11/03/2021

(AU) The Single Most Important Resource Underpinning Australia’s Food Security Is Under Threat

Sydney Morning Herald - Angus Houston

Author
Sir Angus Houston is the chair of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. 
I’ve spent the past six months out in the Murray-Darling Basin, listening and learning. During my latest trip – to central and northern NSW – I was struck deeply by the great uncertainty many people are feeling about the future after experiencing the hottest and driest three years on record. 

At the iconic internationally recognised Macquarie Marshes I saw firsthand how dryland vegetation has encroached upon the marshes – a small but significant sign (no doubt replicated in other parts of Australia) that illustrates that our drier and hotter climate is quickly changing our landscapes, communities and industries.

The Darling River at Louth, in far west NSW, in February last year. Credit: Jenny Evans/Getty Images

While the grass may be a little greener now, it temporarily masks a growing genuine concern about the future. What will the next season hold, and the one after that? What does that mean for the younger generations the future of these communities which people quite rightly feel a responsibility to protect. I have seen firsthand how climate and water shortages are a significant threat to the security of our communities.

Climate change acts as a threat-multiplier. More frequent droughts and natural disasters increase pressure on resources, communities, institutions and infrastructure. It can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities within societies, and have a destabilising effect, worsening the factors that generate conflict and social unrest.

Even stable and wealthy nations like ours are exposed. Only 18 months ago, communities in the northern basin were carting drinking water because dams had run dry.


US President Joe Biden signed a raft of executive actions to combat climate change, including pausing new oil and gas leases on federal land and cutting fossil fuel subsidies, as he pursues clean energy policies he billed as a boon to the economy.

Our prosperity and way of life are dependent on our nation’s water and food security. And the Murray-Darling Basin is the single most important resource underpinning this security.

Last year – through the 2020 Basin Plan Evaluation – we shared a range of future climate scenarios the basin could face developed by the CSIRO. The most probable scenario is that average annual streamflow in 30 years’ time will be up to 30 per cent less than what we see today, due to a 10 per cent reduction in rainfall. We released these climate scenarios alongside a commitment to support the basin in adapting to climate challenges and increasing resilience.

Adapting to a challenge of the magnitude of climate change can seem overwhelming, paralysing. But I believe that as a nation, Australia is strong enough and smart enough to rise to the challenge. Many are already doing just that.

Australia faces ‘constellation’ of diplomatic pressures over climate.

There are plenty of conversations happening at kitchen tables and board room tables about this challenge and what communities and industries are already doing to adapt.

Whether you call it climate change, or just changing weather patterns, it’s clear that now more than ever we all have to lean in and learn – from other communities, industry groups or governments – so together we’re tackling this complex challenge of water scarcity and hotter temperatures from all angles.

The good news is that we have numerous leaders, industries and groups charging ahead with their adaptation efforts. They are rightly proud of the work they’re doing and the progress they’re making to adapt to a drier and hotter climate.

We are bringing together these leaders from agriculture, natural resource management, tourism, finance, support services and government as part of our Basin Climate Resilience Summit, which starts on Thursday in Canberra.

The MDBA does not have all the answers. Our role is to take a basin-wide view and do what we can to supercharge the climate adaptation efforts already underway. The summit is the beginning of this journey and poses three questions. What are the key focus areas we need to consider for the basin? What impediments or lessons do we need to navigate? What are the opportunities to collaborate, and if so how?

It’s hoped the summit will contribute to the collective preparedness of all in the basin. We will ensure all interested parties are kept informed as we continue to work together so our basin communities can survive and thrive sustainably.

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(AU) Morrison Locks In ‘Lower Emissions’ Energy

 AFR - Jacob Greber

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has explicitly endorsed the growing need for additional lower carbon energy supply as his government prepares for what he called the “new geopolitics of energy and climate change”.

As business and investors called for a more rapid shift to renewable energy, Mr Morrison told The Australian Financial Review Business Summit that his government was responding to epoch-making changes in the way energy is produced, transported and consumed.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks at the 2021 AFR Business Summit.

Mr Morrison has long promoted the need for “affordable and reliable” power, but on Tuesday pointedly added “lower emissions” energy to his list of must-haves.

“The world’s response to climate change is simultaneously reshaping the global economy, global politics and the global energy system.”

“We are preparing. Australia is preparing. The Australian government is preparing for this new geo-politics of energy and climate change. It’s gone into another gear.”

“We must address the threats, and we must realise the opportunities for Australia.”

The comments come ahead of a busy year on global climate change policy, where Mr Morrison will appear at a number of major summits leading up to the United Nations Glasgow meeting in November.

Coal-rich Australia has been accused of falling behind the world’s leading economies on climate action, putting pressure on Mr Morrison to lift the country’s level of ambition towards net zero emissions by 2050.

Fortescue Metals chief executive Elizabeth Gaines said later during the summit that investors were putting a “strong focus” on climate change action.

“We will need to see a much more rapid transition to renewable energy in all its forms,” Ms Gaines said.

Ms Gaines added that European investors were ahead of many others in the need for a more rapid shift to renewables.

“It’s quite interesting because we actually see a different focus here in Australia than the investors we’re talking to offshore,” she said.

“There is going to be an acceleration of a transition to renewable energy.”

“A lot of governments and whole industries have committed to net zero emissions by 2050.

“But if we want to align with the Paris Agreement, 2050 will be too late.”

David Solomon, the Goldman Sachs chief executive, indicated strong support for a carbon tax, saying it was something that the world needs to “make progress as a society“.

He rejected the idea that financial institutions such as his own were sweating on the need for a carbon price as a way to make money, saying it was about ensuring capital isn’t wasted.

“It’s centred on finding ways that we can get capital allocated to places where the technology or the investment that’s being made is medium- and long-term.”

Mr Morrison encouraged the Summit’s business leaders to read US author Daniel Yergin’s latest book, published late last year – The New Map – which maps out how climate change policy is shaking up technology, infrastructure and even relations between nations.

“[Yergin] said our response to climate change will ‘bring continuing changes in how energy is produced, transported and consumed; in strategies and investment; in technologies and infrastructure; and in relations between countries’.”

“Very true,” Mr Morrison said.

Mohamed El-Erian told attendees that the private sector is moving ahead of governments.

“Any company that doesn’t get on board risks being left behind in a serious fashion,” he said. “It will tun faster than what governments are trying to do.”

Dr El-Erian, the Allianz chief economic adviser, says governments will find themselves “pushing on an open door” when they catch up.

Striking a note of caution, former Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris, said the new Biden administration could fail if it veers “too far left” on issues such as climate change.

Mr Liveris agreed that a carbon pricing system was inevitable.

But he also suggests safe nuclear energy should be on the agenda in the US and Australia.

Mr Liveris added that there was a need for more large-scale batteries, not just ones that can power states for up to five hours.

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Humans Have 'Destroyed Or Degraded' Two-Thirds Of The World's Original Tropical Rainforests

SBS - Reuters

Logging and land conversion for agriculture has wiped out 34 per cent of the world's original old-growth tropical rainforests and degraded another 30 per cent, leaving them more vulnerable to fire and future destruction.

The sun sets as smoke from illegal fires lingers, in Para state, Brazil last year. Source: AFP

Humans have degraded or destroyed roughly two-thirds of the world's original tropical rainforest cover, new data reveals, raising alarm that a key natural buffer against climate change is quickly vanishing. The forest loss is also a major contributor of climate-warming emissions, with the dense tropical forest vegetation representing the largest living reservoir of carbon.

Logging and land conversion, mainly for agriculture, have wiped out 34 per cent of the world's original old-growth tropical rainforests, and degraded another 30 per cent leaving them more vulnerable to fire and future destruction, according to an analysis by the non-profit Rainforest Foundation Norway.

More than half of the destruction since 2002 has been in South America's Amazon and bordering rainforests. As more rainforest is destroyed, there is more potential for climate change, which in turn makes it more difficult for remaining forests to survive, said the report's author Anders Krogh, a tropical forest researcher.

"It's a terrifying cycle," Mr Krogh said. The total lost between just 2002 and 2019 was larger than the area of France, he found.

The rate of loss in 2019 roughly matched the annual level of destruction over the last 20 years, with a football field's worth of forest vanishing every 6 seconds, according to another recent report by the World Resources Institute.


Two-thirds of tropical rainforest destroyed or degraded globally, NGO says

The Brazilian Amazon has been under intense pressure in recent decades, as an agricultural boom has driven farmers and land speculators to torch plots of land for soybeans, beef and other crops. That trend has worsened since 2019, when right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro took office and began weakening environmental enforcement.

But the Amazon also represents the best hope for preserving what rainforest remains. The Amazon and its neighbors – the Orinoco and the Andean rainforest – account for 73.5 per cent of tropical forests still intact, according to Mr Krogh.

More than 13,000sq km of Brazilian rainforest burned last year. NurPhoto

The new report "reinforces that Brazil must take care of the forest," said Ane Alencar, a geographer with the Amazon Environmental Research Institute who was not involved in the work. "Brazil has the biggest chunk of tropical forest in the world and is also losing the most."

Southeast Asian islands, mostly belonging to Indonesia, collectively rank second in terms of forest destruction since 2002, with much of those forests cleared for palm oil plantations.

Central Africa ranks third, with most of the destruction centered around the Congo River basin, due to traditional and commercial farming as well as logging.

Forests that were defined in the report as degraded had either been partially destroyed, or destroyed and since replaced by secondary forest growth, Rainforest Foundation Norway said.

An aerial view shows a tract of Amazon jungle burning as it is cleared by farmers in Itaituba, Para, Brazil September 26, 2019. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes/File Photo
That report's definition for intact forest may be overly strict, cautioned Tasso Azevedo, coordinator of the Brazilian deforestation mapping initiative MapBiomas. The analysis only counts untouched regions of at least 500 square kilometres as intact, leaving out smaller areas that may add to the world's virgin forest cover, he said.

Mr Krogh explained that this definition was chosen because smaller tracts are at risk of the "edge effect," where trees die faster and biodiversity is harder to maintain near the edge of the forest. A forest spanning 500 square kilometres can fully sustain its ecosystem, he said.

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10/03/2021

(NZ) When Climate Change And Other Emergencies Threaten Where We Live, How Will We Manage Our Retreat?

The Conversation -  |  | 

www.shutterstock.com
Authors
  •  is Lecturer, Environmental Planning, University of Waikato
  •  is Professor, Massey University
  •  is Professor of Environmental Planning, University of Waikato     
Despite living in dynamic environments and facing an uncertain future due to climate change, New Zealanders generally expect their land and property rights will endure indefinitely. But little stays the same.

As last week’s offshore earthquakes and tsunami alerts reminded us, our coasts and the people who live near them are vulnerable to a range of hazards. Such risks will only increase as sea level rises due to climate change.

The government has announced that the Resource Management Act will be replaced by three new laws, including a Managed Retreat and Climate Change Adaptation Act. The writing is on the wall: planners and communities need to prepare for change.

For those living in highly exposed places, managed retreat may be necessary to save lives and secure public safety.

These “managed retreats” — from low-lying shorelines vulnerable to rising sea level, areas that flood regularly and unstable or exposed land — may be a bitter pill to swallow. Especially so in the midst of a national housing crisis and a global pandemic.

But the impacts of climate change are already being felt, and will compound natural hazard risks well into the future. Some existing developments are already proving untenable, exposing people and the things they cherish to severe harm.

So it’s imperative to include the option of managed retreat in adaptation planning for the most at-risk communities.

Once a suburban hinterland, Christchurch’s earthquake ‘red zone’ now lies empty and abandoned. Author provided

What are managed retreats?

 Basically, managed retreats involve the strategic relocation of people, assets and activities to reduce risk.

For obvious reasons, retreats require difficult sacrifices for individuals, families and communities. The process can involve a range of mechanisms, including providing risk maps, official notices on land information memorandums (LIMs), development restrictions and financial incentives to relocate.

Planners and academics have been calling for a national managed retreat strategy, and the law change provides a unique opportunity.

Aside from compulsory acquisition powers used to deliver public works, Aotearoa New Zealand may be the first country to develop specific legislation for managed retreats. The world will be watching with interest.

Managing retreats that are sensitive to the dislocation of people from their homes, livelihoods, landscapes and culture is challenging. Developing the new legislation will involve difficult decisions about why, when, how and where retreats take place — and at whose cost. Putting people first

Just how these retreats will be managed, however, is yet to be determined. Our latest research examines who manages retreats and how. It’s a timely cue to examine the broad policy options and planning implications.

The proposed legislation presents an opportunity to transform land use patterns in Aotearoa New Zealand. But as we have seen in Canterbury, Matatā and elsewhere, the way managed retreats are handled matters greatly to the people affected.

At present, local managed retreat interventions are risky – professionally, politically, financially, culturally and socially. The necessary planning frameworks and resources are seldom available to support effective and equitable outcomes.

Some communities exposed to hazards and climate perils also face the risk of maladaptation — paradoxically, their vulnerability is increased by inaction or misguided efforts.

Who manages retreats and how?

Our research distinguishes three approaches to making policy for a spectrum of possible retreats. Broadly speaking, these are:
  1. government control: using legislation, standards, policies and regulations, central or local government may restrict certain developments or compulsorily acquire property to enforce retreat

  2. co-operative managed retreats: collaborative decision-making and negotiation between government agencies and affected parties, using instruments such as opt-in buyouts, relocation subsidies or land swaps

  3. unmanaged retreats: individual choices influenced by factors such as loss of insurance cover and other market changes, decisions not to invest more in a property or to sell it (potentially at a loss), or to remain in place and face the risk.
Using our framework, we consider the risks and implications of each form of retreat. We draw on decades of lessons from international practice in disaster resettlement and planned relocation.

Getting the law right

Fundamentally, we argue that facilitating co-operative managed retreats is preferable. This means people and communities are embedded in the retreat strategy design, decision-making and delivery.

Necessarily then, flexible, collaborative and fit-for-purpose policies and practices are important. To manage expectations around at-risk, transient and marginal land, regulation of new development or land use is also required (such as placing time limits on consents).

Managed, co-operative and unmanaged retreats each have a role to play. But their associated practices and policy interventions must be strategically planned. To promote public safety, justice and equity, co-operation must be a central focus when managing the relocation of people.

Aotearoa New Zealand has an opportunity to foster long-term resilience in the face of climate change and many other land use challenges. Determining who manages retreats, how, and who pays is important work.

The shape of the new legislation — the processes and outcomes it encourages — will influence the lives and well-being of current and future generations.

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(USA) Climate Change Will Reshape Silicon Valley As We Know It

Wired - Tim O’Reilly

The next entrepreneurial revolution will arise to combat the crisis of our lifetime.

Photograph: Wei Fang/Getty Images

Author
Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media and the author of WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us.
High-profile entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, venture capitalists like Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois, and big companies like Oracle and HP Enterprise are all leaving California. 

During Covid-19, Zoom-enabled tech workers are discovering the benefits of remote work from cheaper, less congested communities elsewhere. 

Though working from home was intended to be a temporary measure for millions of workers in the early days of the pandemic, there is now no clear end in sight. Almost a year later, workers continue to untether themselves from city centers as companies permanently go remote and rethink how they conduct business.

Is this the end of Silicon Valley as we know it? It is my belief that it is—but the reasons why the Silicon Valley party may soon be over run far deeper than the flight of talent. One of the most compelling is that the greatest opportunities will no longer be found in the overbuilt sector of consumer and business internet applications. Instead, they’ll be found in climate tech.

Climate change is the defining crisis of our time, and as it becomes more imminent, our efforts to address it will become the epicenter of the next entrepreneurial revolution. The recent news that Elon Musk is dueling with Jeff Bezos for the title of world’s richest person is a harbinger of what will be the biggest VC opportunity of the 21st century.

Electric vehicles are only the tip of the iceberg. A recent PwC report found that climate tech investment increased from $418 million per year in 2013 to $16.3 billion in 2019, growing at five times the venture capital market rate over the last seven years. Heating and cooling systems, agriculture, raw materials, and manufacturing are all overdue for reinvention as we strive for a greener future, creating the promise of even more innovation on the horizon. 

The climate will also reshape residential and office construction, insurance, finance, and agriculture, in regard to where and how food is produced. Massive climate migrations have only just begun; tens or hundreds of millions of people will need to be resettled. Will we offer them shantytowns, or will we help them become settlers building a new, better world? Experience teaches us that the best opportunities come when businesses solve urgent problems for their customers. What could be more urgent than this?

With the innovation that is needed to transform entire businesses and economies to net zero emissions, there will be more billionaires created over the next two decades than during the internet boom. 

Apart from Musk, many of the already-minted climate billionaires are outside the US. Bloomberg recently named a few: China’s Zeng Yuqun, Huang Shilin, Pei Zhenhua, and Li Ping (electric vehicle batteries), Li Zhenguo, Li Chunan, Li Xiyan, and Lin Jianhua (solar panels and films), and Wang Chuanfu (electric vehicles); Germany’s Aloys Wobben (wind turbines); and Spain’s Jose Manuel Entrecanales (renewable power generation). Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors are not leaders in these sectors, but there are great fortunes yet to be made.

Venture capital will be key to commercializing the technologies needed to address the climate crisis. Capital follows opportunity; it is not the birthright of a particular industry. 

Take a look at Chris Sacca, the former Google special projects lead turned investor who built one of the best-performing venture funds of all time by investing in companies such as Twitter, Twilio, Uber, Instagram, and Stripe. His new fund, LowerCarbon Capital, is focused squarely on the climate opportunity. A minority of its investments so far have been in San Francisco or Silicon Valley.

Of course, who gets rich by helping society transition to a new energy economy is unimportant compared to the question of whether we will summon the political will to do so in time to avoid the most disastrous consequences of climate change—which could, at their worst, bring an end to civilization as we know it. So far, advocates have tried to motivate that political will through fear, but pitching the huge economic opportunity is far more likely to be successful.

Leadership is essential, though—and not just from industry, but from government as well. Tackling climate change is a complicated undertaking, and only a crash mobilization of the economy to electrify everything can get us there in time—an argument that Saul Griffith, Alex Laskey, and Sam Calisch of the nonprofit Rewiring America have made. 

Without a World War II–style mobilization of private industry, markets won’t move fast enough to replace technologies that are still powered by combustion, like gasoline vehicles and natural gas heating and cooling. Waiting for the natural replacement rate on infrastructure will take decades that we don’t have. We will need a heroic four- to five-year effort to complete a 100 percent transformation of our energy infrastructure.

One of the gifts—if you can call it that—of crises like the pandemic and climate change is that they may teach us that we no longer have time for frivolity. Climate change requires large amounts of real investment capital. 

Unlike the money invested in internet companies that’s been used to buy unprofitable growth, money invested in Tesla was used to build factories, manufacture cars and electric batteries, and roll out national charging networks. The path to high returns may take longer, but the need is real, and so is the value created.

For investors and entrepreneurs, there is a clear call to action: Work on stuff that matters, invest in solving problems, and make a real difference in people’s lives. There’s no doubt that climate tech is the new frontier in venture investing, and solving a global crisis will require the best of what we have to offer.

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(AU) Climate Change To Force Farmers To Become More Efficient

Farm Online - Gregor Heard

Australian croppers are doing a great job growing more grain on less rain but will need to continue to improve to help manage climate change according to ABARES.

FARMERS will need to make further efficiency gains just to stand still in terms of overall productivity as climate change continues to impact Australian farming systems.

This was the sobering take-home message from Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences senior economist Neal Hughes speaking at last week's ABARES Outlook conference.

In spite of some commentators talking up increased carbon dioxide levels as positive for plant growth, Mr Hughes said in Australia, the increase in temperatures and likely decrease in rainfall, particularly in southern regions, would more than offset any gains.

"The latest modelling and projections show a range of scenarios, varying from 3 per cent drop in rainfall out to 2050 right out to a 21pc drop," Mr Hughes said.

"It is a similar story in terms of temperature, with temperature rises forecast to nearly double under a high emissions scenario compared to if there were lower emissions."

"The majority of the runs, however, show considerable negative effects and that is going to make it tougher, especially relative to conditions prior to 2000."

He said while models regarding rainfall drops varied in parts of Australia in others they were in more agreement.

"For instance, in the WA cropping zone in the south of the state there is reasonably good consensus there will be further declines in winter rainfall which is really important in WA farmers' systems."

"These projected decreases go even further from what we've seen in the past 20 years, so there will need to be further changes to manage that."

Mr Hughes acknowledged there had been significant production gains made, especially in regards to water use efficiency, in the west, but said eventually the law of diminishing returns would hit.

"There has been a lot of improvement, you only have to look at this year's crop and see how much grain was produced from a relatively low rainfall season."

"The adaptations have allowed them to produce quite a good crop despite tough conditions, but ultimately you will hit diminishing returns, especially as you get closer to that frontier of nature and where crops can be viably grown."

However, he said the industry needed to continue to push for new techniques.

"Technology is potentially part of that, we've already seen the role it has had through things like controlled traffic in maintaining yield in the dry."

Other possibilities include a less risky approach to farming, such as returning to mixed farming systems.

"Mixed farming makes sense in the drier part of the cropping zone in allowing farmers to manage their risk."

He also said consolidation within the industry helped farmers manage climate risk.

"The larger farms usually, not always, can manage climate risk better, the smaller farmers with lower baseline profits are more exposed to negative events."

Mr Hughes said the industry was also looking out for some form of transformative change.

"It could be things like carbon farming, or getting paid to increase biodiversity, it could be plantation forestry, it could be renewable energy, it is a space that is by nature difficult to predict and it will depend on outside factors as to what takes off." 

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09/03/2021

(USA) How Nature Can Help Solve Our Infrastructure Crisis Amid Extreme Weather, Climate Change

Washington Post - Brian Bledsoe | Justin Ehrenwerth

Workers repair a power line in Austin on Thursday. (Thomas Ryan Allison/Bloomberg News)

The recent horrors in Texas, as millions went without electricity and water during a historic winter storm and cold snap, remind us of the ticking time bomb that is our nation’s aging infrastructure.

In the early 20th century, we made bold investments in our infrastructure that powered our success, and our continued prosperity depends upon our ability to innovate and adapt. Yet we have failed to invest for decades, leading to the American Society of Civil Engineers consistently giving America’s infrastructure C-minus to D-plus marks.

As climate change brings more frequent and intense weather events, our infrastructure will continue to face challenges it was not built to withstand. The most vulnerable among us will suffer disproportionately. If this is to be a time of equitable renewal amid a global pandemic, then we must meet this once-in-a-generation opportunity to address our crumbling infrastructure, climate change and social equity with a natural solution.

The case for engineering with nature

A 21st-century infrastructure system should incorporate conventional approaches using rock, concrete and steel that are strategically designed to work with natural infrastructure. Imagine a concrete flood wall with an expansive reef and marsh in front of it. The wall provides flood protection benefits during storms but does little on a sunny day.

In contrast, the reef and marsh system not only reduces the power of waves but also self-adjusts to rising seas, captures carbon, improves water quality, and provides places for us to hunt, fish and recreate.

John Flood works on making a living shoreline in front of a home on the Severn River to protect it from damage caused by cliff erosion. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

Further inland, river floodplains, parks and greenspaces can serve as pressure relief valves to help protect downstream communities from flooding and pollution. When conventional engineering and Mother Nature join forces, our communities are protected by multiple lines of defense that generate a wide range of economic, environmental and social benefits.

Importantly, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will soon release new guidelines outlining how natural infrastructure can best support resilience and flood-risk reduction. This four-year effort, involving scientists and engineers from around the world, will, for the first time, outline in a comprehensive fashion how to best conceptualize, plan, design, engineer, construct and maintain natural infrastructure.

A price on the environment, and life itself

One of the primary barriers to implementing this approach are benefit-cost analysis requirements for federal projects. BCA requirements are rooted in an intuitive approach that most of us use every day. When faced with a decision, we consider our alternatives, weigh the pros and cons, and pick the solution that provides the greatest benefit for the lowest cost.

This approach makes sense for a fiscally responsible government but falls on its face when we don’t consider some of the most important benefits. What if the greatest benefit of the project is a more equitable and resilient future?

Current practice focuses on monetizing the economic benefits of concrete flood walls and levees based on the property values they protect. For decades, many of the engineers and economists who design and evaluate federal infrastructure projects have not fully considered the benefits and costs related to the environment, human health and social equity. As a result, the deck is stacked against progress.

The science of monetizing environmental and social benefits has dramatically advanced, and it is time for federal policy and practice to catch up. Tools like social return on investment employ well-established economic, accounting and social science research to measure what we know to be true — our communities and our environment are worth far more to us than their property values alone.

An opportunity at the intersection of infrastructure, environment and social equity
Trucks line up in February by the Port of Oakland on the San Francisco Bay. Disadvantaged communities in America are disproportionately affected by pollution from industry or waste disposal, but their complaints have few outlets and often reach a dead end. (Jeff Chiu/AP)

When we limit ourselves to old ways of thinking about costs and benefits, we tend to invest in protecting wealthier communities. This approach perpetuates climate injustice: Multimillion-dollar condos on Miami Beach are deemed worthy of protection while less wealthy neighborhoods, disproportionately communities of color that have been underserved or actively harmed by past infrastructure investments, are neglected.

But there’s reason to be optimistic. President Biden has rightly made environmental justice a core priority and called for modernizing the regulatory process to account for environmental and social factors. Tucked away in last year’s coronavirus relief bill was a provision that, for the first time, clearly permits the Army Corps of Engineers to consider environmental and social factors when developing infrastructure projects.

In its 2021 “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” released Wednesday, for the first time, the American Society of Civil Engineers recognized natural infrastructure as a key solution for building resilience and raising the grade across all infrastructure sectors.

While these are encouraging developments, change of this magnitude is never easy. Consistent leadership from the White House and relevant federal agencies will be needed to break decades of federal practice in which exclusive reliance on outmoded economic calculations and conventional infrastructure has limited progress.

If we do not act today, it’s not a question of whether another extreme weather event will expose our growing vulnerabilities but when and at what cost. 

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