2024 Chapters (Layout Features)

Transparency, Accountability and Justice: Why Governments Must Share Flood Protection Planning Leadership with Frontline Communities

Gallay, Paul; Sanders, Victoria; Baird-Zars, Bernadette; Lee, Hoi Nam Hellas; Ding, Amelia

This chapter examines the need for increased co-production in flood risk reduction and other climate resilience-related policymaking. It offers ten community-based ideas for overcoming systemic barriers to effective co-production such as the failure to provide sufficient time and resources to plan collaboratively, histories of mistrust due to past failure to center community knowledge, and, government’s tendency to frame resilience planning around narrow transactional goals rather than systemic transformation or intersectional problem-solving. The chapter considers and draws lessons from relevant academic literature and field research by the Resilient Coastal Communities Project (RCCP) at the Columbia Climate School, including RCCP’s participation in a wide-ranging civic-academic partnership designed to foster effective co-production in the metro NYC-area flood risk reduction project known as the New York-New Jersey Harbor and Tributaries Study.

Based on the research and experience described above, this chapter identifies seven specific strategies and four research questions designed to spur more effective interaction between planning agencies, frontline communities, justice-focused organizations, environmental nonprofits and academia. Through these interactions, dialogue, transparency and accountability can become more integral components in future resilience planning. Effective co-production can also break through systemic barriers to collaboration and promote resilience practice centered on the unique needs of communities facing both flood risks and environmental, social, and economic vulnerabilities due to systemic discrimination and disenfranchisement. Finally, this chapter will address the question of how resilience planning can couple co-produced flood risk reduction measures with congruent strategies for addressing other needs, such as job creation, improved waterfront access, habitat restoration, community cohesion, and revitalization.