Every Climate Resilience Project Starts With One Person Wanting To Make A Lasting Impact
We’re here to help that person create that impact.
Climate Resilience Consulting provides insight to prevent the avoidable and manage the unpreventable in the era of climate change. Our tools allow leaders to Create Resilient Choices during our engagement and beyond.
For projects that result in a public report, please see our Insights page.
Our strategy work focuses on resilience success through transformative policy change, infrastructure improvements, and vibrant partnerships. Over a decade ago, we created one of the world’s first resilience strategies and we lead advisory groups, offer training, and perform research for strategy success.
To move from plans to action, communities need funding. We wrote the book on resilient infrastructure finance and work among stakeholders to address funding issues through targeting activities, policy development, resource allocation, and relationship-building.
Sustainability tactics such as waste, water and carbon reduction fail to measure climate resilience. We created the world’s first measure of resilience, and our tools measure resilience, evaluate progress, and prepare for future scenarios with a special emphasis on justice.
Our founder Joyce Coffee established one of America’s first climate adaptation strategies for the City of Chicago in 2008, and since then, we have been on the leading edge of crafting actionable resilience strategies. Our strategies lead with solutions that create social equity and focus on the fundamentals of resilience-building: assessing climate risk in terms of hazards, vulnerability and exposure; addressing asset-level climate risks; and building community climate resilience. Our strategy work focuses on resilience success that saves lives and improves livelihoods through transformative policy change, prioritized soft and hard infrastructure improvements, and vibrant and reciprocal partnerships. We convene, facilitate, lead advisory groups, write, and raise money for strategy success.
National Weather Service/NOAA
CRC is leading the nation’s Extreme Heat Behavior Health Study to improve the extreme heat messaging and prevent extreme heat morbidity and mortality, especially among vulnerable populations. Questions investigated include relate to how people perceive the dangers and their personal risk related to heat on the human body, what information they use to make decisions, and how do location, experience and other factors impact their ability to mitigate heat impacts.
US Environmental Protection Agency
CRC is the prime contractor for the USEPA’s Disaster Resilient Communities Blanket Purchase Agreement. Our team includes Kim Lundgren Associates, Adaptation International and ONE Architecture and Urbanism. 2022 task orders include Campus RainWorks and Equitable Resilience Planning through Active and Inclusive Community Engagement, enhancing an equitable resilience building tool with communities in the Northeast, Southeast and Great Lakes. We are also leading related equitable resilience building training for government officials and indicator creation, selection and utilization protocols.
US Climate Alliance
CRC was contracted with the UN Foundation to support the US Climate Alliance member states in building climate resilience. Following on the launch of the new Governor's’ Resilience Playbook, we worked with state resilience leaders on federal funding to drive resilience implementation, equity-based solutions and resilience metrics. Products included Local Government Climate Resilience Capacity Building Worksheet for State Resilience Leader; Cost Benefit Analysis for Social and Nature Based Solutions USCA Resource Guide; FEMA’s BCA – Implications for Rural Communities and Recommended Enhancements and USCA Climate Resilience Outcome Metrics Fundamentals. Subsequently, we were retained to interpret the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) guidelines for State leaders use and a living guide of State Government Extreme Heat Mitigation and Adaptation best practice.
Coastal States Organization
Great Lakes Nearshore Engineering and Design project creating nature based solutions. Lead engagement efforts in support of projects developing designs for habitat restoration in rural and urban sites in Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Focus on welcoming environmental justice communities into natural areas and enhancing ecosystem for culturally significant species, in part to support native lifeways and more sustainable recreational use. Subcontractor to ECT.
American Flood Coalition
CRC created state-to-local government technical assistance case study resources in support of AFC’s www.stateresilience.org. In order to make sure the flow of flood-related funding is reaching communities with greatest need, this project aimed to help state leaders across the US create technical assistance assets and structure flood resilience programs that develop local project pipelines.
CEMEX
Global construction materials company CEMEX developed its market-based "Patrimonio Hoy" solution to meet the housing needs of vulnerable families in urban and semi-urban areas, combining resilient and sustainable building with a savings program to improve communities and families’ quality of life. Given growing climate change impacts, the expansion of this program can help fill the climate resilience gaps that exist throughout the world. A case study describes this innovative housing solution, how it creates impactful climate resilience, and what paths CEMEX and Patrimonio Hoy might take going forward. Por favor haga clic aquí para el informe en español.
Environmental Defense Fund
CRC won the bid to consider finance options for Louisiana’s coastal restoration and protection, which will require $1B a year for 50 or more years. We identified funding and finance strategies that could support Louisiana’s natural resource restoration and/or protection projects or plans. To make it feasible to implement we also explored gaps and opportunities in governance, institutional, socio-political and fiscal foundations required to support finance flows. In collaboration with Restore the Mississippi River Delta Coalition.
Telesto Strategy
We stood up an innovative materiality platform for a start up software firm active in the financial services industry through the sustainability strategic consultancy Telesto Strategy where Joyce is a director.
Metropolitan Water Reclamation District
CRC is leading the global MWRD Energy Neutrality expert panel in partnership with Brown and Caldwell and Jacobs. They led stakeholder engagement (Council members, City departments, Community leaders) for the green infrastructure focused MWRD Stormwater Master Planning effort on Chicago’s South Side. In partnership with Jacobs Engineering.
National Association of Realtors
CRC was part of the winning bid to create NAR’s 10 year sustainability and resilience plan, defining trends, goals, targets, recommended actions, and an implementation plan for the largest trade association in the US. In partnership with Verdani Partners and Willis Towers Watson.
Sustainable Cities Network
CRC facilitated the creation of the Sustainable Cities Network 2021-2023 Strategic Plan including leading focus groups, steering committee workshops and polling.
Willis Towers Watson
CRC is a member of WTW’s Climate & Resilience Hub Strategic Advisory. We support their vanguard North American risk finance and resilience platform Climate Quantified™ to improve public sector service delivery, policy and budgets through risk disclosure and practical risk transfer for risks including extreme heat and flooding. Sectors include local government, affordable housing and real estate.
NOAA/CLIMATE RESILIENCE FUND
CRC worked with the American Society of Adaptation Professionals to create a Ready-to-Fund Resilience technical guide, toolkit and training to help local government practitioners design more fundable projects. This work was funded by a grant from the Climate Resilience Fund which was made possible in part by a NOAA cooperative agreement, is featured on the front page of the US Climate Resilience Toolkit (CRT), and supports the CRT's Steps to Resilience framework. In Spring 2023, CRC further developed and co-facilitated sessions for a Steps to Resilience training for local government practitioners across the US.
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Since 2020 CRC has been invited faculty to Harvard’s Executive Education Advanced Management Program in Real Estate, raising questions with global design leaders and offering solutions for real estate climate risk assessment and resilience building. In 2023, Joyce taught in person and gathered a group of experts to teach Some of the training is in person. Others of it is virtual, including this three part training on Real Estate Climate Action Risk Assessment, Resilience, and Net Zero Success
Institute for Building Technology and Safety
CRC works with the executive team and the board to continually monitor climate resilience strengths and opportunities, and position the nonprofit as a resilience leader to further their national and global market reach. We conceived of and led development efforts resulting in IBTS’ first philanthropic grant for the national Equitable Climate Resilience project. We provide expertise to the Keep Safe Miami and Keep Safe Florida projects and developing IIJA-related proposals.
Transportation Research Board
CRC provided resilience acumen to the National Cooperative Highway Research Program’s national summit, enhancing climate resilience and social equity throughout their resilience guide aimed at State Departments of Transportation. In partnership with WSP.
Subsequently, we collaborated with WSP to create a resilience consultation for the City of Chicago including research, partnerships and community collateral benefits.
Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation
CRC supported CMHC’s aspiration of housing affordability for all by 2030, leading focus groups, creating enterprise definitions, recommending partnerships and drafting content related to ensuring that homes and communities are climate compatible and resilient. In partnership with Willis Towers Watson.
Local Government Climate Leadership
Climate Resilience Consulting supports teams-including in Florida’s Miami Beach, Broward County and Alachua County, bringing extreme heat and flood mitigation, resilience finance and funding, affordable housing resilience and community engagement acumen to America’s communities.
Environmental Social Governance+ Resilience (ESG+R)
Climate Resilience Consulting pioneered the first Environment Social Governance Plus Resilience (ESG+R) strategies for our corporate clients starting in 2019.
Moving beyond ESG, our approach includes
Pre-disaster hazard mitigation strategy;
Risk management leadership;
Community building and
Science-based resilience-solutions.
Corporate Climate Resilience
We create social responsibility reports, identify social impact projects, create resilience case studies and lay the groundwork for support of climate resilience within executive structures and business operations.
In order to move from plans to action, communities and corporations need money. Gaps exist for instance between what sustainability and finance professionals know; between mainstream projects that ignore climate risk and resilience projects; between near-term government priorities and long-term climate impacts; and between equitable solutions and finance flows. We bridge these gaps through training, research, policy development, and relationship-building.
GREATER NEW ORLEANS FOUNDATION
As part of its Next 100 Years Challenge, GNOF partners engaged CRC to train local government practitioners in Southeast Louisiana on public and private funding methods. Subsequently CRC was invited to provide subject matter expertise during design workshops, helping nonprofit and local government leaders develop stronger grant applications for their green infrastructure and community building projects.
Natural Resources Defense Council
CRC assessed bond issuances in the Southeastern US and considered how to influence policy and future finance to increase social equity-based climate resilience.
NOAA/Climate Resilience Fund
CRC was part of the winning bid, working with the American Society of Adaptation Professionals to create a Ready-to-Fund Resilience technical guide, toolkit and training for local government.
Urban Sustainability Directors Network
CRC established a resilience finance training platform for USDN’s 260 North American local government members, creating interactive webinars and workshops on the fundamentals of project finance, methods to bridge between chief financial and chief sustainability officers and the mechanisms of the bond industry.
Subsequently, we created guidance on how to justify sustainability in an era of local government austerity and identified funding and financing options for Resilience Hubs and All Hazard Mitigation Plan projects. We worked with select American cities on reparations cost benefit analysis for climate resilience.
ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION
Co-leading a Bellagio convening with Institute for Sustainable Communities, CRC gathered credit rating, municipal bond and federal funding experts to create a Blueprint for Action to Finance Urban Resilience which bolstered national and international resilience by recommending financial services industry policies, procedures and funding streams.
Subsequently, we informed the Resilience Brokers Programme and the Global Transformation Roundtable as invited participants at Bellagio convenings.
The World Bank
CRC co-created a Market Trends and Investor Landscape Analysis for a Global Resilience Investment Fund with Four Twenty Seven, performing an investor survey and investigating innovative debt and equity investment tools for natural hazard, infrastructure, and small and medium sized enterprise resilience investments.
REGIONAL PLAN ASSOCIATION
As New York, New Jersey and Connecticut were finalizing the RPA Forth Regional Plan, CRC mined creative ideas from finance industry leaders to create the framework for an Adaptation and Resilience Trust Fund. The foundational report created implementation pathways for governance and funding to increase the region’s coastal adaptation to climate change.
Bay Area Resilient by Design
CRC created the finance advisory RFP to guide Bay Area resilience development project funding and finance and to help design teams understand their financing options, influencing project and design decisions in the Bay Area Resilient by Design competition.
How do you measure resilience? Unlike many other sustainability tactics like waste reduction, greenhouse gas mitigation, transit ridership and water conservation, there is no unique measure of “climate resilience.” We have been on the leading edge of the field of climate resilience measurement for 10 years, helping investors, governments and philanthropy to set stretch resilience goals, communicate between stakeholders, help leaders make prudent decisions and evaluate progress over time, keeping in mind the future scenarios for climate change, project lifecycles and risk ownership. We create tools and platforms and advise.
WillIam Penn Foundation
We created a rapid climate risk assessment tool to assess climate justice, vulnerability and resilience opportunities in the Philadelphia region and to analyze the foundation’s current green infrastructure, school, and art grant portfolio, identifying opportunities for further climate justice and climate resilience. We created an equitable resilience report, practitioners guide and case studies of the Foundation’s resilience impact.
ND-Global adaptation Initiative
Having conceived of, raised funds for and initiated the Urban Adaptation Assessment, CRC created a global advisor group and led a capstone event as part of the launch of the 260 US city resilience assessment. We drew the group together around shared interests at the intersections of climate change risk, social inequity and resilience opportunity. Subsequently, we created a communications roll out strategy for the assessment.
Winrock International
CRC worked with food industry experts to create an Agriculture Resilience Investment Screen for a Global Environment Fund project The screen enables a resilience assessment that privileges investments that create climate risk mitigation and resilience opportunity in least developed countries. The aim is to improve climate resilience to ensure long-term sustainable increases in agriculture productivity and incomes through an agricultural resilience fund led by an African hedge fund manager.
Enterprise Community Partners
CRC created and led Enterprise’s Equitable Climate Resilience Building Resilient Futures Convening, a gathering that brought together the housing nonprofit’s executive leadership with resilience mavens from around the country and led to a first-of-its-kind internal social equity/climate resilience strategy.
Separately, we were Enterprise’s resilience expert for Housing and Urban Development’s CDBG-DR Problem Solving Clinic for state and local government grantees, training government leaders responsible for multi-million dollar community risk mitigation projects. We were the finance and resilience advisor for the Keep Safe Miami and Keep Safe Florida Projects via IBTS. We are an advisor to the national Resilience Academies, including with Housing Partnership Network, also via IBTS.
In 2023, we are co-facilitating workshops for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)/Enterprise Climate Communities Technical Assistance Program, including related to social equity and community and stakeholder engagement. We are also providing direct technical assistance to HUD clients on climate resilience-related projects.
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