means safer, healthier, more resilient communities and economies that can both prepare for and recover from climate disasters in an affordable, sustainable, equitable way.
Each time the federal government closes, it reinforces a simple truth: the center can no longer hold. The work of building resilient infrastructure and communities must now happen locally.
From stormwater systems to flood mitigation projects, we must redefine community-level investments in resilience not as a municipal cost, but rather as a direct investment in preserving property values and stabilizing the private cost of homeownership.
The majority of U.S. infrastructure is funded, built, and maintained by city councils, county boards, and state legislatures. But aging infrastructure, escalating climate risk, and other factors are converging to leave local communities less prepared to absorb their growing risk.
A smart transition of FEMA toward state and local disaster responsibility would encompass 1) reform to the Stafford Act to rebalance federal and state contributions, 2) a restructuring of state disaster relief funds, and 3) a shift toward regionalization of disaster response.
The muni bond market presents an opportunity to finance resiliency in a way that aligns policy-makers, community stakeholders, business interests, and investors. By strengthening local infrastructure to render assets less vulnerable to climate shocks, it can reduce disaster costs for communities.
