Can Rhode Island “Bounce Back” after Disasters? A New Climate Resilience Strategy Is in the Works

Shaun O’Rourke wakes up thinking about Rhode Island.

He was hired in summer 2017 as the director of stormwater and resiliency at the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank (RIIB), an agency that uses creative financing mechanisms to build, maintain and improve state infrastructure, including green infrastructure projects, at a low cost. Soon after O’Rourke joined the RIIB, Governor Raimondo signed an executive order calling for the creation of a climate resilience strategy for the Ocean State and appointing a chief resiliency officer to lead the writing and implementation of the strategy. O’Rourke was named to this role – remaining at his post at the RIIB, but taking on the responsibilities of chief resiliency officer as a natural extension of his work.

You may be wondering – what does it mean to make Rhode Island “more resilient to the impacts of climate change,” as stated in the governor’s order? What is “resilience”?

“There’s been a lot of talk about resilience for a long time, and if you ask, let’s say, 20 people, you’ll probably get 20 different definitions,” O’Rourke says. “The definition that we’re putting forth now for climate resilience, and this is a working definition … is the ability for individuals, communities, businesses and natural systems to bounce back, but also bounce forward, from acute shocks and stressors related to climate change.”

Rhode Island’s climate is changing – and being resilient means being prepared for the changes to come. One example of a climate “shock” is an extreme weather event, like Hurricane Sandy or the floods that ravaged Rhode Island in 2010. A “stressor,” according to O’Rourke, is a slower moving threat that climate change can exacerbate, like sea level rise, higher temperatures and aging infrastructure. Both shocks and stressors can catch residents, businesses and natural resources off-guard if Rhode Islanders do nothing to adjust to expected climatic changes. In 2010, flooding from extreme rain events caused $14 million in damages to the Warwick wastewater treatment facility. Realizing the city was caught unprepared, the Warwick Sewer Authority cobbled federal, state and city funds together in the aftermath of the flood to increase the height of the levee hill protecting the facility from inundation. These are solutions that O’Rourke is interested in implementing before major disasters strike.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, extreme precipitation has already increased in Rhode Island over the last century. Sea levels have risen more than 9 inches in Newport since 1930 – faster than the global average – and are projected to increase an additional 1 to 4 feet by 2100. The state already has a number of laws designed to cut down on the dangerous climate change-fueling emissions coming from Rhode Island’s industries and residents. A resilience strategy gets to the other question: How do we prepare for the changes we’ve already locked in?

“We’re not debating, in this work, what’s causing climate change… We’re seeing that there’s a changing climate,” says O’Rourke. “What are the investments that agencies across the state and municipalities can make to better protect their residents, economy and environment for that changing climate.”

“Resiliency Roundtables” for Community Leaders

Shaun O’Rourke is a landscape architect by training, from outside of New York City. He worked in the private sector as an ecological designer in New York City and then moved into academics at the Boston Architectural College’s sustainable design program. Before joining the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank, he worked for the Trust for Public Land, overseeing their national green infrastructure work. He moved to Rhode Island about a year ago while working with the Trust for Public Land – and he already has a penchant for hiking around the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed and spending time at the state’s beautiful beaches.

“I’ve always worked in positions that have brought together multiple stakeholders, tried to synthesize a lot of information, and then spit out something that is easily digestible and actionable,” O’Rourke says. “There’s so much happening already – from organizational leads, municipalities, across state agencies. But it’s not always well coordinated.”

As directed by the governor’s executive order, O’Rourke is working with Rhode Island’s Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4) and community partners to coordinate the state’s disparate activities and develop a strategy that can fill in the gaps. They are holding a series of nine “resiliency roundtable” workshops across the state for municipal, organizational and community leaders. At these meetings, O’Rourke asks community leaders questions including: What are the impacts of climate change that you’re seeing locally? What are the assets that are impacted? What are the needs and resources that you need as a community to move us forward? Each roundtable is hosted by a local organization, and other state agencies, environmental non-profits and community leaders have helped manage the events and bring stakeholders into the room. More opportunities for general public engagement will follow these first nine meetings.

”That constellation of partners has been really terrific and they touch everything from the equity issues and environmental justice to the green infrastructure side as well,” O’Rourke says.

Who Is Being Left Out?

Rhode Island encompasses diverse ecosystems and communities – a multitude of interests to be represented in a single resilience strategy.

Community members voiced some concerns at the first resiliency roundtable at Save the Bay, worrying that the state’s most vulnerable populations to the impacts of climate change – especially low-income communities and communities of color – were not being adequately represented in the process. As the roundtable conversations continue, O’Rourke is focused on clearly communicating his goals and the intended audience for each meeting.

“The first meeting I don’t think we were all that clear that we were trying to take a grasstops-level approach across the state to understand what’s currently happening,” O’Rourke says. “So we’re not sure we got the right audience, because we had some experts in the room who had been doing this stuff for 30 years, we had community members who were like, ‘It was really hard to get to Save the Bay, I want to be better engaged’ – so I think we were straddling two sides.

“We’ve been much clearer now, in our communication and outreach, that this first 10 meetings are about grasstops – like organizational leadership, municipal officials, business community – and one of the questions we ask at each of the meetings now is ‘who is not in the room’ or ‘who hasn’t been engaged’ so that we can then have follow-up, informational conversations,” O’Rourke says.

O’Rourke noted that they have only had one meeting in the Providence metro-area so far, and he knows they need to spend more time in the state’s population hub to hear from community leaders. He plans to attend community meetings that are already occurring to meet people where they are at and seek out leaders that may be suffering from “meeting fatigue.”

“Poverty or low-income communities, that’s definitely a stressor that we’re looking at. Because storms that happen or stressors that happen in low-income communities are going to have a greater impact than another community where they’re able to bounce back or have someplace to go, or when it’s hot be able to turn on the air conditioning,” O’Rourke says. “The Providence meeting that we had at Save the Bay started to really identify some of those critical equity issues that we need to look at. So that’s starting to focus who we are going to meet with here in the greater Providence area.”

Often Rhode Island’s coasts get more attention that upland communities, presenting another challenge. Of the first four roundtables, two were held in coastal areas and two were held in upland communities. O’Rourke says this clearly brought out the diversity of concerns and challenges in the state. Flooding and the risk of dam failure are vulnerabilities impacting cities and towns in western Rhode Island.

“From a statewide perspective, there’s been so much done on the coast,” he says. “But there hasn’t been as much upland in the western part of the state and the northern part of the state, and this strategy is really to show that we’re doing work across the state and these outreach meetings are part of that.”

Rhode Island can also learn from the work being done by other states and cities. The Rockefeller Foundation created the “100 Resilient Cities” project in 2013 and have since worked with 100 cities around the world to fund chief resilience officer positions for two to three years. As in Rhode Island, these officers spearhead the development of a resilience strategy for each city.

O’Rourke points to Boston as an example of city centering equity in their resilience strategy. The city’s chief resilience officer, Atiya Martin, calls on the city to center issues of racial justice to build a community more prepared to face a changing climate and changing times.

“I believe the fight for racial equity has to be embedded in all aspects of a resilience plan,” Atiya Martin tells Elle Magazine in an interview. “We’ll respond better to disaster, to terror, to economic issues, to everything, if people are more equal. That’s not the point of the plan. That’s not what we’re aiming for. That’s a prerequisite for it.”

At the state-level, Oregon, California, Virginia and Massachusetts are also engaged in resiliency planning. Some are assessing resilience from particular themes – Oregon focused on earthquakes, Virginia on water and Massachusetts on state facilities.

“We have a really interesting opportunity here in Rhode Island,” O’Rourke says. “We’re a small state, and we can try things here and work through efforts that other states might not be able to try. So we’re excited to really pilot a lot of leading resiliency planning here.”

Getting the Strategy Working

O’Rourke and the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4) must deliver a strategy to the governor by summer 2018 – and, over the next six months, they will be planning the “who” and “how” of implementation.

O’Rourke says that this is a strategy and not a static plan because it will be delivered with clear action items along a number of statewide themes. His team will identify a number of themes that are consistent across the state, like “vulnerability of our drinking water supply,” and create action items to address the different manifestations of each theme across the state. While on the coast, drinking water may be threatened by sea level rise, the danger may come from flooding and extreme rain in western and northern Rhode Island.

The science and technical advisory board of the EC4 will help develop the science behind each theme.

“I sort of wake up every day thinking about resilience in Rhode Island,” O’Rourke says. “In my previous role, I woke up thinking more about what airport I needed to go to, and it was like you land, you go to a meeting and then you leave. And it was hard to gain any purchase.

“We’re doing this for people. The whole resiliency reason why we are doing this effort is that people are at the core,” O’Rourke says. “And it often gets forgotten when we think about big gray infrastructure or environment, but people really are at the center.”

Check out their website for resiliency roundtable information and other climate change resources: climatechange.ri.gov