Robust Indicators

As the climate changes, physical manifestations are all around us, from hotter summers and earlier bloom dates, to increasing ocean acidity. The effects are broad, and having robust indicators to enable measurement is critical. Our team supports the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Climate Change Indicators compilation, directly developing five of these indicators related to incidence of Lyme disease and West Nile virus, wildfires, temperature trends, and heat-related deaths.

Equipping Communities to Respond to Climate Change

In the United States, Abt has shaped housing and community revitalization practices and policy for more than 50 years. As climate change exacerbates risks to housing—and to low- and moderate-income residents in particular—it is critical to integrate resilience planning into housing-related social programs. With this goal in mind, Abt partnered with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to develop the Community Resilience Toolkit. The Toolkit is organized using a clear and concise format that communities can use to identify both potential vulnerabilities from climate hazards, such as wildfires or coastal storms, and the specific actions they can take to reduce their vulnerabilities. Actions are summarized in four categories: planning, buildings and infrastructure, environment, and people. Importantly, the toolkit also provides guidance on how to use HUD funds and other innovative financing options for needed resilience and adaptation strategies.

Flood Risk and Hurricanes

Most hurricane and cyclone damage is caused by water, not wind, and the number of hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. is growing. Climate change has increased flood risks in both coastal and inland areas. To assess flood risks and establish priorities for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers across the United States, Abt designed and developed the National Flood Risk Characterization Tool. The tool assesses relative risks based on the potential for asset damages, human exposure, and exposure of emergency response infrastructure, along with other vulnerability metrics. Through the tool’s map-based interface, decision makers can easily visualize what may confront them and make informed decisions on spending priorities. Zeroing in on state and local needs, Abt developed an inland flood toolkit for the state of New York (.pdf) to enable communities to assess their current and future inland flood risks, including flood frequency and magnitude.

Working with the Central Asian Republics, we developed a comprehensive adaptation training portfolio with an emphasis on adaptation financing. Our team conducted more than a dozen national and regional training workshops, and fostered a meaningful dialogue among the five Central Asian Republics and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on adaptation and best practices.

In Kazakhstan, we revised the country’s Environmental Code to integrate climate change into sector planning, in addition to providing technical support for each country’s development of a National Adaptation Plan.

Through deeper engagement in Tajikistan, we integrated climate risk and resilience into urban development planning through
trainings, development of local resilience action plans and climate risk-screening tools, and the development of a state-of-the-art
climate modeling facility. These actions significantly increased resilience of the Tajik people, including reducing the number of people affected by drought and floods by 20 percent and losses from drought and floods by 25 percent.

In Peru, Senegal, and Madagascar, Abt developed adaptation finance trainings to support each country’s adaptation planning and National Adaptation Plan development. In Peru, we prepared sectoral adaptation portfolios for agriculture, health, and fisheries and aquaculture. In Madagascar, our teams trained stakeholders to integrate climate considerations into their biodiversity plan. In Senegal, we trained fisheries and agriculture sector stakeholders in setting adaptation objectives, developing priority adaptation actions, and assessing climate finance readiness. Abt shared lessons learned across adaptation planning work in these countries through four National Adaptation Plan Global Network events and nine other knowledge exchange platforms.