A Green Infrastructure Guidebook for City Planners

Ninety-six percent of the country’s population lives in counties where federally declared weather-related disasters have occurred since 2010. Federal programs help mitigate these scenarios: EPA programs study climate change and issue guidelines about combating global warming; FEMA provides disaster assistance to mitigate these effects. But under Trump’s budget plan, these programs stand to lose their funding.

The budget blueprint, which emphasizes military spending at the cost of cuts across other agencies, would hit the EPA hard—the agency would absorb a cut of $2.6 billion, or 31 percent of its budget. In the meantime, U.S. counties are not waiting around to feel the aftermath. Many are—and have already been—heavily investing in natural resources to address concerns on a local level. Now, they’ve got a new online resource that makes it easier to do so. Naturally Resilient Communities is an interactive tool featuring 30 case studies of places that rely on nature-based solutions to protect themselves against climate threats like flooding and coastal erosion.