Published 8:34 am Monday, May 27, 2024
By Staff Reports
RALEIGH, N.C. — The N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR) has announced the NC Resilience Exchange, a new interactive resource to help local and state leaders easily search the abundance of climate resilience information available and identify what will be most useful in their area. The Exchange offers funding opportunities, a directory of experts, interactive mapping tools, model ordinances and more in a one-stop-shop that is relevant to North Carolina communities.
The Exchange fulfills a priority initiative named in the 2020 North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan. The site also includes a focus on natural and working land solutions, which will help communities achieve the strategies identified in Executive Order 305 and the Natural and Working Lands Action Plan, which is part of the 2020 Resilience Plan.
“The Exchange began as an identified need for an online toolbox to share best practices and build equitable resilience,” said the state’s Chief Resilience Officer Dr. Amanda Martin. “We are eager to share the current version and will continue to update the Exchange over time – it’s an evolving resource for everyone in our state.”
NCORR developed the Exchange with help from an advisory committee, chaired by N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, and comprised of committed stakeholders from inside and outside state government. The website was designed from a needs assessment involving local and state leaders, who recognized that dozens of agencies are now offering resilience resources online. The goal was to vet the overload of available resources into a North Carolina-centric site.
Features of the site include:
The N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency is the lead state agency managing efforts to prioritize and implement resilience activities in the state, as identified in the Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan. The 2020 Plan is the state’s most comprehensive effort to date, based on science and stakeholder input, to address North Carolina’s vulnerability to climate change. Gov. Cooper’s Executive Order 80 directed the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to draft the plan, which describes the projected change in North Carolina’s climate; climate justice impacts; state infrastructure, assets, programs and services within critical sectors that are vulnerable and at risk to climate and non-climate stressors; actions currently underway; and recommendations for nature-based solutions to enhance ecosystem resiliency and sequester carbon in natural and working lands.
The Exchange was funded through HUD Community Development Block Grant – Mitigation award as well as a technical assistance award from U.S. Climate Alliance.