How do we balance the need to accommodate growth and keep our communities safe from wildfires? Join this webinar to learn more!
Across California, we’re seeing more wildfires burning every year with larger areas burned, and an increased frequency of high severity fires causing more damage to structures and lives lost due to climate change. The impacts of devastation and loss, unbreathable air quality, and evacuations are widely felt. According to experts, the single biggest risk factor driving loss of lives and homes to wildfires is the location and arrangement of homes in high fire risk lands in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI)—area where houses and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle.
Every city in the Bay Area is working to simultaneously address challenges of housing affordability and production as well as climate change adaptation through the Housing Element update process. Further action to protect and preserve homes from wildfires requires planning and investment and the addition of policies and programs in the Housing Element is a key step forward.
Join us for this webinar to understand more about these issues and to learn about a new tool that the Metropolitan Transportation Commission – MTC developed around policy guidance on common wildfire and housing challenges Bay Area.
About the Series
Join Greenbelt Alliance to dive deeper into the five action areas of the Resilience Playbook and start the advocacy and implementation of policies to create a more resilient Bay Area for everyone.
At each webinar, you will have the opportunity to learn more about the recommended policies in specific thematic areas—such as Housing, Nature-Based Solutions, Equity, Wildfire, and Water Resource Management—featured in the Resilience Playbook and connect with experts from around the region to get a look at the on-the-ground work they are doing to put these policies into action.
As part of Greenbelt Alliance’s Future Climate Webinar Series, the Resilience Playbook Series presents informative webinars geared towards elected officials, community members, city/county staff, and others interested in how to incorporate climate-resilient policy and legislation into their General Plans.
The Future Climate is a series of short talks and Q&A with experts and Greenbelt Alliance on adapting to climate change through smart city planning and conservation. Watch past episodes here.
About the Resilience Playbook:
Climate change has presented an opportunity to reimagine our relationship to the natural world and to each other. The Resilience Playbook provides guidance to transform our existing systems through policy and planning recommendations that local decision-makers and community leaders can use to accelerate their adaptation to multiple climate risks, but it is just the beginning. We need to work together to advocate for policies that will leverage natural and working lands as defense mechanisms to absorb floodwaters, sequester carbon, protect water supply, and provide buffers to wildfires. We also need to address critical issues of housing justice, a just transition away from fossil fuels towards green jobs, and environmental justice in order to ensure the outcomes of these policies prioritize the resilience of the most vulnerable communities. Explore more on the Resilience Playbook: www.resilienceplaybook.org