How a Northwest tribe is escaping a rising ocean

The Center for Neighborhood Technology’s RainReady program is creating flood mitigation projects most suitable for Illinois communities in need by ensuring community members have input. The program designs nature-based solutions, like widening creeks and installing rain gardens, based on demographics and flood data. And community committees are involved throughout.

After being hit by two natural disasters in one year, cities, Indigenous tribes, and government agencies in Whatcom County on the Nooksack River are working together to create a new plan to deal with flood risk and salmon restoration. The Floodplain Integrated Planning team is overcoming distrust among its partners to build a more holistic plan that incorporates tested solutions like fish-friendly floodgates, levee repairs, and property buyouts to remove homes that will continue to be flooded in the future.

Mobile homeowners are buying the land their homes are on to form resident-owned cooperatives so they can upgrade infrastructure faster. This allows them to combat and adapt to climate change by installing things like solar panels and drainage systems.

The Sogorea Te Land Trust is an intertribal women-led organization that is working to reclaim ownership of land in the Bay Area that Ohlone people have lived on for centuries. They regained access to the land through a partnership with another local grassroots organization called Planting Justice, who will eventually hand over the land to Sogorea Te for free once it is fully paid off. Sogorea Te believes that the root of a lot of Indigenous problems is the dispossession of their land, so they hope to use this land to rebuild resiliency and a way of life for and with their people.

In the wake of Hurricane Helene and Milton, mutual aid groups across the country are emerging to get essential supplies to thousands of people in isolated communities and working to combat misinformation and government mistrust surrounding climate change. Because mutual aid groups aren’t bound to the bureaucracy of government organizations, they’re able to act quickly and connect with community members on a deeper level.

In the face of increasing land loss and flooding due to coastal erosion and climate change, the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe made the decision to relocate their community to higher ground. After winning a grant from the National Disaster Resilience Competition, the tribe worked closely with the Louisiana state government to figure out where and how the new community would be built.

Farmers in West Bengal, India, are swapping rice for bananas to save on expenses and labor and adapt to increasingly erratic monsoons and rainfall impacting yields. The farmers use solar panels and drip irrigation setups funded by the state government to reduce emissions and minimize water loss, as bananas require a lot of water.

One of China’s many “sponge cities,” Haikou, experiences virtually no flooding after transitioning to primarily green, nature-based infrastructure instead of gray infrastructure like concrete and flood barriers. Prioritizing things like parks, wetlands, mangroves, and permeable pavement allows the city’s ground to soak up more rain.

When designed well, houses built on elevated platforms supported by stilts can help coastal communities adapt to climate change by reducing flood risk.

On its journey to become the first climate-resilient nation, Dominica created an early warning system for extreme weather. Once the warning reaches the national level, the information is distributed to communities where a network of local authorities spread the word. From there, neighbors and friends check in with each other, and traditional conch shells are blown as a warning, too.