{"id":3497696,"date":"2023-07-21T10:04:24","date_gmt":"2023-07-21T10:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3497696"},"modified":"2023-07-21T10:04:24","modified_gmt":"2023-07-21T10:04:24","slug":"disaster-recovery-efforts-can-serve-more-than-one-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2023-07-21\/disaster-recovery-efforts-can-serve-more-than-one-goal\/","title":{"rendered":"Disaster Recovery Efforts Can Serve More than One Goal"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the aftermath of last week\u2019s floods<\/a>, my home state of Vermont faces a daunting path to recovery. Flooding damaged homes and businesses. Roads and bridges washed out, and communities have been cut off from the rest of the state. Vermont has walked this path before, after\u00a0Tropical Storm Irene<\/a>, and we are not alone in facing a recovery now. As the climate crisis deepens, more places will be spending more time in recovery mode.<\/p>\n

Recovery isn\u2019t just a difficult task. It\u2019s also one with lasting consequences. Rebuilt infrastructure will \u2014 hopefully \u2014 stand for decades to come. Over its lifetime, it will influence climate resilience, carbon emissions, health, well-being and social equity.<\/p>\n

Because infrastructure has such a broad influence, the process of recovery has the potential to meet multiple goals at once. A “multisolving<\/a>” recovery would get a region up and running quickly while also protecting climate and biodiversity, increasing community well-being and preparing for future shocks.<\/p>\n

Multisolving makes sense in Vermont, a land of famously frugal small farmers. If you can accomplish multiple goals for the price of one, why wouldn\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

But multisolving may sometimes require more time and more cooperation across silos. That may feel hard to justify in the face of urgent needs like housing people or opening bridges. If Vermont\u2019s 2011 recovery from Irene is any guide, there will be a strong pull to the path of least resistance \u2014 reproducing our pre-storm status quo.<\/p>\n

Urgency is justified, of course. People do need roads and bridges open to get to work, school, grocery stores and hospitals. But Vermont has already done some good multisolving in the past. We, along with communities facing recovery around the world, could do more of it.<\/p>\n

When Irene hit,\u00a0conserved wetlands protected<\/a>\u00a0the town of Middlebury from the brunt of flooding, saving millions of dollars in potential damages. That\u2019s climate resilience. Restoring wetlands also protects biodiversity, improves water quality and promotes recreation. With a multisolving approach, Vermonters could make restoring marshes and wetlands part of recovery.<\/p>\n

Those of us who lived through Irene remember that long before the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trucks rolled in, small businesses and community-based organizations were providing relief to Vermonters. Grocery stores became cell phone charging stations.\u00a0I remember the local brewery that opened up access to its water filtration system to those who needed clean water. My local food pantry coordinated to have me and hundreds of other volunteers clean out basements and sort donations.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0similar web of mutual assistance<\/a>\u00a0is already springing into action in response to the recent flooding. This is homegrown climate resilience. It\u2019s also multisolving. This civic muscle provides benefits year-round, not just once a decade in a climate emergency. During the current recovery, we could multisolve by investing in the service organizations at the heart of our communities. We\u2019d be boosting our capacity to respond to shocks while also increasing everyday well-being.<\/p>\n

Vermont pioneered other multisolving solutions in the aftermath of Irene. One innovation was the\u00a0\u201cIrene Cottage.”<\/a>\u00a0That was a rollout of energy-efficient housing on high ground to replace less efficient housing destroyed in the flooding. Irene Cottages combined recovery, climate resilience and climate protection into one package.<\/p>\n

A multisolving recovery in Vermont could go further. It could upsize culverts for added climate resilience. Rebuilt bridges could include lanes for pedestrians and cyclists, aligning with Vermont\u2019s\u00a0Climate Action Plan<\/a>, which calls for more walking and cycling.<\/p>\n

We can also look beyond Vermont for examples of what a multisolving recovery might look like.<\/p>\n

After a devastating tornado in 2007, the town of\u00a0Greensburg, Kan., rallied around a vision<\/a>\u00a0of a green recovery.\u00a0Today Greensburg is\u00a0powered by renewable energy<\/a>. It has an energy-efficient school, library, medical center and city hall. It saves money on fuel and electricity.\u00a0Greensburg shows that the need to recover can be a chance to rethink our approach as well.<\/p>\n

The specifics of a multisolving recovery will look different in every place. In a coastal area, it might include living shorelines. In a city, it might involve increasing the tree canopy or making homes more energy efficient.<\/p>\n

Whatever the specifics, a multisolving recovery would ensure that every dollar and every hour of investment serves more than one goal. It would design for the future that\u2019s coming, not the past we once knew.\u00a0 It would expand the idea of recovery to include nature and community, as well as bridges and roads.<\/p>\n

Time is short, and the urgency is real. How can we seize the multisolving opportunity while still moving quickly? That\u2019s something we will need to learn in the coming years. But there are prototypes we can learn from.<\/p>\n

Vermont\u2019s Irene recovery created silo-crossing networks that still exist or could be revived. For instance, Irene Cottages grew out of a partnership among a foundation, a housing group and a network of social service organizations.<\/p>\n

After Irene, Vermont\u2019s governor appointed an\u00a0Irene recovery officer<\/a>. In this flooding recovery, a similar position could be charged with aligning recovery with the state\u2019s Climate Action Plan, as well as our goals for nature and community well-being. The effort could take lessons from other examples of governing with a multisolving lens, like Massachusetts\u2019 new office of\u00a0Climate Chief<\/a>\u00a0or the Biden administration\u2019s\u00a0Justice40 Initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are as many ways to multisolve as there are places to try it. The point isn\u2019t perfection. It\u2019s to set out to recover quickly but mindfully, capturing as many co-benefits as possible along the way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Teaser photo credit: Flooding in downtown\u00a0Montpelier, Vermont<\/a>\u00a0as photographed by the\u00a0United States Air National Guard<\/a>. By U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Master Sgt. Michael Davis – https:\/\/www.dvidshub.net\/image\/7904869\/vermont-guard-responds-flooding-vermont, Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=134315649<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A “multisolving” recovery would get a region up and running quickly while also protecting climate and biodiversity, increasing community well-being and preparing for future shocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3497771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79718,79720,213535],"tags":[116235,166860],"class_list":["post-3497696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-society","category-society-featured","tag-buildingresilientcommunities","tag-disasterrecoverystrategies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3497696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3497771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3497696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3497696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3497696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}