Community Adaptation & Resilience Flashcards

A rural farming community installs drought-resistant crop varieties AND creates a local seed bank. Together, these actions represent which type of adaptation strategy?

Answer: Integrated agricultural adaptation with redundancy

Combining drought-resistant varieties (reduced sensitivity) with a seed bank (redundancy) represents integrated agricultural adaptation that addresses multiple failure modes.

Under the Stafford Act, what must communities have in place to be eligible for FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) funding?

Answer: An approved Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP)

FEMA requires communities to have a FEMA-approved Local Hazard Mitigation Plan to be eligible for HMGP post-disaster mitigation funding.

Which term describes the concept that communities should build forward to a new, improved state after a disaster rather than simply restoring pre-disaster conditions?

Answer: Build back better

'Build back better' is a disaster recovery principle promoting reconstruction that reduces future vulnerability rather than recreating conditions that led to harm.

A city identifies that its elderly population is disproportionately at risk during extreme heat events. According to equity-based adaptation principles, the FIRST step should be:

Answer: Engaging elderly residents and their community networks to co-design solutions

Equity-based adaptation prioritizes meaningful participation of vulnerable populations in solution design before implementing interventions, ensuring relevance and trust.

What is the key distinction between 'climate proofing' and 'climate resilience' in infrastructure planning?

Answer: Climate proofing seeks to eliminate climate risk; resilience accepts some risk while ensuring recovery capacity

Climate proofing attempts to design out risk entirely, while resilience planning acknowledges residual risk and focuses on absorbing, adapting, and recovering from impacts.

Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs) in climate resilience projects primarily serve to:

Answer: Guarantee that adaptation investments produce measurable benefits for frontline communities

CBAs are legally binding agreements ensuring that climate adaptation projects deliver specific, measurable benefits to historically underserved frontline communities.

A coastal community is debating whether to armor a shoreline or allow managed retreat. The managed retreat option is preferred when:

Answer: Long-term sea level rise projections make armoring economically and physically untenable

Managed retreat becomes the preferred strategy when accelerating sea level rise makes long-term shoreline armoring cost-prohibitive and ultimately ineffective.