Co-exploring urban climate resilience at the watershed scale

Session description

Big idea: Cities need a holistic watershed framework with associated integrated adaptation approaches for public investments that reduce storm-related urban flooding, improve the quality of down-elevation receiving waters, and create resilient communities. Currently, many cities have separate adaptation frameworks for pluvial, compound, and fluvial/coastal flooding, and hence separate mandates for addressing these complex flooding challenges. This forum will explore opportunities to integrate these efforts across the watershed scale.

Problem/needs statement: As climate change intensifies, the risk of urban flooding—whether coastal, riverine, pluvial, or groundwater—continues to grow due to rising sea levels and increasingly severe storms. Traditional frameworks, which focus on individual sources of flooding or single benefits like water quality or water quantity, are becoming less effective.  Faced with limited funding, space constraints, and an uncertain future, cities are grappling with how to create a more integrated resilience framework that addresses multiple risks and delivers multipurpose solutions for residents, especially in communities already vulnerable to environmental justice issues.

Many cities are trying to address the challenge of climate change with the same mindset that shaped them. To truly build resilient communities, we need transformative innovation inspired by a worldview of unity across species, communities, and entities. This requires fostering creative and diverse partnerships, leveraging co-funding opportunities, and championing community-led, nature-based designs that can evolve with their changing environment. Too many cities still build fixed, fossil-based infrastructure that cannot adapt to changing conditions, often worsening the local ecosystem conditions, offering limited community benefits, and sometimes even failing in their intended purpose.