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New Orleans, Louisiana Project Home Again Land Swaps
2013
The New Orleans Project Home Again (PHA) in Louisiana involved a land swap and redevelopment program implemented post-Hurricane Katrina that can serve as an example for how public-private partnerships can help people retreat away from flood-prone coastal areas. Through this project, PHA aimed to concentrate redevelopment at higher elevations away from low-elevation floodplains and expand relocation options for impacted homeowners. The hurricane-damaged homes on participants’ original properties were demolished and converted to climate resilient open space for flood retention, environmental, and community benefits. Specifically, PHA used a land swap program that enabled low- and middle-income homeowners to relocate to less vulnerable areas with new affordable, clustered housing. The PHA program demonstrates how land swaps can offer a tool for planners and policymakers to effectively guide redevelopment in disaster recovery settings and expand affordable and resilient housing opportunities. A similar land swap model could also be considered in a pre-disaster context and phased over time, if community consensus, vacant or developable land, and funding for housing construction exists.
Resource Category: Solutions
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Resilient Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Resilient Baton Rouge is a program designed to increase local community capacity in the Baton Rouge area of Louisiana to manage mental and behavioral health in flood-prone parts of the region. By engaging local leaders and healthcare providers, the program has been able to focus on not only delivering mental health services to residents displaced by floodwaters, but also to engage community members in a longer-term process to strengthen both the local communities themselves but also the plans to increase resilience in the region. By deeply engaging affected residents and stakeholders, the plans for resilience broadly are more responsive and targeted to those most affected by the floods. The program is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with fiscal sponsorship from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.
Resource Category: Solutions
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Managing the Retreat from Rising Seas — State of Louisiana: Louisiana Strategic Adaptations for Future Environments (LA SAFE)
July 15, 2020
Louisiana Strategic Adaptations for Future Environments (LA SAFE) is a community-based planning and capital investment process that will help the state fund and implement several projects, including for managed retreat, to make its coasts more resilient. In 2016, Louisiana’s Office for Community Development–Disaster Recovery Unit received a nearly $40 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through the National Disaster Resilience Competition and additional state and nongovernmental funds to implement LA SAFE. The grant will support the design and implementation of resilience projects to address impacts in six coastal parishes that were affected by Hurricane Isaac in 2012. The state partnered with the nonprofit Foundation for Louisiana to administer LA SAFE and facilitate an extensive, year-long community engagement process that will result in implementation of ten funded projects across the six parishes. By contemplating a regional, rather than a parish-specific, approach to addressing coastal risk, LA SAFE provides a model that other states and local governments may consider when making long-term adaptation and resilience investments, including for managed retreat. This case study is one of 17 case studies featured in a report written by the Georgetown Climate Center, Managing the Retreat from Rising Seas: Lessons and Tools from 17 Case Studies.
Resource Category: Solutions
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Preserving Our Place — A Community Field Guide to Engagement, Resilience, and Resettlement: Community Regeneration in the Face of Environmental and Developmental Pressures
2019
In 2019, the Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe (IDJC) collaborated with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to release a field guide, Preserving Our Place — A Community Field Guide to Engagement, Resilience, and Resettlement: Community Regeneration in the Face of Environmental and Developmental Pressures. IDJC is in the process of relocating from the Louisiana coast to a new community further inland due to significant land loss and flooding impacts. The field guide was developed to serve dual purposes: first, to document the community engagement process that IDJC has developed throughout its resettlement planning process; and second, to provide procedural guidance and lessons learned for communities that are also contemplating large-scale relocation. The field guide can be used by other tribal or frontline coastal communities that are considering potential larger-scale managed retreat or relocation strategies to adapt to climate change impacts like sea-level rise and other stressors and pressures, like environmental justice and encroaching development.
Resource Category: Solutions
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Louisiana Strategic Adaptations for Future Environments (LA SAFE) Adaptation Strategies
May 2019
Louisiana Strategic Adaptations for Future Environments (LA SAFE) is a community-based planning and capital investment process that will help the state fund and implement several projects, including for managed retreat, to make its coasts more resilient. In 2016, Louisiana’s Office for Community Development–Disaster Recovery Unit received a nearly $40 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through the National Disaster Resilience Competition and additional state and nongovernmental funds to implement LA SAFE. The grant will support the design and implementation of ten resilience projects to address impacts in six coastal parishes that were affected by Hurricane Isaac in 2012 (Jefferson, Lafourche, Plaquemines, St. John the Baptist, St. Tammany, and Terrebonne). Building on LA SAFE’s community-driven framework for adaptation and the ten state-funded projects, the state is continuing to work with the six parishes to mainstream and institutionalize adaptation and resilience at both the regional and parish levels. In May 2019, the state released a regional adaptation strategy and six parish-level strategies to support long-term adaptation planning. Each strategy follows LA SAFE’s framework for identifying projects to meet different adaptation and development goals based on flood risk to ensure that future regional and local projects are similarly designed to advance comprehensive approaches. These strategies will assist the parishes to develop and invest in additional projects that will be more resilient to coastal impacts over the state's 50-year planning horizon and achieve multiple benefits for communities. These strategies can serve as an example for other state, regional, and local jurisdictions considering long-term, comprehensive planning for adaptation and managed retreat.
Resource Category: Planning
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Financing resilient communities and coastlines: How environmental impact bonds can accelerate wetland restoration in Louisiana and beyond
August 20, 2018
The Environmental Defense Fund and Quantified Ventures have assessed how an environmental impact bond (EIB) could effectively be used for coastal resilience financing for wetland restoration in Louisiana and other coastal areas. The report outlines the steps Louisiana would take to pilot and implement the EIB to restore the coast and wetlands, while greatly reducing land loss to sea level rise, and incentivizing investment. The framework could also support financing other natural infrastructure projects that build coastal resiliency, and serves as a template for coastal investments anywhere.
Resource Category: Solutions
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Louisiana Watershed Initiative
August 15, 2018
In August 2018, Governor John Bel Edwards launched the Louisiana Watershed Initiative in response to historic flooding events in 2016 that revealed Louisiana's high susceptibility to flooding throughout the state. Louisiana has a devastating history of flooding, with the state experiencing 16 federally declared flood- and hurricane-related disasters in the past 20 years. The Watershed Initiative is a statewide effort to reduce flood risk and increase flood resilience in Louisiana through regional coordination of floodplain management.
Resource Category: Planning
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New Orleans Climate-Smart Cities Decision-Support/Mapping Tool
2017
In collaboration with the Trust for Public Land, the Office of Resilience and Sustainability in New Orleans, Louisiana has completed a publicly accessible Climate-Smart Cities climate risk mapping and planning tool. This decision support tool is designed to guide green infrastructure planning for climate adaptation in New Orleans - through heat mitigation, social equity, flood control, and more. The tool identifies priority areas for multi-benefit green infrastructure investments based on climate impacts, and the location of vulnerable populations in New Orleans.
Resource Category: Data and tools
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Louisiana 2017 Coastal Master Plan
June 2, 2017
In June 2017, the Louisiana State Legislature unanimously approved the state’s 2017 Coastal Master Plan, which updates the state’s 2012 plan. The Coastal Master Plan provides a 50-year blueprint for directing Louisiana’s investments, regulations, and programs in coastal restoration, resilience, and protection. The plan recommends 124 projects to restore coastal ecosystems, build flood control structures, and enhance land-use policies to reduce flood risks in coastal Louisiana communities and to enhance coastal economies and ecosystems.
Resource Category: Planning
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Case Study of Efforts to Promote Resilient Affordable Housing in New Orleans
2016
The City of New Orleans is prioritizing efforts to provide safe, affordable housing as part of its resilience strategy. In June 2016, the City released its Housing for a Resilient New Orleans: Five-Year Strategy, that lays out the City's approach for protecting and enhancing safe and affordable housing as the City continues to rebound from Katrina and other hurricanes. Although the Strategy does not explicitly address climate change, it does talk about the resilience challenges posed by the lack of safe and affordable housing and it discusses the city's plan for preserving and enhancing existing affordable housing and building new housing.
Resource Category: Planning
