Twentieth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Impoverished and under-served communities are often exposed to the worst environmental and climate hazards. Identifying these communities and building their resilience capacity to withstand the events is an important justice aspect of environmental management. Existing models and tools were used to determine parish-level resilience to natural hazards for southeastern Louisiana (US) parishes subject to flooding, hurricanes, and other potential natural climatic events. Through consultation with state officials and local community groups, candidate environmental justice (EJ) and social justice (SJ) communities were selected to develop resilience capacity enhancement plans to address potential adverse parish and community outcomes of natural hazard events. Interactions with regional planning commissions, local government, local NGOs, and citizenry were completed through community engagement sessions to determine strategies for resilience capacity enhancement. Plans and approaches for their implementation were determined as a result of the community engagement workshops. Continuing studies will monitor the success of their strategy implementations and assess the transferability of the approach to other candidate communities.