SJV Regional Workshop: Overcoming Barriers to Local Adaptation

Join us for an interactive, discussion-based workshop to discuss financial and organizational barriers that local governments in the San Joaquin Valley face in implementing community resilience projects, as well as strategies to overcome these barriers.

Participants will have a unique opportunity to share and learn about existing needs and opportunities available in the San Joaquin Valley to better address drought, air quality, water quality, extreme heat, and other related climate change issues. Participants will learn about practical opportunities to fund adaptation and how to move their organizations to higher levels of capacity to advance resiliency work in the region.

We encourage you to attend this workshop if you work in, with, or for local governments on adaptation research, planning, financing, funding, and/or implementation.

Project Goals:

Financial Barriers: to support state and local policymakers in their efforts to help solve the adaptation financing problem by answering three core research questions:

• How big is the financing gap (between need and availability) for local governments in California?
• What economically and politically feasible financing options are available to fill this gap?
• What is the nature of the financing challenges and how can they be overcome?
  

Institutional Barriers: Previous research has found that when barriers are revealed, this can help local governments develop adaptation strategies that are geared to overcome or avoid the barriers, thereby increasing the implementation/effectiveness potential. Through this project, the project team will focus on:

• Furthering the understanding of the diversity of institutional barriers across local governments in California,
• Developing a capability maturity model, a guidebook and best practices for local governments to overcome these barriers, and
• Conducting case studies with local governments on the usefulness of these tools.

About the Research Projects

This workshop is being conducted as part of two larger research projects that aim to explore practical opportunities to fund adaptation and overcome institutional barriers to adaptation as part of California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment that informs state policymaking. The research team is made up of ICF International, the Local Government Commission and Susanne Moser Research & Consulting.