All Resources on the Economics of Adaptation
This tab includes all resources on the economics of adaptation in the Adaptation Clearinghouse, including plans addressing economic impacts and reports describing the economic benefits of adaptation actions. Filter this list by sector or impact.
435 results are shown below.
Resource
2001
This article, published in Elsevier in 2002, outlines how cool surfaces (cool roofs and cool pavements) and urban trees can have a substantial effect on urban air temperature and, hence, can reduce cooling-energy use and smog. Using a dozen metropolitan cities as case studies, this paper demonstrates an estimate of about 20% of the national cooling demand can be avoided through a large-scale implementation of heat-island mitigation measures. This amounts to 40 TWh/ year savings, worth over $4B per year by 2015, in cooling-electricity savings alone.
Authors or Affiliated Users: H. Akbari, M. Pomerantz, H. Taha
Resource Category: Solutions
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Aquarius is a software application developed by the Rocky Mountain Research Station of the U. S Forest Service and Colorado State University. The modeling system depicts the temporal and spatial allocation of water flows among competing traditional and nontraditional water uses in a river basin. The program can be used to determine economically efficient water destination strategies by systematically examining, using a nonlinear optimization technique, the feasibility of reallocating unused or marginally valuable water storage and releases in favor of alternative uses.
Authors or Affiliated Users: Gustavo E. Diaz, Thomas C. Brown, Oli Sveinsson
Resource Category: Data and tools
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Hosted by the NOAA Coastal Services Center's Digital Coast, this online mapping tool allows users to observe the effects of sea level rise on U.S. coasts. Being able to visualize potential impacts from sea level rise can be a powerful teaching and planning tool, and the Sea Level Rise Viewer brings this capability to coastal communities.
Resource Category: Monitoring and Reporting
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December 7, 2020
The Brussels Community Land Trust (CLTB) focuses on providing affordable housing for the most at-risk populations in the capital region of Belgium, such as low-income workers, immigrants, single mothers, seniors and people with disabilities. CLTB focuses on developing multi-family apartment buildings; it has constructed three projects with 48 units and has seven other projects under construction or study that would deliver more than 120 units. It is building highly energy efficient “net zero” housing developments that conform to sustainability requirements established by the Brussels-Capital Region. Several CLTB projects are also incorporating other green design features, such as green roofs, public gardens, and other community spaces to enhance both the environmental and social benefits of the project. It is exploring opportunities to build local energy cooperatives, to leverage incentives to build housing powered by renewable energy sources, and to shift development patterns to enhance access to transit and shift mobility patterns to emphasize biking and walking. CLTB is also working to develop “social economy hubs” in its projects to provide business incubation opportunities for the neighborhood and to support local job creation. For example, one of their development sites had old warehouses and rather than tear those buildings down immediately, CLTB worked with residents to organize temporary uses on the site including pop-up restaurants, cooking classes, and incubation of a catering business.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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December 6, 2020
The Bristol Community Land Trust (Bristol CLT) operating in the City of Bristol, in the United Kingdom, presents an example of a CLT that is benefiting from low-cost transfer of city-owned surplus land and delivering sustainable, resilient, affordable housing options for lower-income residents. Bristol CLT is building shared-equity and affordable rental units that meet the highest standards of energy efficiency and incorporate renewable energy with back-up batteries, air-source heat pumps, shared green space, “car share,” and other environmental and social amenities. The city adopted a policy in 2020 that will help the CLT develop affordable housing by recognizing the social, environmental, and economic benefits delivered by a project as part of the “consideration” it receives in exchange for the transfer of the land. This policy will better enable Bristol CLT to access low-cost land by rewarding the unique values of CLT-housing, including engaging residents, building social cohesion, and delivering permanently affordable housing. It also demonstrates how cities can change policies related to how they dispose of surplus lands to facilitate transfers to community-led organizations that will redevelop these properties for publicly beneficial uses, like affordable housing.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) in the Dudley Triangle neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts is one of the first examples of a city-land trust partnership designed to address a range of community challenges including housing affordability, and racial and economic inequality. In the 1980s, DSNI created the community land trust, Dudley Neighbors, Inc. (DNI) to combat blight in the Dudley Triangle neighborhood, which as a result of disinvestment had numerous vacant properties and became a frequent site for dumping and arson. The goal of the land trust was to facilitate redevelopment of the neighborhood without displacing existing residents and to empower community control over future development. DNI acquired 60 acres of land and currently stewards 225 units of affordable housing, an urban farm, a greenhouse, a charter school, parks, and a town common. The DSNI is also notable because of the unique partnership with the City of Boston. The City granted the land trust eminent domain authority to condemn lands in the Dudley Triangle neighborhood and provided the land trust significant financial resources to support the development of affordable housing and other community projects in the neighborhood. DSNI’s work has helped to enhance the resilience of the community by preventing displacement in the face of rapid gentrification in the city, enhancing food security for residents, creating and stewarding green space that help to reduce urban heat islands, and by increasing social cohesion in the neighborhood through community activities and a community-led governing Board. DSNI shows how innovative public-partnerships between land trusts and cities can be fostered to address climate resilience and other community stressors, such as the lack of affordable housing, blight, and disinvestment.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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July 26, 2020
In Seattle and King County, Washington, the Homestead Community Land Trust (Homestead CLT) is helping to preserve existing and build new affordable housing that incorporates green design features. The CLT currently stewards 13 acres of land with more than 200 homes for low- and middle-income homeowners earning 80 percent or less of area median income (AMI). Recent projects have incorporated green design features to increase the sustainability of land trust homes. The CLT is currently building twelve “net-zero” energy townhomes in area Renton, WA near transit, which will reduce both energy and transit costs for homeowners and help the region meet greenhouse gas reduction goals.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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July 26, 2020
The Irvine Community Land Trust (Irvine CLT) presents an example of a city-established CLT designed to support infill development of sustainable, permanently affordable housing. The CLT’s developments meet the City’s green housing standards by incorporating green design features (like energy and water saving utilities, low-energy lighting, renewable energy power). Housing developments also incorporate other community amenities like parks, community space, and community gardens. Additionally, Irvine CLT is building housing to provide services to residents with special needs; for example, its Doria housing project reserved 10 percent of homes for people with a history of homelessness, including veterans and people with mental illnesses.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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July 26, 2020
The Oakland Community Land Trust (OakCLT), in Oakland, California, presents an example of how land trusts can help to reduce displacement pressures in gentrifying cities. It was created in 2009 to stabilize housing threatened with foreclosure as a result of the recession and mortgage crisis. Through mobilization of residents and a local community organization, Urban Strategies Council, the Oakland CLT was formed to acquire and rehabilitate properties in foreclosure. Since it was established, OakCLT has acquired and preserved approximately 50 units of housing and stewards multi-use and commercial properties that provide affordable rents for culturally important businesses and grassroots organizations.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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July 25, 2020
The Sawmill Community Land Trust (Sawmill CLT) in Albuquerque, NM provides an example of how CLTs can support community redevelopment and reduce displacement of existing residents. The Sawmill CLT was formed out of a community-driven planning process to redevelop the Sawmill-Wells Park neighborhood (between Old Town and downtown Albuquerque). The neighborhood had become blighted due to underinvestment and pollution from industrial facilities. The CLT’s first project, called Arbolera de Vida (Orchard of Life), was developed on a 27-acre formerly contaminated industrial property that it acquired from the city and facilitated clean up and redevelopment to include permanently affordable housing and other community amenities.
Resource Category: Solutions
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