The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its 6th Assessment Report on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability on February 27. The report presents key findings on efforts across the globe to adapt to worsening climate change and highlights vulnerabilities to future impacts. Overall, the picture is bleak: the report details a range of impacts resulting from the release of CO2 into the earth’s atmosphere due to human activities, including temperature increases, desertification, precipitation decrease, and sea level rise. The report finds that individuals living in historically marginalized communities – such as low-income households – are more likely to be endangered by the impacts of climate change yet less likely to receive assistance to mitigate these dangers.
Chapter 8 of the report, “Poverty, Livelihoods, and Sustainable Development,” addresses vulnerability to climate change. This portion of the report also explains how “adaptive measures” taken by more affluent communities – such as levees or flood walls that protect higher-income communities but direct flooding towards less affluent communities – can have negative impacts on those with lower incomes. In addition, the report suggests that decreasing funding for social welfare programs in favor of climate mitigation projects can backfire by increasing the needs of those facing the negative impacts of climate change, like worsening disasters. “Measures to enhance social welfare and safety nets themselves help enhance the poor’s resilience to climate impacts because they focus on non-climatic stressors affecting livelihoods, which interact with climate hazards,” reads the report. “Therefore, diverting attention away from safety nets may in fact undermine adaptation efforts.”
The report’s suggestions align with the principles of the NLIHC-led Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC), a group of more than 850 national, state, and local organizations, including many working directly with disaster-impacted communities and with first-hand experience recovering after disasters. DHRC works to ensure that federal disaster recovery efforts reach all impacted households, including the lowest income seniors, people with disabilities, families with children, veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and other at-risk populations who are often the hardest-hit by disasters but have the fewest resources to recover afterwards.
One bill supported by the DHRC – the “Reforming Disaster Recovery Act” introduced by Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI), Susan Collins (R-ME), Todd Young (R-IN), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Representative Al Green (D-TX) – would take steps towards addressing some of the problems identified in the IPCC report. The bill would permanently authorize HUD’s long-term Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program and create a framework to ensure that federal long-term recovery funds can reach low-income households quickly. The bill would also ensure that funding for infrastructure repair and economic development following a disaster would remain proportionate to funding provided for the housing needs of disaster survivors.
Read the IPCC report at: https://bit.ly/3hCD4Fk
Learn more about the DHRC at: https://bit.ly/35SbwJC