Meeting the immense impacts of climate change will require strong “top-down” policies to reduce emissions and remove carbon from the atmosphere, as well as building resilience in the face of climate stresses and shocks. As communities and governments undertake rapid and fundamental transformation of sectors and systems—energy, transportation, buildings and even green spaces—the need for governments to develop strategies that drive innovation and technological solutions becomes more urgent and essential.

California has led the nation in developing and implementing a comprehensive suite of such policies, including statutory emission reduction targets, renewable energy procurement requirements, emissions and fuel credit trading programs, and vehicle emissions standards. Together, these measures have helped the state reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels below 1990 levels in 2016. This accomplishment came four years ahead of the groundbreaking target that state leaders first enacted in 2006.

Yet top-down actions alone are insufficient to engender necessary change. Place-based programs designed to meet the needs and priorities of specific local communities also are essential to drive policy implementation, technological and economic transition, and community-level investment. Such programs support solutions that work both across systems and in different contexts, drawing on community strengths and assets.  

Place-based approaches are especially important for lower-income and rural areas. These communities not only have experienced disinvestment and systemic exclusion due to redlining and other policies, but they are also places that will experience challenges during the transition to a decarbonized economy.

California is a leader in this arena as well, implementing a number of place-based programs that integrate local resilience and mitigation efforts. These initiatives include the California Strategic Growth Council’s Transformative Climate Communities program, the Community and Watershed Resilience Program funded by the National Disaster Resilience Competition, and a new program to support community economic resilience in the transition to a carbon-neutral economy.

The place-based programs being implemented in California are already showing signs of success. And because of their focused investment in infrastructure and capacity building, they also promise community benefits that extend beyond the aims of the original program.

Identifying and Prioritizing Communities

An important element of implementing place-based programs is to identify priority areas for investment that align with their stated goals. CalEnviroScreen— a spatial tool that identifies communities with high pollution burden and vulnerability based on a range of environmental and socioeconomic criteria—is one instrument that helps the state to do so.

As the state’s main vehicle for investing funds generated by cap-and-trade allowance auctions, the California Climate Investments (CCI) program uses CalEnviroScreen to direct a portion of investments to the highest-scoring areas, defined as Disadvantaged Communities (DACs). Through bills passed in 2012 and 2016, the California legislature has required that at least 25 percent of CCI funds are invested in and benefit residents of DACs. The federal government is implementing a similar prioritization through its Justice40 Initiative, as is Washington State. The state of New York also is considering a similar measure.

Tools like CalEnviroScreen do face some inherent limitations. Using uniform criteria is necessary to define priorities for state- and national-scale investment, but it can miss some of the particular nuances and vulnerabilities that define equity in local areas. In response, communities like San Francisco and San Luis Obispo County have expanded on CalEnviroScreen criteria to identify local disadvantaged communities that fall outside the state definition.

Other programs have employed different tools to identify priority investment areas. The National Disaster Resilience Competition has sought to limit investment to the most impacted and distressed areas to maximize resilience benefits. While no tool is perfect, setting relevant criteria for eligible communities improves focus and outcomes and can support local iteration of initiatives.

Tailoring Climate Solutions in Disadvantaged Communities

Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) is a California program that makes climate investments in communities that experience the state’s highest levels of pollution, concentration of poverty, and historic disinvestment. Established by statute in 2016, TCC uses cap-and-trade funds to support projects that must achieve three goals: (1) reduce GHG emissions; (2) maximize climate, public health, environmental, workforce, and economic benefits; and (3) avoid economic displacement of low-income disadvantaged community residents and businesses. In addition, the state must provide technical assistance at both the application and implementation phases of TCC.

Administered by the California Strategic Growth Council, TCC places community at the forefront of the program’s implementation. While it is guided by state climate goals, the measure is rooted in a community process to develop a vision and identify investments needed to achieve that vision. The program guidelines require a collaborative stakeholder structure to implement those projects, formalized through a memorandum of understating among partners that includes clear lines of accountability and citizen oversight. In addition, the guidelines themselves require comprehensive evaluation at each investment location to track the environmental, economic, and social impacts of the investments.

To date, California has awarded eight TCC grants between $10 million and $66 million to diverse communities across the state.. The first three investment sites (Fresno, Watts, and Ontario) began their implementation in 2019 and they have already achieved significant milestones. The grant given to Watts, for instance, has boasted numerous successes. Construction has begun on a new affordable housing development, and nine new electric vehicle chargers have been added to the neighborhood. Existing housing in Watts also has seen significant improvements, with over 300 energy efficiency measures and 33 retrofits completed on single family homes, as well as the installation of over 35 kW of rooftop solar.

The COVID-19 pandemic also demonstrated how making these tailored investments helps to build resilience in the community. In Watts, several of the TCC-funded projects pivoted to ensure access to food during the pandemic, and leaders of the initiatives used engagement meetings to disseminate public health information to the community.

Rural Impact: The Community and Watershed Resilience Program

In 2015, the Obama Administration launched the National Disaster Resilience Competition, which was open to jurisdictions that faced federally-declared disasters in 2012, 2013, and 2014. The initiative encouraged applicants to take a holistic, people-centered approach to resilient recovery, seeking to link social, built, economic, and natural systems together to achieve these aims. As a partner in the program, the Rockefeller Foundation provided significant technical assistance for all applicants.

California’s Community and Watershed Resilience Program proposal won a $70 million award to support its resilient recovery from the devastating 2013 Rim Fire in Tuolumne County near Yosemite. California’s approach brought together state, federal, and local partners to support investments in forest and watershed restoration, fuel breaks for community protection, biomass utilization to support economic development, and the creation of community resilience centers.  It was a partnership that piloted a new, integrated approach to forested community resilience tailored to the reality of land ownership and management in a rural part of the state.

Tuolumne County is now the site of two Community Resilience Centers, designed to meet the needs of a large, rural, and geographically dispersed county. Each center was designed to be in service during an emergency such as the 2013 fire.  But equally important is the fact that these centers also serve as a continual resource to support community cohesion and connection, and bring essential services closer to where people live.

The offerings at these resilience hubs include senior and family services, recreational and educational programs, and local government services—all of which were identified by local community members as top priorities. This process ensures that the new resilience centers will link diverse local investments and deliver year-round, high-use benefits. For example, leaders in Groveland have extended a local bike trail to connect the resilience center to the rest of the town, reinforcing a central role for both community assets.

Transition to a Carbon Neutral Economy: Community Economic Resilience Fund

An increasingly important area of focus for climate policymakers is investment in communities that will experience directly the economic impacts of the transition to a low carbon economy, and especially communities with significant economic and cultural dependence on the fossil fuel industry. In these cases, place-based approaches that consider local economic, workforce, and social and cultural considerations will be critical for ensuring a smooth translation.

Established to support economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, California’s Community Economic Resilience Fund promises investments in regional collaboratives to support economic development. Crucially, state leaders recognized the connection between the impacts of the pandemic and the climate crisis on local community resilience, and crafted the program with a specific focus on “long-term economic resilience in the overall transition to a carbon-neutral economy.” While the program is still in its early phases, leaders are prioritizing projects in “disinvested communities” (including state-identified DACs as well as other low-income and tribal areas) with an explicit recognition that a local approach is needed for “community- and worker-centered inclusive economic planning” that builds long-term resilience to a range of possible disruptions. 

Making Place-Based Investments Work: Technical Assistance and Capacity Building

A crucial element of effective place-based investment is to harness local expertise to build partnerships and encourage community leadership as the state supplies the technical assistance to support project development and implementation and capacity building. Few communities—disadvantaged and underinvested ones, in particular—have the resources to undertake locally-tailored visioning and partnership development. Outside technical assistance and capacity building are vital to ensure that communities are able to shape, oversee, and receive the maximum benefits from new place-based investments. By recognizing the importance of these essential elements, place-based programs such as TCC and the National Disaster Resilience Competition are securing the long-term success of the community investments they fund.

California’s substantial progress in taking a place-based approach to climate investments is only the first step in a long-term process that will see the broader spread of this concept. State leaders in California are confronting a range of issues at the intersection between state emission reduction programs and local environmental impacts. They are crafting efforts such as the Community Air Protection Program to better understand and mitigate those impacts. As climate policy efforts become more comprehensive,  place-based efforts will only become more central to effective implementation.