The research team surveyed a wide range of literature to inform the perspective and baseline of this work, focusing on three main parallel workstreams.

CRP focused on three main concurrent workstreams:

1. Desktop Research: Included reviewing a case set of 14 State program grant guidelines, analyzing historical distribution of California Climate Investments (CCI) and California Natural Resource Agency (CNRA) bond funding, and looking at indirect stakeholder perspectives from the 2020 Annual Planning Survey, and the recent OPR regional workshops.
2. Stakeholder Engagement: Conducted from January through April 2022, this process included assessing responses through a new survey and conducting primary stakeholder interviews with climate resilience experts from the nine regions across the State, the regions of which were outlined by California’s 4th Climate Change Assessment.
3. Ad Hoc Working Group: Convened a cohort of 25 cross-industry climate resilience leaders, who provided feedback and guidance on the above two activities through four meetings over the course of the project.

This body of work has broadly explored climate resilience needs from the State’s own comprehensive climate assessment^[1] and strategy^[2] processes to diverse perspectives on risks facing California,^[3] frameworks for action,^[4] effective adaptation project development,^[5] and realizing more equity in adaptation efforts^[6] and engagement approaches.^[7]  Additionally, there’s a strong body of work more specifically addressing funding^[8], ^[9],10 and governance^[10],^[11],^[12],^[13] needs and barriers including pointed critiques of disparities in funding and governance approaches.^[14] Within this literature and beyond, a range of potential strategies for better adaptation governance and funding have been explored and/or proposed including targeted investments^[15],^[16], coordination models^[17],^[18],^[19] and technical assistance strategies.^[20],^[21] These studies, whitepapers, and frameworks were echoed and complimented by our own recent effort to collate stakeholder input and outline priorities for resilience funding in California.^[22] 

CRP started this process by breaking down larger goals and interests into two major question areas: funding (design and deployment of), and governance (structures for effective resilience support). The rationale for this two-pronged approach was in partly due to the structure of OPR’s funding programs, the Regional Resilience Planning and Implementation Grant Program and the Community Resilience and Heat Grant Program, as well as a recognition that effective outcomes are likely to be enabled through both how the funding is distributed and who participates and benefits from the available funding that is made available.  Given the increasing scale of climate impacts, development of more effective Statewide support for  resilience requires establishing mechanisms for funding and support that can span a wide variety of scales, issues, and perspectives. It is widely acknowledged^[23],^[24], ^[25] that climate change cannot solely be addressed within the jurisdictional and institutional boundaries that exist today, but new forms of collaboration, governance, and coordination are needed.

Much of this work, particularly the governance and funding studies conducted as part of the 4th Climate Assessment process^[26],^[27], reflects a broad-based synthesis from hundreds of local, regional, State perspectives on the range of challenges and shortcomings with current resilience funding, regional collaboration and governance vehicles. As such, it reflects a backbone perspective informed by widespread community-level input. Looking across the full body of work, CRP identified a few general themes that informed our outlook on the value of and approach to this landscape analysis.

• Capacity: Across scales from community based organizations (CBOs) to regional organizations, many institutions need greater capacity to be able to adequately address climate resilience and equity concerns. Baseline capacity is frequently a barrier to even accessing and managing funding, in addition to the actual implementation.
• Alignment: Throughout the State, jurisdictions are missing opportunities to align their planning and implementation processes for more cohesive approaches to resilience.
• Community Building: Many areas and jurisdictions need to invest in building trust with their local communities and with each other at the regional scale. Building more collaborative partnerships is necessary to facilitate planning and project alignment and maximize the benefits of climate and equity efforts.
• Equity: A critical topic at all levels in California, equity has received much attention, yet many grant programs, governance mechanisms, and partnerships struggle to mainstream equity in their institutions and programming.

While very diverse and significant in scope, the existing resources we have identified were conducted in the absence of specific opportunities, and as such, lacked a focus on specifically informing design of funding streams in order to realize impact. With this in mind, our team defined a set of more tactical research questions that could guide our landscape analysis in ways designed to best reveal design and implementation recommendations for State funding programs.

Based on this comprehensive assessment, CRP defined a series of questions that would guide our funding and governance research activities. The eight research questions developed are focused on the funding of climate resilience activities and the governance that supports, or inhibits, climate resilience progress. Across all of these questions, we wanted to understand variations in perspective on specific climate risks, and how funding and governance might respond to them. These questions were developed based on input from OPR, as well as the extensive expertise of CRP on related topics.

While we articulated a clear set of research questions to pursue, as the team engaged with the breadth of primary (direct stakeholder engagement) and secondary (desktop research) activities, it became increasingly clear that no one question could be explicitly answered at high resolution through the defined research activities given the time and access available to us. Increasingly, we saw and heard partial responses, incomplete or inaccessible data as a factor inhibiting the fullest picture of the landscape. Rather than a barrier to our work, we came to see this as a finding in itself. While it might be ideal to know exactly where funding has gone for what and to whom across every climate risk area and region of California, the current structure of disaggregated funding streams and incompatible outcome tracking makes this impossible. Similarly, while it might be important to understand the dynamics of regional scale governance and collaboration across the State, the nature of existing regional relationships, power dynamics, and status quo perspectives makes it difficult for stakeholders to describe what should be when they are still trying to understand how climate change is affecting them.

Based on this experience and reality, we turned from a more explicit throughline of research questions to outcomes towards an approach that used the questions as guidance in more general terms. As has been described in the outcomes section, for each research activity (both primary and secondary) we sought to address what questions we could but let the results — including gaps in clarity — speak for themselves which ultimately allowed us to both pull out important recommendations for State program design and identify some broader structural gaps.

To ground the desktop research and stakeholder engagement efforts, CRP drew on the desktop literature to develop a set of 14 funding and governance characteristics to help guide the other workstreams.

Given our intent and goals for this project, CRP began to define a vocabulary for funding and governance mechanisms that can guide input, feedback, and ultimately impact. Drawing on the initial set of foundational reports and studies that have already distilled a wide variety of input on what support for climate resilience should do and how, we developed a set of funding and governance “characteristics” that ideally should be supported and mobilized through pending State funding mechanisms. Unsurprisingly, some commonalities have emerged across these two domains (e.g., issues of “equity” and “participation” emerge as a critical element in both).

These studies recognize the aspirations of current policy and funding, while calling attention to significant deficiencies in the status quo approaches. Taken as a whole, we consistently see that the structure and delivery of State programming aimed at funding projects and supporting regional collaboration significantly impacts who participates, what they can accomplish, and the catalytic breadth of outcomes.^[28]

The intention in developing this “a priori” set of funding and governance characteristics was to provide the research team with analytic frameworks that were able to guide both desktop and direct stakeholder research in several ways. By establishing a common set of characteristics, we can better compare findings across sources. The characteristics also grounded the project in an existing body of knowledge so as to better inform conversations with stakeholders.

Out of this literature review, we identified 14 characteristics within three major groupings for funding and 12 characteristics within 5 categories for governance (details are provided in Appendix B).

Table 1.1: Funding Characteristics

Table 1.2: Governance Characteristics

State grant program guidelines and related application materials provide an important perspective on how State agencies intend to address and fund climate resilience challenges. The goal of this case review was to develop an initial comparison of programs to 1) assess the utility of a characteristics-based approach to grant program assessment, and 2) use this assessment to identify possible strengths and gaps. A high-level description of the criteria, the grant programs selected, and the rubric for evaluation are provided below, further details are provided in Appendix E.

Evaluation Rubric

The team developed a rubric based on the 14 funding characteristics described above. Qualitative review instructions were created for each characteristic to assess how closely “aligned” the guidance was to the ideal characteristics. Guidelines that were “not well-aligned: with the ideal lacked language that supported the characteristics or provided only status-quo approaches. Guidelines that were “somewhat aligned” possessed a moderate level of features and language that reflected the intent of a given characteristic. Guidelines that were “closely aligned" included strong language and clear guidance that linked well to the ideal for the characteristic.^[29] Close alignment in this review does not mean they are a perfect or necessarily better program, but rather a strong example of the type of program guidance grants might consider if they are interested in supporting that characteristic. Further, as noted above, the funding characteristics were designed to represent idealized attributes. Therefore, this review process was not designed as a means to rank order grant programs, but rather was intended to build understanding of opportunities for improvement.

Selection Criteria of Grant Program Guidelines

Due to CRP’s limited time and capacity, we could only review a limited set of guidelines. To select a representative set, we developed the following selection criteria for guidelines that are:

1. Representative of different funding activities (i.e., implementation, planning, capacity building);
2. Topically distributed across principally climate-resilience subjects (e.g., wildfire, sea-level rise, energy) along with some general resilience subjects (e.g. housing, transportation);^[30] and/or are
3. Ad Hoc Working Group recommendations of grant programs to review.

State Program Grant Guidelines Reviewed

Based on these criteria, CRP reviewed 14^[31] guidelines:

1. Caltrans - Sustainable Transportation Planning (FY 2022-21). This $34 million grant program is dedicated to California sustainable transportation planning projects.
2. Department of Water Resources - Integrated Regional Water Management Grant Program (2022). This $510 million grant program has been funding projects that help the State with long-term water needs since 2014.
3. Coastal Conservancy - Wildfire Resilience Projects (FY 2021-22). This $10 million grant program is dedicated to wildfire resilience implementation projects.
4. CalFire - Fire Prevention Grants Program Procedural Guide (FY 2021-22). This $120 million program is funded by the State of California General Fund and California Climate Investments (CCI). Funding is geared towards fire prevention projects.
5. California Coastal Commission - Local Assistance Grant Program (2022). Since 2013, $8.25 million has been awarded to local governments for planning for sea level rise and climate change.
6. CalRecycle - Food Waste Prevention and Rescue Grant Program (FY 2019-20). This program is part of the CA Climate Investments program funds (CCI). Projects are dedicated to food waste prevention and food rescue projects, with $4million available for FY 2019-20.
7. California Strategic Growth Council (SGC) - Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) (2022) - TCC was established in 2016 by Assembly Bill 2722 to fund neighborhood level implementation projects that reduce GHG emissions with a focus on disadvantaged communities. Round 4 funding for FY 2021-22 allocates $115 million.
8. California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) - Urban Greening Program (2022) - Funded through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) and General Fund, this program’s $47.5 million is allocated to urban greening projects that reduce GHG emissions.
9. California Strategic Growth Council (SGC) - Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program (AHSC) (2021) - The 6th round of funding included $405 million for land-use, housing, transportation, and agricultural land preservation projects that reduce GHG emissions.
10. California Department of Housing and Community Development - Regional Early Action Planning Grants (REAP) (2021) - REAP 2.0 provides $600 million from the Coronavirus Fiscal Recovery Fund of 2021 and the General Fund for housing and climate projects.
11. California Department of Housing and Community Development - Local Early Action Planning (LEAP) (2019) - The HCD allocated $119 million for the LEAP program for one-time grants to update planning documents and implement process improvements.
12. Department of Water Resources - Sustainable Groundwater Management (SGM) Grant Program (2021) - This program allocates about $350 million for planning and implementation projects dedicated to supporting regional groundwater agencies to comply with California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
13. Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) - Building REsilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) and Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) (2021) - $700 million for FY 2020 to research-supported, proactive investment in community resilience.
14. Caltrans - Clean California Local Grant Program (FY 2021/22) - Through the General Fund, Caltrans allocated $296 million dollars for projects that beautify and clean up local communities.

Review Process

For each grant program, team members read the guidelines, reviewed the grant website, and in some cases, reviewed supplementary materials to define guidance language that related to each characteristic and assign a general rating for the characteristic. From individual reviews, CRP then looked across the suite of reviews to identify commonalities and differences across the programs looking for  promising practices to highlight for future program design. Note this assessment process is preliminary as it is the first attempt at applying the characteristics rubric and the short project timeline limited reviews to 1-2 hours per guideline. Findings are described in the next section.

Historical distribution of climate resilience related funding from State programs provides an important high-level perspective on what funding is going where, which can help understand uptake and gaps. Program-level data in an accessible format (e.g., at the project level with location information) is limited, however, CRP was able to collect and organize a total of $38 billion dollars in grant program funding by region and climate topic, encompassing 120,000 projects since 1999.

Selecting Funding Distribution Data

In collaboration with Ad Hoc Working Group members, the team sought out funding distribution data that ideally included the following information for each grant program before moving forward with analysis:

• CRP agreed that the following information was necessary for evaluation:

• Agency and Program
• Project and Grantee
• Location and Region (ideally city and county)
• Amount of funding

• CRP also identified the following attributes as desired criteria, if ready and easily accessible:

• Project description
• Amount dedicated to priority or disadvantaged communities
• Any additional tracking details that would help identify the funding activity (e.g., planning, implementation, capacity building, research projects) or climate resilience subject (e.g. wildfire, sea-level rise, urban greening etc.). We did not receive information on project type for all data, but did for climate subjects.

Distribution Data Reviewed

Based on the criteria above, the distribution data research focused on two main resources: 1) the California Climate Investments (CCI) programs and 2) the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) bond programs. We chose these data sources as they fit the criteria, are publicly available, and include project-level data that is location-based from across the State. Additional details about each funding source can be found below.

California Climate Investments (CCI) (2015-2021)

The first source included is the Cumulative List of Implemented Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) Projects as reported by Agencies Administering California Climate Investments (Project data as of May 31, 2021).^[32] This CCI dataset includes over 110,000 items totaling 6.7 billion dollars.

California Natural Resources Agency (CRNA) Bond Data (1996-2022)

As the CCI data is primarily mitigation focused, significant historic funding for non-mitigation resilience projects were not represented. he team compiled a second source from the CNRA Bond Accountability Uunit.^[33], -- The “CNRA” dataset this includes over 10,500 projects, totalling $32.5 billion across Propositions 1, 12, 13, 1E, 204, 40, 50, 68, and 84.^[34]

Analysis Process

Both CCI and CNRA data were coded and analyzed by region and by climate resilience subject (e.g., air quality, sea level rise, urban greening, etc.). Given the limited project timeline and the level of details in the CCI and CNRA data, this process 1) did not include all possible climate funding sources, 2) applied subjective decisions regarding inclusion or regional coding of projects based on general geographic information, and 3) applied high-level tentative coding for subjects due to limited details at the dataset level. Findings from the data analysis are provided in the following section. 

Guided by the characteristics and the eight initial research questions, CRP reviewed qualitative datasets to complement the CCI and CNRA Bond funding distribution data. This qualitative input was sought to add to all research questions and answer questions that could not be answered purely by data.

When selecting the qualitative datasets, CRP looked for information that was readily available and accessible that would provide insight into climate resilience funding and/or governance issues across the State. The comprehensive California Statewide Landscape Analysis (SLA) survey that was developed as part of this project and was completed by climate resilience practitioners helped to fill some of the gaps of the qualitative datasets.

Qualitative Datasets Reviewed

To provide qualitative regional information about climate resilience risks and gaps in funding and governance, the team analyzed the results from the following datasets:

• The 2020 Annual Planning Survey feedback
• Summer 2021 OPR State Adaptation Strategy Workshops that were hosted by region
• California SLA Survey

Annual Planning Survey (APS) (2020)

The APS^[35] is a voluntary survey distributed by the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) to the planning departments of cities and counties. Respondents were asked a series of questions, with each question having a subquestion for different topics, including greenhouse gas emission mitigation, health equity, and housing production.  CRP analyzed 319 responses of 539 possible city/county responses from the 2020 results, with respondents coded and grouped by region. CRP’s analysis focused on response categories on the topics of “climate resilience and adaptation,” and “environmental justice” in order to focus on response categories most relevant to our research questions. Some counties are divided between the OPR-designated regions. Cities within these counties were parsed into their appropriate regions, but county governments of split regions were not included (only 4 responses). Additionally, some regions had a low number of respondents; Sierra Nevada and North Coast had 15 responses each, while Los Angeles had 101 responses. CRP acknowledges that these discrepancies in sample size require the insights from this analysis to be taken in that context.

California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) and the Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) State Adatapation Workshops (2021)

In June of 2021, the CNRA and OPR held a series of regional workshops to obtain feedback from stakeholders on the Draft California Climate Adaptation Strategy. Ten workshops were held throughout the State in each of the nine California regions, with the Sierra Nevadas divided into north and south regions. The total number of participants in each workshop were not published, but based on the number of individual responses received in questions, it appears that more populous regions like Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area had significantly more participants than less populous regions, such as Inland Deserts and North Coast. As each region had varying levels of participation, this summary is provided as a snapshot of one data point we analyzed.  CRP organized review of the content by region to identify overall themes and specific regional observations. CRP focused on the survey questions most closely aligned with the initial research questions including unique resilience challenges, draft adaptation strategies, and how the State can help regions adapt.

Between January to April 2022, CRP convened a sequence of stakeholder engagement activities within each of California’s nine regions, as defined by the 4th Climate Assessment, to enhance understanding of existing planning, implementation, and governance challenges.

Approach

Spearheading the stakeholder engagement portion of this project, the RCC contingent of the CRP team was divided into three regional teaming pairs, with each teaming pair managing research and engagement of three regions. In developing an appropriate stakeholder engagement plan bespoke to each region, teams conducted extensive primary and secondary research to generate an overview of funding and governance issues and identify key stakeholder archetypes (e.g., regional entities, nonprofits, city-wide organizations, tribal organizations) and leaders for engagement.

In providing visibility of efforts throughout the stakeholder engagement process, regional teams met biweekly to coalesce around activities, findings, and any challenges encountered. For managing regional stakeholder relationships, a database was developed to track stakeholders by organization, region, and function in climate resilience work. Teams also used the Ad Hoc Working Group as a network to elicit feedback on stakeholder engagement efforts, and validate emergent themes and recommendations.

Methods

Methods of engagement varied by region and approach, and included roundtables, one-on-one interviews, and focus groups--all virtual due to in-person meeting constraints brought on by COVID-19. In some instances, regional teams were able to leverage stakeholders’ existing forums (i.e., monthly meetings, board meetings) to connect with a captive audience of climate resilience practitioners. Harnessing the virtual environment enabled teams to use a blend of interactive polling activities, specifically through the Mentimeter tool, to generate robust discussion around funding and governance challenges. Though roundtables and focus groups proved effective in casting a wide net of participants, one-on-one interviews with regional climate resilience leaders were by far the most common and effective approach to elicit deeper feedback.

Questions

In leveraging key questions on funding and governance generated by the desktop research, regional teams centered their engagement around the following:

To collectively synthesize findings at the end of this project phase, teams grouped their extensive results by funding and governance challenges, key recommendations, and relevant case studies to bolster context.  

SLA Survey

To complement the desktop research, indirect stakeholder feedback, and regional stakeholder engagement meetings, CRP developed a survey based on the research questions and characteristics. The survey’s targeted audience was primarily climate resilience stakeholders, including representatives of CBOs, municipalities, and their partners. Requests were distributed through Statewide list-servs, on LinkedIn and Twitter, and through direct outreach to stakeholders (including the Working Group and regional stakeholders engaged as part of the research). In total, the survey received 169 responses. The survey included questions about organizational structure, partnerships for climate resilience, focus areas for respondents’ climate resilience efforts, perspectives on regional leadership, and reflections on existing and future State funding program design. An imbalanced distribution of regional responses prohibited regional level analysis of results, so results are presented as a whole.

The Ad Hoc Working Group supported project goals by participating in four 90-minute meetings via Zoom; reviewing and providing feedback on preliminary research findings; and advising on Statewide and regional stakeholder engagement approaches. CRP also requested feedback from Working Group members on the development of the SLA survey and requested members complete a test run through the survey.

Process

The Working Group was composed of 25 members as representatives from each of California’s nine key regions. The four meetings centered on the following agenda items highlighted in the table below. The list of Working Group participants are provided in Appendix A.

In advance of every meeting, the Working Group received pre-reading materials and pre-meeting discussion questions for consideration to help inform the discussions. Following each meeting, CRP reviewed the input and integrated it into the direction and findings of the project.

Overall Summary

Grant programs were reviewed according to aspects defined in the characteristics rubric, but these reviews represented the use of this rubric for a limited selection of grants. Within this pool, grants may be referred to more or less aligned with the characteristics, but given wider sampling and more experience with this process, our initial results might change. CRP also acknowledges that the pool of grant programs may not be representative of State grants in general, as many of the programs were chosen for review based on Working Group or stakeholder input, which may influence the frequency of alignment findings and may not be applicable to State grant programs as a whole.

The chart below shows all the grant programs reviewed, with colored boxes indicating how closely aligned CRP found each program to be according to each characteristic. Deeper colors represent closer alignment while yellow shows programs with mixed levels of alignment and gray shows characteristics the team was not able to review deeply enough to assess alignment.

Overall, the chart shows some grant programs which are more closely aligned with funding characteristics across categories, such as the TCC grant program and the AHSC grant program. Some were more difficult to assess overall, such as the LEAP grant. More detailed patterns for each grouping of characteristics are discussed below in each characteristic subsection.

Table 2.1: Characteristics Alignment to State Grant Programs

Characteristic Category: Funding Source

The first major group of characteristics concerns the structure of the funding source itself. Across various sources, how the funding is structured has a significant impact on who and what is funded. Funding source includes the following characteristics:

• Dependability
• Accessibility
• Equity, and
• Continuous Learning

For each of the characteristics, we identified commonalities and differences across the programs and have identified what may be the good practices to adapt moving forward. Notably, CRP found that many grant programs did not align closely with “continuous learning” or “dependability”. There were mixed results in the “equity” and “accessibility” characteristics, with more programs in closer alignment with these two characteristics, but still many programs less aligned. The TCC grant program had the closest alignment with the characteristics in this category. Other programs, such as the LEAP, while strong in other categories, did not align closely with the characteristics of the funding source section, which  may be due to the newness of the program.

Dependability

The dependability characteristic describes how dependable the funding source is over time. Several of the literature sources reviewed in the development of the characteristics note that regularity is critical to allow applicants to build understanding, compete for funding, and develop appropriate projects.

Few of the grant programs reviewed (two out of 14) were found to be in close alignment with the dependability characteristic. There was considerable variation across program websites in how clearly they communicated the availability of the grant over time. Some grant programs did not explicitly State whether previous rounds of funding had occurred or would continue, nor was it clear if grant awardees would be eligible to apply in the future.. Program websites that Stated their previous funding rounds generally also posted previous application materials. However, the level of detail of materials posted varied, with some agencies only posting previous guidelines, and others also including previous awardees or other information. Some of the programs provide dedicated summaries for how guidelines have changed annually, based on stakeholder feedback or changing priorities.

CalRecycle’s Food Waste Prevention and Rescue Grant Program took an approach to dependability that differed from others in the reviewed pool of grant programs. This program allows for existing grantees to apply for additional funding, but they must include in their proposal how the applicant will not double count the progress towards their goals and how projects are distinct from previous awards. This not only improves dependability but also accessibility, another characteristic, because organizations know they have an option for additional funding through the same program.

By posting materials from previous grant rounds to the website, new grantees can see how programs have changed over time as well as which projects are considered awardable projects, which helps new projects to create winnable proposals. One-time grants may be helpful to disburse funds quickly, but annual funding increases a program’s alignment with CRP’s definition of dependability.

Accessibility

Related to dependability is how accessible the grant program is for varied audiences. This characteristic can be evaluated in a number of ways. CRP focused the accessibility review on user readability and eligibility.

There was a wide variation in the accessibility of basic program information across different websites. Some programs identified goals, eligibility, and previous awardees, while other programs did not include much information at all. The Sustainable Transportation Grant program provides a summary of the program at the beginning of the guidelines to provide a quick overview of the grant in a digestible format. Caltrans’ Clean California grant program has a two page fact sheet on the website with an overview, a list of eligible projects, and eligible applicants.

Some of the grant programs are very specific in limiting who is eligible while others include broad lists which seems to promote a wider range of applicants who can receive funding. Other grant programs identify key eligible organizations but allow for partnering organizations, such as government agencies, to bring in nonprofits or businesses to compete.

CRP found 5 grants that offered technical assistance and/or consultations regarding questions or approaches with the distributing agency, which is a method to increase accessibility for those less familiar with the program or process. The California Coastal Commission, for example, allows potential applicants to ask for assistance directly.

Most of the grant programs are clearly written, but the guidelines vary in length. For example, LEAP and REAP have shorter than average applications that are noncompetitive, accessible, and have limited rubrics in order to quickly disburse funds. A couple of programs, including the DWR programs, have more complicated guidelines as projects need to be consistent with multiple local and State ordinances. Some programs are highly technical and/or require significant administrative capacity that inherently prohibits lower capacity and lower resourced applicants from participating. Some programs facilitate accessibility by providing helpful resources and tools for the application development process. For example, TCC included a separate attachment with a narrative rubric, example scores and guiding questions. This may be time consuming for the organizations to develop but helps applicants think through their responses.

Compared with other grant programs reviewed, DWR’s Sustainable Groundwater Management (SGM) grant program took extra measures to provide accessibility. Guidelines include an appendix with useful web links for program resources, review tools, plans for compliance, California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) handbook, Climate Change information, Department of Industrial Relations, Tribal Consultation, etc. Directions are very clear and organized. The program language is digestible and readable. DWR also has an eligibility criteria checklist to ensure compliance and demonstrate where to include the requested information. An agreement template is also included so that expectations are clear for which proposals will likely be funded. In addition, DWR’s program sets aside $2 million dollars for technical assistance for tribal organizations and underrepresented communities.

Programs with tiered access points, planning or technical assistance support, and dedicated funding for under-resourced applicants are going to be more accessible. It would be helpful if State grants had a consistent approach to summarizing the grant so that the basic information is accessible for time constrained organizations. For example, the landing page for every grant could include some high-level overview which is in a consistent format across agencies. Information could include program goals, eligible applicants, eligible activities, non-eligible activities, cost share or match allocations, identify if it is a one-time or yearly grant, the location of helpful resources, past awardees, technical assistance resources, or other items that applicants deem important. Posting FAQs to the website can also serve as a helpful summary, with questions about the overall structure as a way to summarize the program if a separate fact sheet is not provided.

Pre-application deadline workshops and webinars are also helpful to support accessibility. Posting the recordings and summaries to the website can inform future rounds of funding and increase accessibility.

Equity Alignment

Equity alignment is a characteristic that is generally present in the intention of many funding streams, but there are very different extents to which equity is or might be considered in the grant materials and project requirements themselves. CRP found equity alignment to be challenging to assess, and the team acknowledges that due to time constraints, only a limited number of qualities that promote equity were examined for each grant. Acknowledging that equity is larger than these few categories, and cannot be evaluated deeply in the same timeframe as many of the other characteristics present, the team chose to focus on the following aspects: set aside funding exclusively dedicated to disadvantaged communities (e.g., DACs, defined by CalEnviroScreen, DWR or other agencies), tribes, disadvantaged unincorporated communities (DUCs), or other underserved groups; the level of active, sustained participation or buy-in required from the community; whether tribes must be federally recognized to apply; whether project activities were required to address inequities, whether equity was an evaluation criteria of applications, and any other unique features of the program which might enhance equity.

According to these elements, CRP found that 4 of 14 of the grants reviewed contained detailed specifications on two or more of the above elements.

Some of the most common ways grants prioritized equity were by setting aside funding allocated for tribes or for DACs. Most State grants specified that California Native American Tribes (a term which includes both federally recognized and unrecognized tribes) were eligible to apply, but some were less clear. With many tribes in California unrecognized by the Federal government, it is important to be clear when all tribes can apply, especially when operating through Federal funding sources like CalOES and FEMA’s BRIC program. Funding set asides for tribes were not as common the grants reviewed as set asides for disadvantaged communities.

Additionally, there are different criteria for defining disadvantaged communities, according to different agencies and definitions. Some of those definitions may be more appropriate for different types of communities, and some communities may qualify as disadvantaged under one definition, but not another.

Another important measure of equity that varied across grants was the level of community involvement required. Several grants required demonstration of community input at the outset of the project, however,  many grant programs did not appear to require sustained community participation through the project lifespan. Some programs also had more robust definitions of what community outreach or input into the project should look like. Many grant programs required a certain number of awardees to be located in or show benefit to disadvantaged communities, but few specified priority for projects that showed partnership with community organizations or whose project idea originated from the community - an important specification to ensure community voices are not just represented but are driving on-the-ground implementation.

The TCC program details project elements such as community benefits, community engagement, and technical assistance. In the planning and implementation project guidelines, they outline the criteria and point system for each piece that will be evaluated, providing a higher level of transparency in their methodology for selecting projects. The TCC Mapping tool shows disadvantaged census tracts based on data from CalEnviroScreen 4.0 and 3.0 and low-income Census Tracts defined by AB1550. There is also a video tutorial and story map to explain the mapping tool. The TCC Benefits calculator can walk the user through estimating co-benefits and key variables in addition to the GHG emissions reduction, showing detailed outputs. All TCC projects must foster job creation and the program provided a summary of the major changes by section between Rounds three and 4 on the website. TCC programs require applicants to develop a collaborative stakeholder structure, which is unique among the grants CRP reviewed to ensure stakeholder voices help govern the project. All of these specifications and tools influence the equity outcomes of the program through increased clarity, accessibility, partnership and impact.

It must be noted that there are many other ways to make projects and outcomes more equitable, and the scope of this review was not able to encompass all manners of equity consideration. Through the lens that CRP used, the reviewed grants could generally improve their specificity on inclusion and participation from communities and the inclusiveness of their definitions of disadvantaged communities. This pool of set aside funding could be more inclusive if applicants were allowed to choose from more than one definition of a disadvantaged community, such as CalEnvironScreen, DWR, or even the CDC’s data. While equity is described as a feature in many of the reviewed grants, only a few of the grants reviewed provided more careful consideration of implementing equity in multiple phases of the project requirements, beyond the initial start-up phase. The characteristic of accessibility is also related to equity; comments on accessibility can be found earlier in this section.

Continuous Learning

Finally, within the funding source category, CRP identified continuous learning as a desirable element of the funding source. Climate resilience support is constantly changing, and if grant programs have no mechanisms to evaluate outcomes, share successes and challenges, and evolve to better serve their goals, they are less likely to realize intended outcomes.

For example, three of the 15 programs are new or one-time programs and therefore have not had materials to share. It appears that 10 of the 15 grant programs provided materials from previous rounds of reporting. Of those programs, only Caltrans’ Sustainable Transportation Grant program posted unsuccessful grant applicants to the website for prior funds, in addition to winning awards. Those unsuccessful applicants are also encouraged to request a debriefing from Caltrans.

CRP found only 5 programs that publicly posted information about webinars or workshops for potential applicants: CalOES’ BRIC; CalFire’s Fire Prevention; SGC’s AHSC, and TCC; and LEAP grants. Compared with other programs reviewed, SGC posted more materials related to grant program workshops (i.e., TCC and AHSC) and has an annual process for improving the guidelines. For both the TCC and AHSC grant programs, SGC solicited feedback from public, State, local, nonprofit, and applicant groups over several months. They then posted summaries of how the guidelines have changed between years in response to stakeholder feedback, to address State priorities, and to ensure AHSC projects continue to advance sustainable development best practices across California’s communities. This shows that the funding source has incorporated previous learnings to improve their processes, and improves accessibility for returning applicants.

Despite the importance of this element, not many of the grant programs the team reviewed had publicly visible feedback structures. This lack of visibility into continuous learning elements led to less comprehensive results on this characteristic overall. Providing past application results to new applicants is one way to support a learning process, by allowing new applicants to learn from previous program outcomes and improve projects in a self-paced manner. This aspect of continuous learning is related to the characteristic of accessibility because by highlighting previous projects, new applicants have an easier starting point. These activities improve transparency so that future applicants can learn from chosen (and unsuccessful) projects.

Characteristic Category: Funded Activities

The second group of characteristics that emerged concern what kinds of activities are allowable within a given grant program. If allowable and prioritized activities do not sync up with community resilience needs, the program may still fund projects, but their ability to lead to lasting resilience outcomes may be constrained. To assess the grant guidelines within this major group, we evaluated the following characteristics:

• Evidence-based and Concrete Resilience Activities
• Regionalism
• Vertical and Horizontal Collaboration
• Participation
• Capacity Building
• Training
• Communications/Education

For each of the characteristics, we identified commonalities and differences across the programs and have identified what may be good practices to adapt moving forward. As the largest group of characteristics, funded activities had mixed results across programs. Participation, capacity building, and training had some of the lowest levels of alignment. Evidence-based and concrete and regional needs had closer levels of alignment across programs. The grant programs that had the closest levels of alignment in funded activities were AHSC and TCC.

Evidence-based and Concrete Resilience Activities

The first characteristic within the group of funded activities is that funding should support evidence-based and concrete resilience activities. While it makes sense that climate resilience funding needs to support project activities grounded in climate science and documented community needs, there is variation in the degree to which programs support these activities.

The grant programs for CalFire’s Wildfire Resilience, DWR’s Integrated Regional Water Management and Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, Coastal Commission’s Local Coastal Programs (LCP), and CalRecycle’s Food Waste Prevention and Rescue Program ask applicants to describe overall outcomes associated with the project, or to link outcomes to broader climate goals, but do not ask for detailed supporting data. In 6 of the 14 programs, programs required projects to provide a high degree of specificity and therefore are strongly aligned with this characteristic.

CalFire’s Fire Prevention Grants Program has a fair amount of evidence and application requirements that maintain a high degree of focus on explicit fire reduction activities. The guidance, scope, and mapping requirements all support clear evidence based and concrete activities. Planning and education activities are also similarly asked to document how the work is tied to fire risk reduction.

Moving forward, programs could support evidence-based and concrete resilience activities by clearly defining climate adaptation goals, asking for proposals to describe climate resilience and adaptation elements, providing guidance on allowable and prioritized projects, and highlighting resources to connect project proposals with climate resources.

Regional Needs and Priorities & Horizontal and Vertical Collaboration

Grant programs were assessed for their explicit connections to regional needs and priorities, as well as how well the grant programs support or require horizontal and vertical collaboration. To evaluate the extent to which each grant program aligned with regional issues, CRP looked for: eligibility of regional organizations to apply; whether regional partnerships and collaboration are prioritized and allowable activities; and whether the applicants were encouraged or required to describe how the project aligned or worked with regional needs.

Connected to regional needs and priorities is a characteristic focused on horizontal and vertical collaboration. Horizontal collaboration describes the relationship with similar organizations across a region, and vertical collaboration describes collaboration between different levels of government or CBOs collaborating with local governments.

Since adaptation activities require coordination beyond single organizations, CRP noted language related to requirements or supporting language for cross collaboration. CRP found that 5 out of the 14 grant programs reviewed either required applicants to have an explicitly regional focus or required them to describe how their project adds to regional needs or goals. An additional 5 grant programs encouraged applicants to show a connection to regional needs but did not require it. Another three of the programs made no or almost no mention of regional needs, and were not regional in nature. Housing and transportation grant programs seemed to show the strongest regional connections.

Given that many climate risks are regional in scale (or larger), 11 sources note the need for funded projects to consider, align, and coordinate with regional needs and priorities, but they vary in much emphasis they place on regional connections and whether it is an explicit requirement of the grant. A number of the sources further emphasized regional coordination as a means to maximize benefits.

Among the guidelines reviewed, the team noted a wide range of strength to the collaboration guidance. Four programs (e.g., TCC, AHSC, LEAP and Caltrans) had explicit and robust partnership and collaboration goals both vertically and horizontally and included guidance and support for further development of these as part of the program activities. Several other programs support collaboration, but the collaboration is not well defined or limited. Others had little or no emphasis on collaboration, and collaboration expenses were not allowable expenses.

The California Department of Housing and Community Development created two grant programs to support infill development and fair housing. One grant program, LEAP, focused on local projects, while the other program, REAP, was strictly regional in nature. REAP required applicants to “a significant geographic or region-wide benefit for impacted households^[36]” and include regional coordination. By providing separate funding streams, these two grant programs allow progress to be made both locally and regionally without having these very different projects competing with each other.

Resilience efforts are often broad and diffuse and affect a variety of levels of a community. Much of adaptation requires coordination beyond single organizations and ideally, both vertical and horizontal collaboration should be happening with climate adaptation projects. The high number of grant programs that have an overtly regional focus in this pool of programs may be a factor of the selection process and not reflective of State grant programs as a whole.

Participation

Another important related characteristic to collaboration and equity is participation. This characteristic specifically calls out how much the program requires or supports participation of community members and groups through the development of proposals, implementation, and outcomes.

Seven of the programs reviewed have robust and specific requirements for community engagement and feedback platforms that go beyond simple meetings or feedback and importantly are part of the design and development of project goals. Other programs support participation by  allowing for community engagement as funded activities, which may provide resources for improving participatory practices. We did find that some of the programs include budgetary limitations. For example, the SGC’s TCC Round 4 Program guidelines allows for up to 8% of the budget for “eligible community engagement and outreach activities during grant implementation.”

Additionally, many of the grant guidelines reviewed  require an initial input from the community in the project design, and an initial show of the benefits to the community. However,very few programs require consistent engagement throughout the implementation process.

The SGC’s AHSC Guidelines requires applicants to call out how local residents and CBOs were engaged in developing the project, and how the project addresses community-identified needs. Applicants also need to identify how stakeholders have been engaged during the application process and how they will be engaged throughout the project. There is also required documentation for measuring the participatory actions, including a letter of support and a community engagement tracker. The separate narrative rubric document is very detailed about example scores of activities and guiding questions, such as “were community residents or CBOs involved in development and selection of project components included in the application?” Another question includes “Does the project demonstrate the incorporation of community input and identified needs?”

The degree to which a grant program prioritizes, requires, and supports deep community participation in the full project from definition to implementation is important to ensuring that real community needs are addressed and the project is building long-term momentum and success.

Capacity Building & Training

An emerging theme in many discussions is the importance of capacity building as a tool to empower communities to build momentum with climate resilience activities. This term refers to the resources (e.g., staffing, funding, community will) that various communities have on hand to tackle pressing issues. A characteristic for training was separated out as a more specific element of internal capacity due to the high need to support skill building among the people who are responsible for managing resilience response efforts. CRP looked for grant programs that explicitly encouraged or supported learning activities that could build stakeholder and practitioner skills over time.

Most grant programs (9 of 14) made some inclusion of capacity building activities, including training, partnering or similar activities;  few did not mention  capacity building. Few grant programs specifically identified capacity building as a funded set of activities.

FEMA's BRIC program, accessible through CalOES, is an example of a grant program that specifically highlighted capacity building activities as a funded category. Additionally it defines capacity activities as activities which “which enhance the knowledge, skills, expertise, etc., of the current workforce to expand or improve the administration of mitigation assistance,” and outlines specific potential activities for applicants to include.

CRP found that the highest number of grant programs (5 out of 14) did not support training activities, and many did not contain references to training or specifically allow it as an activity.  More so, grant programs that mention training as an allowable activity eligible for funding generally did not require it, nor have detailed examples of such.

The TCC Grant had one of the most specific training guidance of all grant programs reviewed and outlined training goals, criteria, and equity prioritizations. The program allows applicants to allocate up to 5% of the overall budget to training through workforce development and economic opportunities. Applicants to the program are required to create a plan that generates workforce development and training programs that provides residents of the project area with career pathways, and creates high quality jobs. The grant guidelines also add equity considerations, detailing that “TCC encourages training and job placement partnerships with small businesses in the Project Area owned by priority populations, including women; minority; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT); and disabled veteran-owned business enterprises.”^[37] This additional specification shows consideration of equity holistically.

Though implementation funding is vital, without complementary capacity building and training funding, it is likely that existing imbalances in funding recipients, and the extent to which said funding leads to lasting change, will remain or exacerbate. The use of the term “capacity building” and outlining of associated activities, including training, seems helpful to encourage applicants to steer project activities towards that which can build an organization’s or community’s long-term ability to build resilience.

Communications and Education

The communications and education characteristic refers to activities related to building awareness and understanding through project activities. Related to capacity building and training, communications and education are important activities that complement resilience projects, but can be allowed and supported to varied degrees in a given grant program.

Out of the grant programs reviewed, CRP identified 4 out of 14 with a dedicated communications or education plan as a project option, including clear guidance on allowable activities and desired outcomes as part of the application process. Some of the grant program materials reviewed Stated communications and education as goals of the program or included as questions for the application narratives, but did not outline how these activities should be conducted or measured.

While some of the reviewed programs allowed for communications and education as the core funded project, some programs identified the maximum budget allocation allowed for communications and education only when  part of broader project plans. For example, CalRecycle’s Food Waste Prevention and Rescue Grant Program materials allow for up to 50% of the applicant’s requested grant amount for public education and outreach. CalRecycle also identifies potential eligible public education and outreach examples, which helps inform applicants what types of programs could be funded. CalOES has a 10% cap on community education and outreach in relation to the project, though these activities are not a requirement.

Given the small number of grant programs which align with this characteristic, more grant programs could put effort into elevating the importance of communications and education in their guidelines. Often, communications and education get grouped together with capacity building, training, participatory and collaboration activities. However, it is important that grant programs elevate communications, education, and/or outreach as eligible funding activities as these activities can help project success and motivate positive change as a result of the project. Having communications and education activities be part of a project can also contribute to the characteristics related to mainstreaming key concepts and learnings from a project.

The DWR’s Sustainable Groundwater Management grant program’s agreement template includes a category dedicated to “stakeholder outreach and public education,” requiring the deliverables of an “outreach and engagement plan” and “sign-in sheets and outreach materials.” Other grant programs specified that community and stakeholder outreach be conducted as part of the application period but not explicitly included for the duration of the project. The most detailed programs for these characteristics included metrics for the entire duration of the project, from the proposal period through implementation.

Of the 14 grant programs reviewed, 10 did not identify education and communications as important pieces or at all as project aspects mentioned in passing.

Characteristic Category: Project Outcomes

The final group relates to the intended project outcomes from a grant program. While discrete activities are the core of how a program supports resilience outcomes, it is important the grant program sets direction so all individual projects are contributing to a broader resilience outcome for the State as a whole. To assess the grant guidelines within this major group, we evaluated the following characteristics:

• Breadth
• Measurable impact
• Mainstreaming

For each of the characteristics, we identified commonalities and differences across the programs and have identified what may be good practices to adapt moving forward. As a group, the characteristics within project outcomes tended to have slightly closer alignment across grant programs than the other groups of characteristics. Breadth had the most number of grant programs in close alignment, while measurable impact had the most programs in less alignment. The Transformative Climate Communities grant program showed the closest alignment of the group with all characteristics examined.

Breadth

The first characteristic within project outcomes is breadth. Since climate resilience is larger than specific impacts and includes a host of other community issues, a grant program should recognize and support a broad and holistic approach to resilience by connecting climate impacts more broadly with aspects such as health, safety, equity, and other issues. CRP evaluated the presence of this characteristic by looking for grant materials which request applicants to specify a range of benefits and outcomes that cross sectors or subject areas to increase community resilience to a broader range of issues.

Of the grant programs reviewed, 11 out of 14 were found to be in close or medium alignment with the specifications of the breadth characteristics. In general, breadth was found in integration of climate concerns in grant programs in other sectors such as housing or transportation, or environmental programs that asked applicants to demonstrate co-benefits of the outlined project.

In some programs, guidelines have a limited set of broader priorities that are holistic in nature (e.g., provide public benefit or education, benefits disadvantaged or underserved communities, leads to longer term resilience or more sustainable benefits) but qualities of these priorities are not well defined or are not referenced in explicit ways in the program material.

While many programs were found to be in close or medium alignment with breadth goals, CRP found that specificity around the outcomes of those goals could be strengthened in many programs.

Caltrans’ Clean California Local Grant Program requires applicants to select at least one of four goals that connect to broader program goals that benefit other resilience aspects. The guidelines put guardrails around how to describe the outcomes in the application. The program itself is not geared towards climate resilience, though the criteria includes both broad resilience goals (e.g., improve public space, community need) and climate goals (e.g., urban heat island effect). This focus on connection with other resilience sectors and specificity on outcomes made this program unique among the reviewed grants.

Measurable Impact

To understand how effective a grant program’s activities may be, it is important that the program establish clear standards and criteria to measure activity impact so individual and collective progress, outcomes, and benefits (or gaps) can be tracked. To assess this characteristic, CRP looked for Statements in the grant guidelines or other materials which specified monitoring, evaluation, establishment of outcome criteria or metrics, or other indication that projects were required or encouraged to track and measure their outcomes.

Of the 14 programs reviewed, 8 were found to be in close or medium alignment with measurable impact, and an additional four were in mixed alignment. Programs that were found to be in close alignment with measurable impact were generally explicit about community resilience goals and approaches to defining, measuring and reporting these goals in ways that relate to needs and benefits. Programs which were found to be in medium alignment generally had goals for meaningful outcomes, but had less definition in the program structures and metrics. Those with mixed alignment had guidance and/or requirements related to metrics, but less direction on the links to community impact and benefit and measures of success. Only one program was found to have a low alignment with measurable impact requirements.

Most grant programs reviewed in this analysis did address measurable impact in some way, although more explicit guidance and definition of metrics and outcomes for multiple benefits could be specified in guidelines.

Mainstreaming

The characteristic of mainstreaming is related to how the grant program encourages or allows the integration and institutionalization of adaptation and resilience activities. This may include organization development and standardization, staff training, and capacity building, policy or planning integration, and other related activities, some of which are described earlier as part of Funding Activities.

CRP evaluated mainstreaming by looking for long-term integration of adaptation practices, embedded activities within existing institutions, or mechanisms that integrate within existing systems. Programs that have clearly defined goals and support for mainstreaming as an important program activity and support related eligible funding activities were reviewed as being in closer alignment with mainstreaming than programs which did not.

Most of the programs reviewed had little or no inclusion of mainstreaming as a program objective and did not generally appear to support any mainstreaming activities, but overall 5 of the programs reviewed were found to be in closer alignment. Many of the grant programs which were found to be in closer alignment with mainstreaming involved planning updates or activities, and only a few supported mainstream implementation, such as creating a requirement for annual programs.

As most grant programs are not persistent or large enough to accomplish all that is needed for a community, funding should support mainstreaming of climate resilience into systems, processes, and relationships so that managing risks. This can further embed resilience into the fabric of California communities and help them become less dependent on what may be limited external funding. Ideally, funding should help organizations institutionalize adaptation into operations and management. However, many of the grant programs reviewed are not explicitly supporting mainstreaming, and when they do, it may be limited to planning. Among grant programs reviewed, there do not appear to be many which emphasize the importance of the integration of resilience considerations across sectors and implementing efforts providing ongoing community support for the communities. While planning lays the foundation for resilience and is a necessary part of the process, a higher focus on operationalizing plans, or implementation of activities which mainstream resilience needs, could bring grants programs into closer alignment with mainstreaming objectives.

Guidelines Key Takeaways and Next Steps

State agencies can support long term climate resilience through future funding cycles by broadening the scope of their programs to be focused on more holistic resilience activities, allowing for more regional partnerships, encouraging information sharing, and lowering barriers to obtaining grants. Many of the State programs, such as for water quality and supply or wildfire resilience, are more aligned with the breadth characteristic as by nature of the program subject, they have climate benefits and other more community and regionally based benefits. For those programs alternatively focused on a limited scope of climate activities, we recommend broadening the list of activities to ensure the project supports broader State and local goals for community resilience. Encouraging activities that support community resilience also includes supporting or requiring participatory engagement activities and elevating the voices of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) groups and environmental justice groups. These themes came up regularly through stakeholder and working group conversations. While many of the programs reviewed mentioned priority access for disadvantaged communities, agencies should be more conscious about improving equity in the way programs are created and distributed.

Many of the State programs reviewed mentioned activities related to capacity building and training, but few identified these activities as eligible for funding. From conversations with regional stakeholders and working group members, it is known that capacity is a challenge across organization types. Funding capacity building and training can help build resilience within organizations and communities. Even the application process can be so time consuming and complicated, many organizations do not have capacity to even enter the competition for grants. State agencies can improve their grant programs by sharing best practices with other entities to improve user experience, and incorporate their own learnings into future cycles. Accessible language and formatting, longer application windows, and access to assistance can help reduce barriers to entry. Standardizing the application process or the amount of information shared on program websites could also help streamline the review of programs for organizations determining which grants meet their needs. Additionally, State programs could share a centralized help desk for grant application, project development support, and technical assistance, to help alleviate capacity constraints and improve accessibility.

Agencies are encouraged to use the characteristics and related rubric as a set of guidelines, as well as best practices and lessons learned from other grant programs, in developing future grant programs.

As described above, CRP coded and analyzed the CCI and the CRNA program data to assess the distribution of funding in the State related to climate resilience. Data analysis was completed on 129,540 projects, totaling $38.5 billion of funding. Findings are organized in this section by general findings and by region. Additional findings are available in Appendix F.

General Findings

Funds are distributed across the State, concentrated around higher populations

The largest distribution of CCI and CNRA bond data funds analyzed went to Los Angeles (25%), San Francisco Bay Area (16%), and Sacramento Valley (14%). At a high level, this distribution likely makes sense based on where the largest populations are centered in the State. With larger populations, there may be more opportunities for grant programs. Future analysis comparing the population density to how much money is directed to a given region would help illuminate distribution patterns.

Table 3.1: Distribution of Funding by Region

Funds are distributed across climate topics

The analysis of the distribution data complements the stakeholder engagement findings in that climate resilience challenges differ by region. A preliminary coding by subject illustrates an approximation of funding across a variety of climate resilience topics. Additional details about how CRP coded for climate risks and examples of project types are included in Appendix F.

The top 5 funded climate issues, which make up 83% of the funds within the data analysis, are: 1) Flood Management,  2) Water Supply, 3) Ecosystem Restoration, 4) Water Quality, and 5) Transportation. About 65% of the CCI and CNRA Funds, or $24 billion, were allocated to water-related projects; this included projects focused on flood management, water supply, and water quality. The scale of this funding relative to other subjects is a result of the scale and duration of CNRA bonds, which have been primarily water- focused to date.

Table 3.2: Distribution of Funding by Climate Subject

While not presented in the body, the team also organized the results by 1) funding agencies and 2)region and topic. Availability of these results can help clarify which agencies are more responsible for climate resilience funding, and where those agencies are typically directing funds. See Appendix F for these details.

Regional Findings

Understanding the distribution of climate funding at a regional level is critical to clarifying resource allocations. A high level summary of findings from the CCI and CNRA data for each region is provided below, with more detailed tables of results provided in Appendix F.

Central Coast Findings

About $2.6 billion, or about 6.8% of the $38 billion CCI and CNRA funds, went to the Central Coast. Of the Central Coast CCI funds, 37% of the $167 million went to priority populations, which was substantially lower than the State average, by 30%. The top 6 climate subjects where CCI and CNRA funds are focused by dollar amount, (not by number of projects) are the following: 1) Flood Management, 2) Water Supply, 3) Ecosystem Restoration, 4) Recreation, 5) Water Quality and 6) Urban Greening. Relative to other CCI funding in the region, sea level rise for a coastal region is lower than initially anticipated.

Inland Deserts Findings

About $476 million, or a little over 1.2% of the $38 billion CCI and CNRA funds, went to the Inland Deserts region. Of the Inland Deserts CCI funds, 78% of the $145 million went to priority populations, which was higher than the State average, by 15%. The top 6 climate risks where CCI and CNRA are focused by dollar amount, not by number of projects, are the following: 1) Water Supply, 2) Ecosystem Restoration, 3) Transportation, 4) Urban Greening, 5) Air Quality, and 6) Housing.

Los Angeles Findings

About $9.7 billion, or about 25% of the $38 billion CCI and CNRA funds, went to the Los Angeles region. Compared with other regions, this region receives the most CCI and CNRA funding for projects. Of the Los Angeles CCI funds, 75% of the $1.9 billion went to priority populations, which was higher than the State average, by 10%. The top 6 climate risks where CCI and CNRA are focused by dollar amount, not by number of projects, are the following: 1) Flood Management, 2) Water Supply, 3) Water Quality, 4) Transportation, 5) Ecosystem Restoration, and 6) Recreation.

North Coast Findings

About $1 million, or about 2.7% of the $38 billion CCI and CNRA funds, went to the North Coast region. Of the North Coast CCI funds, 67% of the $168 million went to priority populations, which was about the State average. The top 6 climate risks where CCI and CNRA are focused by dollar amount, not by number of projects, are the following: 1) Ecosystem Restoration, 2) Forest Health, 3) Water Quality, 4) Water Supply, 5) Flood Management, and 6) Recreation.

Sacramento Findings

About $5.3 billion, or about 13.7% of the $38 billion CCI and CNRA funds, went to the Sacramento region. Of the Sacramento CCI funds, 58% of the $670 million went to priority populations, which was lower than the State average by 10%. The top 6 climate risks where CCI and CNRA are focused by dollar amount, are the following: 1) Wildfires, 2) Transportation, 3) Housing, 4) Energy, and 5) Agriculture.

San Diego Findings

About $1.8 billion, or about 4.6% of the $38 billion CCI and CNRA funds, went to the San Diego region. Of the San Diego CCI funds, 62% of the $294 million went to priority populations, which was about the State average. The top 6 climate risks where CCI and CNRA are focused by dollar amount, not by number of projects, are the following: 1) Water Supply, 2) Ecosystem Restoration, 3) Water Quality, 4) Transportation, 5) Recreation, and 6) Flood Management.

San Francisco Findings

About $6 billion, or about 15.7% of the $38 billion CCI and CNRA funds, went to the San Francisco Bay Area region. Compared with other regions, the San Francisco Bay Area region receives the second most CCI and CNRA funding behind the Los Angeles region. Of the San Francisco Bay Area CCI funds, 64% of the $1.4 billion went to priority populations, which was about the State average. The top 6 climate risks where CCI and CNRA are focused by dollar amount, not by number of projects, are the following: 1) Flood Management, 2) Ecosystem Restoration, 3) Water Supply, 4) Transportation, 5) Housing, and 6) Recreation.

San Joaquin Findings

About $3.3 billion, or about 8.7% of the $38 billion CCI and CNRA funds, went to the San Joaquin. Of the San Joaquin CCI funds, 80% of the $1.4 billion went to priority populations, which was higher than the State average by about 15%. The top 6 climate risks where CCI and CNRA are focused by dollar amount, are the following: 1) Water Supply, 2) Flood Management, 3) Water Quality, 4) Ecosystem Restoration, 5) Agriculture, and 6) Waste.

Sierra Nevada Findings

About $1.3 billion, or about 3.3% of the $38 billion CCI and CNRA funds, went to the Sierra Nevada. Of the Sierra Nevada CCI funds, 55% of the $644 million went to priority populations, which was lower than the State average by about 10%. The top 6 climate risks where CCI and CNRA are focused by dollar amount, are the following: 1) Ecosystem Restoration, 2) Forest Health, 3) Water Quality, 4) Water Supply, 5) Wildfire, and 6) Waste.

Distribution Data Key Takeaways and Next Steps

Analyzing the CCI and CNRA bond data provides insight into the distribution of climate resilience funding in California. These results were constrained by the limited accessibility and resolution of available data, and yet still reveal useful insights about how climate resilience funding is allocated across the State climate resilience funding in California. CRP was able to code for $38 billion funding for 120,000 projects since 1999, a large amount considering the new climate resilience budget of $3.7 billion. However, it seems that up until this historic budget allocation, climate resilience funding has been ad hoc and incremental. The results of the analysis indicate a wide range of variance across topic areas and funded regions. If we want to see near and long term outcomes, this new funding should be more targeted towards resilience initiatives by region, focused on climate risks that are most concerning to a wide range of organizations that can use the funds.

Additionally, in spite of the recognized key role of planning and capacity building activities to mobilize climate resilience efforts,the available level of information seemed insufficient to code the data for activity type. Based on the data available, the projects were primarily implementation-focused, and yet through stakeholder engagement, findings underscore capacity building as one of the most needed priorities for State support. We also recognize that some projects are highly likely to have multiple subjects or activities, in alignment with the breadth characteristic, but without more details it is impossible to code for multiple subjects or activities.

Another key finding as a result of the different workstreams is the importance of requiring funds to be allocated to environmental justice groups and CBOs. The CCI is constructed to allocate funds to priority populations,^[38] and tracks the information. However, the agency programs reviewed either don’t require funds to go to certain vulnerable and disadvantaged communities or tribal organizations, or do not track the reporting of the allocations. As supporting a wide range of community organizations is a critical component of community resilience, programs should require and track the reporting of funds being distributed to these key voices.

A more robust analysis could be undertaken in the future (and tracked on an ongoing basis) if State programs were to develop a consistent method for tracking project level data. While we applied subject codes to each project type, this was done with very limited knowledge of project specifics, and thus lacks a desirable nuance for understanding what climate resilience issues are or are not funded. Looking ahead, it would be ideal if grant funding sources could at a minimum define a common approach for tracking 1) regions (or at least city and county), 2) project type (e.g., planning, implementation, research, capacity building, etc.), and 3) more specific climate topics. Such a consistent implementation would make similar analysis more reliable and useful for understanding how distribution of funding might connect with overall activities and outcomes at the local or regional scale.

CRP gathered indirect stakeholder feedback from the 2020 Annual Planning Survey (APS) and the 2021 California Natural Resources Agency/Office of Planning and Research (CNRA/OPR) Draft California Climate Adaptation Strategy Workshops. Both sources provide a selection of insights related to climate resilience funding needs and gaps, described further below.

Annual Planning Survey (APS) (2020)

Annual Planning Survey results focused on overall findings for the selected set of questions as well as select regional findings where relevant differences were observed.

Staff Support

Respondents were asked in the survey what their current level of staffing, intern, or consultant support was for various topics.

General Findings

Overall, the majority of  jurisdictions who responded face inadequate levels of staffing to support work on climate adaptation and resilience and environmental justice. In the total pool of respondents, 76% of jurisdictions reported no staff or very little staff, with limited funding for consultants to address climate resilience and adaptation, and 77% reported the same for environmental justice. These very high rates of understaffing seem to reflect the theme from the literature review and stakeholder feedback that capacity at the local government level is low in many areas.

Regional Findings

The North Coast and Sierra Nevada regions appear to have the most jurisdictions with no or limited staff support for these topics, while the San Diego region appears to have the fewest jurisdictions reporting to have no or very limited staff support.

Technical Assistance

The APS asked two questions of jurisdiction on technical assistance: whether they had received technical assistance in the last year on each topic, and whether they were interested in receiving technical assistance in the future.

General Findings

The results showed that 80% of all jurisdictions that responded were interested in receiving technical assistance in climate resilience and adaptation, and 74% of all respondents expressed interest in receiving technical assistance in environmental justice. Results this high indicate a large appetite throughout regions for State assistance on these topics. This seems to be in line with literature reviews and stakeholder feedback that capacity at the local government level is low in many areas.

Regional Findings

The North Coast Region and San Francisco Bay Area reported some of the highest levels of interest in technical assistance on both topics. In most regions, at least ⅔ of jurisdictions had received technical assistance on both topics in the last year, with the outliers being Inland Deserts regions and the San Francisco Bay Area. In those regions, only 61% and 58%, respectively, had received technical assistance on climate adaptation and resilience in the last year. Every region reported greater numbers of jurisdictions receiving technical assistance in environmental justice than in climate resilience. However, most regions reported higher interest in receiving technical assistance in climate resilience.

Collaborative Meetings

Survey respondents were asked with what frequency they had collaborative meetings on several topics, including climate adaptation and resilience and environmental justice. To examine these results, CRP grouped responses which indicated that their planning departments met on a quarterly, monthly, or weekly basis on these topics.

General Findings

Overall, a very low percentage of jurisdictions are having regular meetings on these topics:11% of jurisdictions are having regular meetings on climate resilience, and only 7% are meeting on environmental justice.

Regional Findings

 In all regions but Inland Deserts, San Joaquin Valley, and Los Angeles, collaboration around climate resilience is more common than collaboration around environmental justice. Inland Deserts is the only region that had more regular collaborative meetings on environmental justice than on climate resilience.

Planning Alignment

The APS asks respondents if their jurisdiction has aligned their planning efforts on different topics with “larger regional plans or efforts” since January 2020.

General Findings

The results show a large range of the levels of planning alignment across jurisdictions and regions. Both in total and across regions, levels of planning alignment were reported as higher for climate resilience than for environmental justice. However, jurisdictions in alignment with regional efforts were the minority, with only 19% of jurisdictions reporting alignment in climate resilience and 8% in alignment on environmental justice. This low level of planning alignment on these topics echoes the literature review and stakeholder interviews that Stated that lack of coordination on resilience efforts was prevalent, and aligning with neighboring jurisdictions was challenging.

A larger percentage of jurisdictions are working on aligning their climate resilience plans (44%), while 33% of jurisdictions reported that they were not working on alignment or did not plan to address alignment on climate resilience (the remaining 4% of respondents did not answer this question). Rates of alignment on environmental justice appeared lower, as only 8% of jurisdictions have aligned their plans on environmental justice with larger efforts, and 33% are working on alignment. 52% of jurisdictions say they are not working on or do not plan to address aligning their environmental justice plans with larger efforts.

Regional Findings

The North Coast reported some of the lowest levels of planning alignment, with no jurisdictions in alignment climate resilience or environmental justice, although 73% were working on climate resilience alignment. The Central Coast also reported no jurisdictions in alignment on environmental justice. San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area had the highest levels of planning alignment on climate resilience, with 27% and 28% of jurisdictions in alignment with broader efforts.

Funding

Respondents were asked from which sources they had received outside funding in the previous year.

General Findings

Overall, the highest number of jurisdictions reported receiving funding from regional or local agencies (63%), while roughly equal numbers of jurisdictions received funding from philanthropic sources (15%) or received no outside funding at all (16%).

Regional Findings

In every region except the North Coast, over 50% of all jurisdictions have received funding from local and regional jurisdictions. Local and regional agency funding played the largest role in the Inland Deserts and Sierra Nevada region, with 80% or more of jurisdictions in both regions reporting receiving this type of funding. Philanthropic funding played the largest role in the Inland Deserts and San Francisco Bay Area, and a smaller role in other regions. The San Joaquin Valley reported the highest number of jurisdictions which received no outside funding (21%).

Climate Adaptation and Resilience

The APS included a question asking respondents what actions or measures they have taken to promote climate adaptation and resilience. Respondents were then asked to select as many items as they needed from a menu of planning, implementation and assessment activities.

General Findings

The highest reported strategy overall was developing a Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (67%), with erosion control (33%) and flood control measures (31%) a distant second and third. The two least pursued strategies were establishing multi-purpose resilience hubs (3%), and implementing extreme heat mitigation programs (11%).

Regional Findings

The most common adaptation action in every region was developing a Local Hazard Mitigation Plan. The San Joaquin Valley had the lowest rates of developing a Local Hazard Mitigation Plan, with only 36% of jurisdictions reporting that they had created one. Inland Deserts were second lowest with 39% completing a Local Hazard Mitigation Plan. One of the broadest and most comprehensive actions listed in the answer options was integrating “climate risk into decision-making, budgeting, and operational processes” which received a wide variety of answers from 0% of jurisdictions in Inland Deserts to 27% and 28% in The North Coast and San Francisco Bay Area Regions, respectively.

Community Engagement

The APS also asked jurisdictions what they are doing to build relationships with residents and empower them to engage meaningfully in the planning process.

General Findings

Overall, the most common action was working with citizen advisory groups on planning issues (60% of jurisdictions) and second was partnering with CBOs to do deeper public engagement (50%). The two least common actions were hosting a planning academy for residents (8%) and evaluating the effectiveness of the engagement with standardized metrics (15%). Very few jurisdictions overall are giving community residents planning skills or elevating community planning for grassroots solutions.

Regional Findings

The Central Coast had the highest percentage of jurisdictions working with citizen advisory committees or workgroups on planning topics, with 81% of jurisdictions reporting this action. The San Joaquin Valley reported the lowest percentage, with 39% of jurisdictions reporting this action. The San Francisco Bay Area was the region with the highest percentage of jurisdictions using standardized metrics to assess the effectiveness of their engagement (22%), while the Sierra Nevada region reported 0 jurisdictions using this action.

Summary of Annual Planning Survey Outcomes

The responses collected through the APS support the ideal characteristics identified through the literature review and described earlier in this report. Overall, the APS results outlined above provide strong confirmation that the funding and governance characteristics designed for this review track with local needs and reinforce that emerging themes that staff capacity and collaboration are lacking across regions. Every region reported high levels of understaffing in the fields of climate resilience and environmental justice, and had high levels of interest in technical assistance, which may be related to State grants being too complex and time-consuming to obtain. Collaboration and planning alignment were also low, and likely related to understaffing, as existing staff may have very little time to participate in information sharing. The climate resilience actions that most jurisdictions are taking are generally aimed at disaster prevention or recovery — mitigating erosion or flooding or the preparation of a Local Hazard Mitigation Plan, which is a required step to receive FEMA disaster funding. While jurisdictions are taking many types of actions to increase their engagement with communities, overall very few are giving communities planning skills or or elevating community-led planning.

Notable linkages between the characteristics and emerging themes and the APS results include a persistent lack of staff support and high interest in technical assistance which link  up with several funding characteristics (e.g., capacity, training, mainstreaming) and governance characteristics (e.g., organizational and resource capacity). Additionally, the evident lack of collaborative meetings reflects the equity alignment and participation characteristics, and also points to the value of information sharing and horizontal and vertical partnerships in both sets of characteristics. Planning alignment is also reflective of institutionalization and goals/plan-setting in the governance characteristics and regional needs and priorities and mainstreaming in the funding characteristics. Additionally, the mixed results around community engagement actions connect with equity alignment, and stakeholder and public participation in the governance characteristics and equity alignment, training, and communications/education in the funding characteristics.

CNRA/OPR Draft California Climate Adaptation Strategy Workshops (2021)

General Findings

While the workshops were fundamentally regional in nature and focus and our results are presented principally in regional terms, a number of common themes were visible and warrant commentary. Across the State, stakeholders face a lack of capacity, lack of regional coordination and political will/leadership to work on resilience, yet have a high interest in building climate resilience through partnership and collaboration. A lack of resources and capacity was identified as a unique resilience challenge for every region except Inland Deserts and San Diego. Additionally, every region identified funding and financing as a way the State can support a regional approach to adaptation and resilience. Across all regions, coordination, partnerships, resources, community engagement, capacity building, and infrastructure management are common themes for every region as needed to strengthen protections for climate vulnerable communities. Every region also stated that they needed more data — either financial and economic data, impact projection and mapping data, or sector-specific data.

Regional Findings

Unique resilience challenges

When participants were asked about unique resilience challenges, participants from each region reported a range of responses which have been synthesized in the table below.

Table 4.1: Unique resilience challenges per region

Overall, in each region, the top three identified resilience challenges were: lack of resources; capacity or funding; lack of coordination; and lack of leadership or political will. Inland Deserts had the most unique list of challenges, including contamination issues and evaporation, although this may be influenced by the size of the participant group in that workshop.

Among the “other” challenges identified through the workshops, the more populous regions of Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area identified inequity as a top resilience challenge, while in both populous and rural regions, “land use” was listed as a challenge. Both the Central Coast and North Coast workshops identified “lack of regional strategies” as a challenge. Both the Northern and Southern Sierras expressed that a lack of data and research was a prominent resilience challenge. Additionally, in the North Coast and in San Diego, participants cited the severity of the climate impacts they were facing as a top resilience challenge.

Table 4.2: How can the State support a regional approach to adaptation and resilience through the Strategy?

Funding was the most common theme on responses regarding how the State can support a regional approach to climate resilience. Every region identified State mandates, regulations, guidance, and/or incentives as a way the State can support a regional approach to adaptation and resilience, except for North Coast, San Diego, and San Joaquin Valley. Rather, these regions focused more on the State supporting regional and community-driven solutions. Aside from the top four actions in the chart above, many regions also mentioned an interest in that State providing data or resource tools. Some of the more rural regions had answers that differed more than the more urbanized regions. For example, San Joaquin Valley emphasized the need for partnership and coordination, as existing collaboration structures do not exist. The region also indicated that regional needs should be treated equally, regardless of population. Inland Deserts, San Joaquin Valley and Southern Sierras had unique answers, including addressing CEQA, wildfire, education, and community-driven solutions.

Table 4.3: Knowledge gaps or information needed to accelerate adaptation efforts

This question revealed some of the most unique answers between regions. Even where broad categories of needs overlapped, for this question, many regions framed their needs differently. Every region identified data needs, with most specifying economic/financial data, climate data and mapping, or sector-specific data. Additionally, many regions identified the need for social science in adaptation and community needs. In the rural regions of the North Coast and Southern Sierras, respondents emphasized the need for transit, power, and funding, which are tailored to a rural context. Only Sacramento Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area identified effective coordination, partnerships and collaboration as needed information areas. The North Coast was the only region to identify “agreement on metrics for measuring progress” as a need. Some of the listed needs in the “other” category included carbon neutrality information, technical support, funding, and capacity building.

Summary of CNRA/OPR Workshop Outcomes

As with the APS, the CNRA/OPR workshops results reflect and support the characteristics identified through the literature review and several of the emerging themes. Here, lack of capacity was identified as a unique resilience challenge in every region except San Diego, and lack of coordination, potentially related to lack of capacity, was also indicated across most regions. Regions want support from the State in the form of funding, State leadership and guidance, and region specific approaches. This need for funding may reflect the fact that State grants are difficult to access and manage. Furthermore, the call for region specific approaches was mentioned by many of the more rural regions, suggesting existing approaches may not be meeting their needs. Across all questions, rural regions mentioned that existing approaches to resilience were not meeting their needs. Every region indicated that data was a critical gap to fill, either on the financial and economic side or in improving mapping and other climate-related data. Additionally, many regions also noted that community-driven solutions were a knowledge gap in the resilience conversations.

Overall, the workshop results provide strong confirmation that the funding and governance characteristics reflect local needs, as they are aligned with the concerns and desires expressed by participants in each of the regional workshops. For example, many participants across regions Stated that more collaboration and partnership is needed in climate resilience, which is reflective of funding characteristics (regional needs, horizontal and vertical collaboration, participatory) and governance characteristics (stakeholder and public engagement, representation or participation).

Other notable linkages include that participants in all regions identified the need for more effective governance, leadership, political will, technical assistance and guidance, which connects with both the funding characteristics (e.g., continuous learning, horizontal and vertical collaboration, capacity building) and governance characteristics (i.e., motivation to lead, goals/plan, internal/external information sharing). Many participants mentioned the lack of resource capacity, aligned with the governance characteristics for funding and staff bandwidth. A number of stakeholders specified their need for better social and climate science, relating to the governance characteristic of application of climate and social science/knowledge. Additionally, several participants from across the regions identified the need for more funding to be dedicated to resilience projects, which is connected to the characteristics of accessibility and dependability.

Indirect Stakeholder Input Key Takeaways and Next Steps

CRP reviewed the responses from the 2020 Annual Planning Survey and the 2021 CNRA/OPR workshop responses to evaluate qualitative input about current climate resilience initiatives and priorities for future activities. The responses reviewed underscore the need to incorporate and support the funding and governance characteristics in resilience planning and funding distribution. Findings from these different sources reinforce the key emerging themes of this report, including the lack of and support for more capacity, regional coordination, and technical assistance.

Across the data sources, individuals and organizations noted that State grants are complex and time-consuming to complete, and therefore require more technical assistance and simpler application processes. Additionally, participants identified the need for more effective governance and planning alignment to support climate resilience adaptation and planning.

Data from the CNRA/OPR workshops indicate a high interest in regional collaboration for climate resilience, yet the APS data show that it is not resulting in widespread collaborative meetings, at least for planning departments.

Profile of Respondents

The Statewide landscape analysis survey was intended for climate resilience practitioners including representatives of nonprofits, regional collaboratives, CBOs, and municipalities, tribal organizations, State agencies, philanthropy, and academia as well as their partners. Overall, 169 participants completed the survey, with varying response rates per question. Participants were asked about their experience with State grant programs and their priorities for future funding.

Distribution of Responses

Participants were asked to identify the regions in which they conduct climate resilience activities, with the option to select one or more regions. Almost 25% of total responses were from multiple regions. CRP therefore is not able to break down the survey results by region as there is not a large enough distribution across the State. However, the responses received are helpful data points in the data analysis. The San Francisco Bay Area made up the largest group of respondents that only selected one region, representing 17% of the total responses.

The North Coast and Sacramento Valley only had 6 representatives through the survey, which hampered the team from drawing representative conclusions about these regions.

Table 5.1: Regional responses of SLA survey

Respondents

Participants were asked to describe their organization as part of the survey, and every participant selected at least one organization. Together, nonprofits and municipal governments made up just over 50% of respondents. A significant number of participants — just about 30% — identified as nonprofit organizations. Municipal governments, which included representatives from cities, towns, counties, and jurisdictions, made up about 20% of the pool of respondents. Regional collaboratives, CBOs, and the private sector were also represented, but only between 8% to 10% of the participants.

Tribal organizations, the Federal government, State government, philanthropy, and academia were all underrepresented, at or below 5% of respondents. This could be due to a number of reasons, including capacity constraints to complete the survey, awareness of the survey, or interest in completing.

About 80% of participants identified as a single organization, and the remaining 20% of participants selected more than one option. It is interesting to note that in particular, many of the nonprofits and regional collaboratives identified as more than one organization. Of the 30% participants that identified as nonprofit organizations, 60% also identified as a CBO. Regional collaboratives made up 10% of participants, and 60% of those participants were also identified as State government, municipal government, nonprofit, CBOs, private sector, and others.

This breakdown of respondents is interesting to keep in mind when evaluating the results, as organizations are not well represented. However, we can still pull together interesting learnings about the current status of funding for climate projects and priorities for future funding cycles.

Table 5.2: Organizational background of survey respondents

Further analysis and time would allow for additional review of the respondents by organization type. For example, it would be interesting to look at how each of the organization types felt about State government needs (see Appendix H).

Resilience Capacity

Respondents were asked: “What is your organization’s capacity to take action towards resilience projects/activities?” of which 159 participants responded. The CRP team was surprised to see that generally 40-60% of all the areas were “adequate” or “high” in capacity measures, with staffing as the lowest. This could have been due to the fact that the response pool is mainly comprised of practitioners in the resilience space, or because those who have the capacity are the ones who were able to fill out the survey.

Overall, the most critical capacity needed indicated by respondents was staff support. Nearly 50% of all respondents indicated this as a need, however, it was not always the most indicated need in each region. The Central Coast, for example, indicated that grant applications support was the most common need, and those who represent multiple regions indicated project implementation as the most common need. In the San Francisco Bay Area, which was the largest pool of respondents out of the total, 100% of respondents indicated that staff support was a top need, but respondents from this region also indicated higher needs than any other region across all categories.

Within capacity needs, CRP broke out responses by the two most populous respondent types--municipal governments and nonprofits--and found  significant gaps across all capacity areas. Municipal governments consistently reported higher levels of need in all capacity areas than nonprofits. In particular, nonprofits seemed to have more grant application capacity than municipal governments. In overall capacity need, staffing still was listed as the most common area of need by both respondent types. This is consistent with the stakeholder engagement and desktop research findings, underscoring that organizations have staffing constraints when it comes to completing grant applications and for project implementation.

Table 5.3: Municipal and nonprofit organizational capacity to act on resilience projects/activities

Partnerships

In total, 162 respondents provided a response to the question “How frequently does your organization partner with the following types of entities on climate resilience activities?” The list of entities included CBOs, nonprofits, municipal governments, regional collaboratives, and other types of entities. Participants were given a choice to rank the interactions by “frequent” “neutral” and “not frequent.”

The presence of local and community partnerships were higher than CRP anticipated. Over 60% of respondents marked “frequent” for CBOs, nonprofits, and municipal governments. About 50% of respondents said they partner with regional governments and State governments. Between 20% and 30% of respondents said they partner with the private sector, academia, the Federal government, tribal organizations, and philanthropy. Overall, the findings demonstrated how respondents tend to frequently partner with many organizations on climate resilience activities;it appeared to be more common to partner with local organizations than regional or broader ones. CBOs, nonprofits, and municipal governments were the most frequently partnered with, indicating higher levels of partnership than regional collaboratives, State government, or Federal government. Respondents indicated that they partnered the least often with tribal organizations and philanthropy.

Table 5.4: Organizational frequency in partnering with different types of entities on climate resilience activities

CRP also examined the results in this question by respondent type, breaking out municipal government and nonprofit answers. Across almost each category, nonprofits partnered significantly more with every type of organization than municipal governments did. The only type of partnership that municipal governments engaged with more frequently was with other municipal governments. Municipal governments and nonprofits appear to partner with regional collaboratives at similar rates, although non profits did so slightly more. Nonprofits partnered significantly more frequently with philanthropy, CBOs, other nonprofits, and tribal organizations.

Table 5.5: Municipal and nonprofit organizational frequency in partnering with different types of entities on climate resilience activities

Focus of work

In total, 162 respondents provided a response to the question “Which topics best capture the community priorities your work addresses?” Overall, 90% of respondents identified 3 or more topics, and a range of topics are strongly represented (35-50%). Of the 10% that identified 2 or fewer topics, the topics included a wide variety of single and combined responses of community engagement, housing, transportation, wildfire/forest fire, and energy. Some issues are very underrepresented as priorities, including green and blue investing, and broadband access, which are only priorities for less than 10% of participants. CRP notes that this is not necessarily representative of the entire State, but rather is of the survey participants.

A significant number of participants across all regions, about 45%, identified community engagement as one of many or as the only work priority, which aligns with CRP’s direct stakeholder engagement findings.

Followed by community engagement, the next most indicated category is wildfire/forest fires (just over 30%). Wildfire/forest fires was also selected as one of many topics that the organizations address. We looked to see if the prevalence of wildfire/forest fires could be because of the regional distribution of organizations that completed the survey, and found that Sierra Nevada and San Joaquin Valley made up about 60% of the participants that listed wildfire/forest fires, which is aligned with what we heard from the stakeholders from those regions through direct stakeholder engagement.

Table 5.6: Community priorities addressed through organizations’ work

When examined at the regional level, CRP saw differing priorities across regions with a few consistent themes. Community engagement was in the top three priorities for each region, and was often, but not always, the number one priority. This noted interest in community-level involvement reflects a need for deeper continuity from a local connection. Wildfire was the top priority in the Sierra Nevada, North Coast, and those who represented multiple regions. Economic development was also a top priority in several regions, including San Diego, San Joaquin Valley, and North Coast. Some of the more unique trends were in the Central Coast and San Diego, where over 50% of respondents marked carbon sequestration as a top priority, and watershed management, which 71% of Sierra Nevada respondents picked as a top priority, but no other region did.

Outlook on State Funding

Out of the 169 participants, 29.94% of respondents reported using State grant program(s) for climate resilience projects in the last two years. Of those participants, some identified examples of the grant programs and distributing agencies they have experience with, which included: Caltrans’ Clean Transportation Program, CalOES’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, Coastal Conservancy’s Climate Ready Program, Caltrans’ Sustainable Planning Grant, CNRA’s Green Infrastructure, CalFire’s Climate Investments, CDFA’s Healthy Soils Project grants, Coastal Conservancy’s Fire Resilience and Forest Health, SGC’s Transformative Climate Communities, DWR Groundwater Recharge Demonstration Project Program, and other State programs.

Existing Funding

There is fairly low agreement that current funding aligns with a range of characteristics explored through the survey question: “Thinking about the State’s current grant programs, to what extent do you agree with the Statements below?” Out of 169 respondents, only 150 participants responded to this question, which touched on 12 characteristics. Less than 40% of respondents agreed with the Statements about all 12, only 3 characteristics had agreement from 30% of participants, and 4 characteristics received less than 20% of participants in agreement. These findings underscore room for improvement within the current funding programs to align with the characteristics. Positive standouts of more than 30% of participants in agreement includes: Encouraging Mitigation and Adaptation Planning;Valuing Equity;and Supporting Science. Critical standouts with low agreement include: Dependability; Accessibility; Addressing Feedback; and Fund Capacity Building.

Table 5.7: Perceptions on State’s current grant programs

The CRP team compared the responses of municipal governments and nonprofit organizations as the top two organization types that provided the most responses (about 60%). Both organizations were fairly aligned in agreement regarding the State’s current grant programs. Municipal governments tended to agree more with the Statements that the State’s current grant programs “encourage climate mitigation and adaptation planning” (10% higher than nonprofits at 40% agreement) and “value equity” (5% higher than nonprofits at 35% agreement). Alternatively, nonprofits agreed at a higher rate that the State’s current programs “provide support for implementation and/or permitting” (10% higher than municipal governments at 25% agreement) and “are accessible” (10% higher than municipal governments at 15% agreement).

Future Funding

Overall, 154 of the respondents completed the question asking about future State grant programs: “In your opinion, which of these qualities are important for future State grant programs?” Sub-questions were broken up in alignment with the funding and governance characteristics. Options for responses ranged from “not important” to “important” with “neutral” as a third option.

There was strong support (50%+ of respondents) on the importance of all of the characteristics. Some standouts (75%+) include “regional collaboration”, “dependable and reliable”, “equitable and community driven,” and “directly funded capacity”. The lowest priority for respondents was “continuous learning”, with only 56% of respondents identifying this characteristic as an important priority for State funding.

Table 5.8: Important perceived qualities for future State grant programs

These results are not surprising as CRP identified these qualities as priorities that were lacking in the structure and distribution of current grant programs through stakeholder engagement, the Ad Hoc Working Group, and desktop research. Therefore, CRP recommends that future grant programs should include these qualities in future grant programs:

• Directly fund capacity through staffing and partnerships
• Provide dependable and reliable funding
• Support regional collaboration around climate resilience
• Support equitable and community-driven climate resilience building
• Support community awareness and education programs
• Support the development of “shovel-ready” resilience projects
• Provide grant writing support to potential grantees
• Cultivate knowledge exchanges for shared insights and learning
• Make impact easily measurable through project goals and metrics
• Encourage continued learning by embedding best practices into evaluation

As a whole, 75% of total participants identified supporting equitable and community-driven resilient building as “important” for future State grant programs. However, when we pulled out municipal governments and nonprofits, which made up 60% of the respondents, only 46% of these two types of organizations identified this Statement as “important.” Additionally, 75% of nonprofits and municipal governments put importance on encouraging continued learning by embedding best practices into evaluation, while only 50% of organizations as a whole identified this Statement as “important”. We can see in the chart above that 75% of respondents view directly funding capacity through staffing & partnerships as “important”, but only about 55% of the responses from municipal governments and nonprofits identified this as “important”.

As a group, nonprofit organizations put more importance on “shovel-ready” climate resilience projects (about 80% of nonprofit organizations identified this as important, while 65% identified this as important). We can also see large variation in responses between municipal governments and nonprofits for the Statement regarding support for regional collaboration. 60% of municipal government respondents identified regional collaboration as “important” for future State grant programs, while only 30% of nonprofits identified regional collaboration as “important”.

Qualitative Feedback

Grant Programs

Survey respondents who indicated that they had received a State grant were asked about the challenges and successes of the grant process. When asked about successes, most respondents described the project successes the program funded rather than the program itself, but a few responses highlighted some grant successes. The Caltrans SB1 grant program and the Coastal Wildfire Resilience Grant were described by some stakeholders as “flexible”. Additionally, some respondents said that having a State contact to answer questions and help them through the application or reporting process was key to their success in navigating the process.

When asked about the challenges of the grant programs they applied for, the most frequently indicated challenge (37% of respondents) was that the grant management process was burdensome, overcomplicated and time-consuming. The complexity and burdensome nature of the grant applications was also a frequently mentioned challenge, but a less frequent response than overall grant management. This may be a factor of the survey pool, given that the respondents in this section indicated that they had been awarded a grant, and therefore had the capacity to navigate the application process successfully. The second most frequently indicated response was that parameters of the grants, such as the timeline or other requirements, were too rigid and inflexible. Some respondents described that projects frequently evolve as they unfold, which may require changes in scope or other activities, which rendered difficult and impossible under certain grant requirements. Funding was also challenging when grants relied on reimbursement models, or the potential funding offered was insufficient to cover the true scope of the project. Under the category of other comments, notable responses included that payments from the grant were sometimes delayed, and that funding of infrastructure was easier to obtain than funding of operations.

Table 5.9: Challenges in using State grants

Lastly, survey respondents were given an opportunity to submit any additional comments on any subject. Of the 63 responses received in this open comment box, most responses focused on the challenges of funding, or how funding needs to change in the State. Most other respondents' comments focused on which types of activities or priorities climate funding should be directed toward, or on the general landscape of climate governance and funding in the State.

Table 5.10: What needs to change in structure of State grant programs

The top two consolidated areas of concern for respondents addressing what needs to change in grant programs were around the scope of grant funding coverage, and around simplifying grant applications and management. These results echo those of the grant challenges section closely, as respondents also reiterated that timelines need to be longer to allow for more flexibility. A new insight from this section was that the definitions used to define which communities as “disadvantaged” were too narrow, and that more flexibility in that definition is needed.

The respondents who chose to comment on where funding should go generally focused on the type of activity the funding should support, rather than the sector or subject area. The most indicated funding area was “capacity building and staffing”, followed by “collaboration and partnership”. Many respondents also emphasized the various types of natural resources that they want to see protected and invested in. “Community centered process and planning” were also mentioned as activities in need of more funding support.

Table 5.11: Where should climate funding be directed?

Summary of Survey Findings

The results of the SLA survey provide additional insight into how organizations feel about the current State funding, and their needs and priorities for future funding cycles. The responses were primarily from nonprofits and municipalities, which were two of the target groups for this survey. These two groups aligned on their emphasis on the importance of reliable funding, continued learning by funding sources, and easily measurable impact. Evidently, nonprofits put more importance on having “shovel-ready” projects, while municipal governments emphasized the need for more regional collaboration.

The participants across organizations and regions are in agreement around the key areas for improvement in the distribution of funding from State grant programs. Key challenges identified across the survey for across the State include: staffing constraints, complex grant management processes, time consuming applicants, and accessibility. These findings should be balanced with the grant guidelines review and funding characteristics, as more specificity in grant guidelines can bring them into closer alignment in key areas, but further complication of the grant process could exclude and burden organizations even more than at present. Additionally, a key priority across the State and a high priority in every region is around community engagement, and it appears that municipal governments surveyed are not able to partner with other types of entities as frequently as nonprofits can.

With more time and resources, further survey outreach could focus on a larger pool of recipients that are more representative across the different types of organizations working on climate resilience in the 9 different regions in California. This survey could also be adapted for use as an annual survey as a mechanism to continually pulse the industry for program improvements.

TABLE 1: Stakeholders Engaged: Full Regional List

TABLE 2: Statewide Engagements by Region

TABLE 3: Ad Hoc Working Group

Project Team:

Resilient Cities Catalyst

Resilient Cities Catalyst operated as the project lead, coordinating the overall vision, research questions, methods, and outcomes. In doing so, RCC has driven the implementation of the stakeholder engagement activities, distillation of stakeholder input into the landscape analysis, coordination of final deliverables, and communication of results.

Principal: Sam Carter

Project Manager: Kristen Tadrous

Regional Leads: Anna Friedman, Sam Carter, Jeb Brugmann

Regional Support: Alex Klein, Shail Joshi, Amelia Smyth

Cross-Team Support: Alex Klein

Farallon Strategies

Farallon Strategies led the desktop research. This involved a thorough synthesis of literature used as the foundation of the research, including State grants, relevant surveys, and workshops. The organization also leveraged its relationships across the State to support RCC on stakeholder engagement activities.

Principal: Michael McCormick

Lead Investigator: Kif Scheuer

Project Associate: Christina Oraftik

Graduate Project Assistant: Annie Howley

CivicWell

CivicWell served as the lead of the ad-hoc working group, a cross-sectoral group of climate resilience practitioners across the State who provided guidance on the overall research and engagement throughout the course of the project. In this role, CivicWell was responsible for developing the working group charter, vetting the working group participants, managing all logistics, and setting the tone for each of the four meetings.

Lead: Julia Kim

Table 4: Project Teaming Structure

CRP identified 14 funding characteristics and 12 governance characteristics.

Development Rationale

Given the scale of climate impacts, development of more effective Statewide support for climate resilience requires establishing mechanisms for funding and support that can span a wide variety of scales, issues, and perspectives. As such, it is important to define a vocabulary for such mechanisms that can guide input, feedback, and ultimately, impact. Drawing on an initial set of foundational reports and studies that have already distilled a wide variety of input on what support for climate resilience should do and how, we developed a set of funding and governance “characteristics” that ideally should be supported and mobilized through pending State funding mechanisms. Not surprisingly, there are some commonalities across these two domains (e.g., issues of equity and participation emerge as a critical element in both).

These studies (and our own recent work advocating for resilience funding^[39]) recognize the aspirations of current policy and funding, while calling attention to significant deficiencies in the status quo approaches. Taken as a whole, we consistently see that the structure and delivery of State programming aimed at funding projects and supporting regional collaboration significantly impacts who participates, what they can accomplish, and how truly catalytic the outcomes are^[40].

Intent for Use

The intention in developing this “a priori” set of funding and governance characteristics is to provide the research team with analytic frameworks that can guide both desktop and direct stakeholder research in the following ways:

• Establishes a common set of characteristics that allows us to compare findings across sources, conversations, issues, and regions. This will enable the research team to see the common elements that will inform more robust recommendations, as well as identify outliers or differentiators.
• Allows us to “come to the table” with stakeholders informed, acknowledging what has been well established, allowing us to dive deeper into what can and should be done.
• Ideally leads to a framework for future analysis and feedback that allows for faster proactive critique of initiatives and funding so they can be more effective and impactful from the outset.
• Grounds our work in what has already been done so we can avoid duplication or repetition.

The goal at this stage is to use these characteristics to sketch an initial map, but use the project itself to refine and fill in this map with a goal of arriving at a more firmly established and useful set of characteristics at the end.

Draft Funding Characteristics

A diverse body of work [Sources to date = ^[41],^[42],^[43],^[44],^[45],^[46],^[47],^[48],^[49],^[50]] reflecting a broad-based synthesis from hundreds of local, regional, and State perspectives outlines a variety of challenges and shortcomings with current resilience funding, and more importantly suggests a number of ways to better deploy funding to advance community resilience across California. These studies, whitepapers, and frameworks are echoed and complimented by our own recent efforts^[51] to collate stakeholder input and outline priorities to maximize impact of the current resilience funding in California.

We developed these funding characteristics by starting with the Moser et al Adaptation Finance Challenges Report as that work represents a comprehensive peer-reviewed part of California’s 4th Assessment process and more importantly was grounded in local perspectives (surveys, focus groups). This report defined 15 elements under seven “archetypes of adaptation funding”^[52]. For each element, a set of problems and possible solutions were presented. We reviewed the full suite of identified solutions with an eye towards suggested characteristics for designing funding streams. We then reviewed a number of other sources to look for complimentary or distinct characteristics (as well as refinements to the framings of the characteristics).

From a process perspective, we moved away from the Moser et al. archetypes due to the intent of this project and the planned utilization of the characteristics. While Moser et al. were looking at financing writ large, we are interested in an analytic frame that can be used to review existing funding sources and reveal recommendations for specific grant programs within a State agency. So for example, analyzing existing funding programs may not benefit from a framing around funding type or ability to use and administer funds. For this purpose, we felt it was more useful to define characteristics in ways that map to the design features of a given grant program. Given that potential funding streams are very likely to be designed for multiple purposes, geographies, and recipients, we also chose not to focus on identifying characteristics tied to specific climate issues (e.g., heat, flooding, etc.) that might be more or less relevant in a given region. Rather we focused on those that are more generalizable, but did include a characteristic related to climate resilience overall. From this process, broader structural and operational characteristics of funding mechanisms that successfully achieve desired resilience outcomes across hazards and stakeholders.

The result of this cross-walk process led to 17 characteristics within three major groupings (see draft funding characteristics below). A brief summary of each major grouping and the included characteristics is provided here.

• Funding source: The first major group of characteristics concerns the structure of the funding source itself. Across various sources, how the funding is structured has a significant impact on who and what is funded. One characteristic describes how dependable the funding source is over time. Several of the sources note that regularity is critical to allow applicants to build understanding, compete for funding, and develop appropriate projects. Related to dependability is how accessible the grant program is for varied audiences. Some programs are highly technical and/or require significant administrative capacity that inherently prohibits lower capacity / lower resourced applicants from participating. Alternatively, programs with tiered access points, planning or technical assistance support, and dedicated funding for under-resourced applicants are going to be more accessible. Aligning funding with equity considerations is a major characteristic that is generally already present in the intent of many funding streams, but has variation in implementation (such as the degree to which vulnerable community representatives are involved in the development of the project, or how much of the funding is dedicated to addressing inequities overall). Finally, within the funding source category, we identified continuous learning as a desirable element of the funding source. So much of climate resilience support is changing over time, and if grant programs have no mechanisms to evaluate outcomes, share successes (and challenges) and evolve to better serve their goals, they are less likely to realize intended outcomes.
• Funded Activities: The second group of characteristics that emerged were the kinds of activities which are allowable within a given grant program. If allowable and prioritized activities do not sync up with community resilience needs, the program may still fund projects, but its ability to lead to lasting resilience outcomes may be constrained. The first (and perhaps most obvious) is that funding should support evidence-based and concrete resilience activities. It makes sense that climate resilience funding needs to support project activities grounded in climate science and documented community needs, but there is variation in the degree to which given funding streams support evidence-based project activities. Regionalism is another important characteristic. Many climate risks are regional in scale (or larger) and many sources note the need for funded projects to consider, align, and coordinate with regional needs and priorities so that activities in one community don’t undermine activities in another. Connected to regional needs is a characteristic related to collaboration—both vertical and horizontal. Resilience efforts are often broad, and they diffuse and affect a variety of levels of a community. For longer term resilience outcomes, collaboration should be strengthened, so the degree to which a grant program recognizes and empowers both vertical and horizontal collaboration is an important dimension to consider. An important related characteristic to collaboration is participation. The sources we reviewed suggest that the degree to which a grant program prioritizes, requires, and supports deep community participation in the full project (from definition to implementation) is important to building long-term momentum and success. An emerging theme in many discussions is the importance of capacity building as a tool to empower communities to build momentum with climate resilience activities. This is a general and umbrella term, but it refers to the resources (i.e., staffing, funding, community will) that various communities have on hand to tackle pressing issues. While it is clear from what we have reviewed that implementation funding is vital, without complimentary capacity building funding, it is likely that existing imbalances in who gets funding and how much any given funding leads to lasting change will remain or exacerbate. Somewhat related to capacity building—but standing out as distinct—are two characteristics related to building community momentum: training and communications/education. Training stands out as a more specific element of internal capacity because there is a great need to support skill building among the people who are responsible for managing resilience response efforts. Communications/education similarly refer to activities related to building awareness and understanding at a community scale through project activities. Both of these are important activities that compliment specific resilience projects, but can be allowed and supported to varied degrees in a given grant program.
• Project Outcomes: The final group relates to the intended project outcomes from a grant program. While discrete activities are the core of how a program supports resilience outcomes, it is important the grant program sets direction so all individual projects are contributing to a broader resilience outcome for the State as a whole. Within this group we identified breadth as a characteristic. This refers to the fact that climate resilience is never about just climate impacts, but a host of other community issues that are entangled;the program should recognize and support a holistic approach to resiliency that connects climate more broadly (e.g., health, safety, equity, etc.). While breadth is important, if funding is going to realize desired benefits, it is also vital that the program establish clear standards and criteria for measurable impact (even if across multiple dimensions) so individually and collectively progress, outcomes, and benefits (or gaps) can be tracked. Finally, as most grant programs are not persistent or large enough to accomplish all that is needed for a community, and climate resilience is increasingly the “new normal” for communities, funding should support mainstreaming of climate resilience into systems, processes, and relationships so that managing risks and fostering greater resiliency become further embedded into the fabric of California communities and ideally help them become less dependent on what may be limited external funding.

As outlined above, the specific approaches to the design of the funding mechanism (i.e., how the funding is deployed or distributed), allowable project activities (i.e., what activities are supported or required by the funding), and the metrics for evaluating/tracking project outcomes can support or inhibit effective resilience outcomes, and thus may present an important way to understand and improve funding processes. These characteristics will be used in the foregoing analysis to assess existing funding guidelines, assist in the characterization of funding distribution, and organize stakeholder feedback on necessary or desired funding approaches.

Draft Governance Characteristics

To understand the necessary characteristics of governance structures that could best support regional resilience building and adaptation action, we reviewed several published pieces addressing governance issues in adaptation [Sources to date =  ^[53],^[54],^[55],^[56],^[57],^[58],^[59],^[60],^[61],^[62]]. These reports describe a variety of governance challenges and potential solutions. These sources spanned theoretical and academic perspectives, including regional and issue-based assessments (e.g., addressing sea level rise adaptation in the San Francisco Bay Area), as well as extensive surveying across diverse stakeholders. Cross referencing these studies against the goals of the project to inform State climate funding, we distilled the elements into a set of 17 characteristics within 5 major groupings necessary for effective governance to advance regional resilience (see draft governance characteristics below).

Across studies, we identified key characteristics within a particular organization, agency, jurisdiction, or other governing body (referred to hereafter as “organization”), such as leadership and authority, social capital, equity alignment, resource capacity, and organizational capacity, which influence an organization’s ability to effectively and equitably conduct resilience and adaptation activities. In the ecosystem of regional governance, there is a need for organizations that fulfill different roles to act in coordination with each other to effectively implement resilience building initiatives. As such, the governance characteristics outlined below should be assessed across a network of regional resilience stakeholders to more fully understand how the network as a whole is or is not equipped to build resilience to short term shocks and long term stresses associated with climate change.

In total, we identified 14 characteristics within five categories which the reviewed resources identified as key for successful and equitable resilience building (see draft governance characteristics below). The characteristics and categories are briefly summarized here.

• Authority & Leadership: In order to be an active partner in resilience building, an organization must have the legal authority to take action and an interest in engaging in resilience work.

• Legal authority: Taking resilience action can have many forms, and what action an organization can take will be dictated by the structure and legal authority that organization has. Understanding what authority an organization needs to work within will inform what types of resilience work they can do.
• Motivation to lead: While an organization may have the legal authority to take resilience action, leadership must be willing and interested in making resilience progress. If staff or one department is attempting to push a resilience agenda against disinterested leadership, they are less likely to make progress than an organization with pro-resilience leadership.
• Resilience goals or plan: Organizing around specific resilience topics and creating specific goals or plans for resilience action allow organizations to generate more interest in their work and measure resilience progress.

• Social Capital: In order to work in collaboration effectively and with equity, an organization must have the relationships necessary to work productivity with multiple types of partners at multiple scales and engage with stakeholders. Such relationships are dependent on trust, perception, history, accountability, and other aspects that can be grouped under social capital.

• Horizontal and vertical partnerships: Many sources highlighted that effective collaborative work on adaptation and resilience requires partnerships that extend horizontally across sectors, jurisdictions, and issues among organizations at the same governance level, and vertically, across CBOs, through city, county, State, and Federal levels. Some sources term this cross-domain and cross-scale relationships. The most productive types of partnerships lead to co-production of regional resilience solutions.
• Stakeholder and public engagement: One of the most consistent themes through the resources is that engagement and buy-in from stakeholders and the public is key for adaptation and resilience building success. Building a foundation of trust with stakeholders and the public takes time, but is necessary to engage in the co-production of resilience solutions, one of the most successful and effective types of collaboration, according to two studies on regional climate collaboratives.

• Equity Aligned: The need for equity alignment and centering is crucial, as frontline communities and communities of color both receive a disproportionate burden of climate impacts and are less frequently represented in the adaptation and resilience building spaces. There are many ways to incorporate equity as priority, but resource review suggested that two categories could prove more effective.

• Representation or relationships: Having direct representation in the organization from frontline and marginalized communities or robust working relationships with them was mentioned as key to correcting historic and present-day exclusion from these spaces and the most direct way to ensure their voices are included in adaptation and resilience.
• Procedural and distributive equity: Having established policies within an organization to ensure that equity is built into the process of projects and program formation, as well as the distribution of the benefits of those efforts is essential to ensuring equitable outcomes.

• Resource Capacity: An organization cannot make progress on equity and resilience if it is under-resourced and cannot support any additional work. The two most commonly discussed types of under-resourcing according to the literature reviewed are the following.

• Funding: Organizations looking to make adaptation and resilience progress need ongoing funding that supports their work and should ideally be aware of additional sources of funding that could be used to expand their efforts.
• Staff bandwidth: There are numerous ways that the ability of staff to work on adaptation and resilience can be hampered. Many organizations are understaffed, with current staff doing the work of more than one role, leaving no time for additional resilience work. Working on adaptation, collaboration, engagement or other necessary aspects of resilience may fall outside the job descriptions of staff, meaning that resilience work they do is through voluntary participation outside their paid duties. Additionally, an organization may lack staff with the technical background or skills to adequately address resilience in their work.

• Organizational Capacity: Aspects of an organization’s ability to take adaptation and resilience action which are not related to its resources or relationships fall into the category of organizational capacity. The elements of organizational capacity mentioned across reviewed sources are the following.

• Institutionalization: An important aspect of making adaptation and resilience progress is considering climate impacts and resilience across departments and in all decision-making processes of an organization. Without resilience being institutionalization across programs, there will be issued opportunities for progress, and possibly regressive or discoordinated action. This not only hampers resilience progress but could harm relationships and trust built with other actors. Additionally, while an organization may have adopted climate or resilience plans and goals, keeping data, monitoring, evaluating, taking accountability, and learning from those efforts is essential to understand and improve progress towards those goals. Progress on putting resilience goals into action requires institutionalization of the importance of resilience building.
• Application of climate and social science/knowledge: In order to make the best informed actions for resilience building, it is important that an organization have access to and the ability to understand and act on reliable climate and social knowledge. Without an accurate understanding of ecological, social, and other dynamics in its area, no organization can make appropriate and equitable action. The terms “science” and “knowledge” are both used in order to include and elevate types of knowledge which are critical, but do not always fall within the commonly accepted definition of “science” (i.e. traditional ecological knowledge, local historic knowledge, lived experiences, etc).
• Internal/external information sharing: Another key factor is sharing their climate and social information both internally and externally. Organizations can share knowledge internally and have staff partake in trainings or use tools which can help them make further progress on resilience action. Additionally, sharing information, best practices, and other knowledge with organizations and the public were mentioned across resources as important factors in successful collaboration.

Table 5: Funding Characteristics

Table 6: Governance Characteristics

We developed a rubric based on the funding characteristics as a way to analyze a set of State grant programs to identify strengths and gaps. The following is a list of initial programs we evaluated from a range of programs across agencies. As with the distribution data, there is a large universe of potential programs to review, and we welcomed guidance from Working Group members.

Table 7: State Program Grant Guidelines Reviewed

Exclusions from the analysis:

• High Speed Rail projects
• Statewide
• Region is blank/unknown, or couldn’t be reconciled from “multiple counties”
• Administration-related projects

The following bond programs were included in the analysis:

• Prop 1: Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act. Obligation bonds to fund ecosystems and watershed protection and restoration, water supply. 2014-Present
• Prop 1E: Disaster Preparedness and Flood Prevention
• Prop 12: Safe Neighborhood Parks, Clean Water, Clean Air, and Coastal Protection Bond Act of 2000
• Prop 13: Safe Drinking Water, Clean Water, Watershed Protection, and Flood Protection Act
• Prop 40: California Clean Water, Clean Air, Safe Neighborhood Parks
• Prop 50: Water Security, Clean Drinking Water, Coastal and Beach Protection Act
• Prop 68: Drought, Water, Parks, Climate, Coastal Protection, and Outdoor Access for All
• Prop 84: Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River and Coastal Protection
• Prop 204: Safe, Clean, Reliable Water Supply Act

Table 8: Distribution of Funding by Agency

CRP coded the data by the primary climate issue that the project addresses. If a project focused on multiple climate issues, such as energy and water, then CRP labeled the project as “Multiple.” Project examples that addressed the 19 climate issues are provided in Table 4 below.

Table 9: Climate Subject Examples

Table 10: Central Coast

Table 11: Inland Deserts

Table 12: Los Angeles

Table 13: North Coast

Table 14: Sierra Nevada

Table 15: Sacramento Valley

Table 16: San Diego

Table 17: San Francisco Bay Area

Table 18: San Joaquin Valley

As a way to address the governance research questions related to the existing and ideal roles of regional organizations and agencies in advancing climate resilience planning and implementation, as well as the key regional stakeholders in each region, CRP developed the following table from the Annual Planning Survey (APS). APS highlighted the key Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) and Council of Governments (COG), as well as other regional organization(s) or collaborative networks. These responses are related to the governance characteristics of horizontal and vertical partnerships, and internal/external information sharing. While roles were not identified, the responses provided through the survey provided insight into who are some of the key regional leaders to help inform stakeholder engagement activities.

Table 19: 2020 APS MPO and COG Findings

CNRA/OPR Workshop Data

Unique Resilience Challenges Identified

Central Coast

• Lack of resources and capacity
• Lack of leadership, political will, and consensus among decision makers
• Lack of coordination
• Lack of regional strategies

Inland Deserts

• Increased expansion from urban areas into wildlands and resulting habitat impacts (unique to Inland Deserts)
• Land spreading sludge and contaminants (unique to Inland Deserts)
• Evaporation (unique to Inland Deserts)
• Funding (unique to Inland Deserts)
• Urbanization (unique to Inland Deserts)

Los Angeles

• Land use
• Lack of resources and capacity
• Lack of clear leadership, political will, and consensus among decision makers
• Inequity

North Coast

• Lack of resources and capacity
• Climate impact and severity
• Lack of clear leadership, political will, and consensus among decision makers
• Lack of regional coordination and strategies

Northern Sierra

• Lack of clear leadership, political will, and consensus among decision makers
• Lack of resources and capacity
• Research and data gaps
• Lack of coordination

Sacramento Valley

• Lack of clear leadership, political will, and consensus among decision makers
• Lack of resources and capacity
• Land use
• Lack of coordination

San Diego

• Land use
• Lack of clear leadership, political will, and consensus among decision makers
• Climate impact severity and frequency
• Lack of coordination

San Francisco Bay Area

• Lack of resources and capacity
• Lack of clear leadership, political will, and consensus among decision makers
• Inefficient government policies and regulations
• Inequity

San Joaquin Valley

• Lack of resources and capacity
• Water mismanagement and decreased water supply (unique to San Joaquin Valley)
• Lack of clear leadership, political will, and consensus among decision makers
• Lack of education and public awareness

Southern Sierra

• Lack of resources and capacity
• Lack of clear leadership, political will, and consensus among decision makers
• Lack of coordination
• Research data and gaps

San Francisco Bay Area

• State mandates, regulation, guidance, and incentives
• Funding and financing
• Support region-specific approaches
• State action and leadership

How can the State support a regional approach to adaptation and resilience through the Strategy?

Central Coast

• State mandates, regulation, guidance, and incentives
• Funding and financing
• State action and leadership
• Coordination, partnerships, and collaboration

Inland Deserts

• Enforcement of mitigation measures approved in CEQA plan reviews (unique to Inland Deserts)
• Enhance and update CEQA, CESA and other environmental review legislation (unique to Inland Deserts)
• Education materials and funding geared toward politicians and the public (unique to Inland Deserts)

Los Angeles

• Coordination, partnerships, and collaboration
• Data and resource tools
• Funding and financing
• State mandates, regulation, guidance, and incentives

North Coast

• Data and resource tools
• Funding and financing
• Support for region-specific approaches
• Coordination, partnerships and collaboration

Northern Sierra

• Support for region-specific approaches
• Monitoring and tracking (unique to Northern Sierra)
• Support for region-specific approaches
• Coordination, partnerships and collaboration

Sacramento Valley

• State mandates, regulation, guidance, and incentives
• Support for region-specific approaches
• Data and resource tools
• Coordination, partnerships and collaboration

San Diego

• Funding for training and capacity at regional scales for adaptation projects
• Prioritizing funding for collaborative efforts
• Customize approaches by geographic conditions: Beach, River, UWI, desert

San Joaquin Valley

Results were not summarized  by CNRA and OPR, but listed individually

• Capacity building in the region, including data & tools, but also support for partnerships and convening, which does not occur naturally
• Could we do things more holistically? Put solar panels on the irrigation canals?
• Make sure that air and water and agriculture are working together
• Fund valley-wide collaboratives for aligned planning/projects that include community resident representation
• Provide funding/models for collaborative groups like was done for IRWMs
• Prioritizing community driven solutions
• Support local governmental agencies and communities
• Ensure that all regional needs are given equal weight regardless of population

Southern Sierra

Results were not summarized  by CNRA and OPR, but listed individually

• Local leadership education, funding, and technical assistance - rural communities do not have capacity for unfunded State mandates
• Please provide funding and technical assistance to our regional Council of Governments (ESCOG and the "ESCOG: Sustainable Recreation and Ecosystem Management Program")
• Please understand that the ESCOG is a JPA and will never be an MPO - funding is needed for Rural California to garner political support for State policies such as climate change
• Making CalFire firefighters available for prescribed fire activities on Federal lands through some form of partnership

Knowledge gaps or information needed to accelerate adaptation efforts

Central Coast

• Economic and financial information/data
• Adaptation strategies and guidance, and guidance
• Climate impact data
• Improved data, mapping, and technology

Inland Deserts

• Recent, local data (trip and bicycle data) (unique to Inland Deserts)
• Specific needs of communities (unique to Inland Deserts)
• Economic projections for likely costs of fire and flood insurance, and the negative impacts associated with not acting now
• Up-to-date aerial imagery

Los Angeles

• Improved data, mapping, and technology
• Carbon neutrality and greenhouse gas mitigation
• Economic and financial information/data
• Sector-specific research and data

North Coast

Results were not summarized  by CNRA and OPR, but listed individually

• Sea level rise and groundwater impacts
• Understanding cascading impacts
• Best approaches for public engagement
• Evaluate cost/benefits of various adaptation strategies
• Low carbon back-up power sources for PSPS events (need research on this)
• Public transit research for best technology decisions in transition to zero emission vehicles for rurals
• How to measure social impacts
• What types of demographic shifts might we see such as climate refugees
• Agreed upon metrics for measuring progress

Northern Sierra

• Adaptation strategies and guidance
• Community-driven science/community engagement
• Improved data, mapping, and technology
• Sector-specific research and data

Sacramento Valley

• Adaptation strategies and guidance
• Community-driven science/community engagement
• Economic and financial information/data
• Effective coordination, partnerships, and collaboration

San Diego

Results were not summarized  by CNRA and OPR, but listed individually

• Provide a central location to place any proposed Federal or State legislation that is being considered that could affect a local plan for moving forward with their CARP.
• How much carbon can we sequester with regenerative agriculture practices in our climate?
• Please collaborate with Jack Dangermond (ESRI) and his science and planning staff to build a planning and using GeoDesign. CalFire and other agencies already build on GeoDesign
• Need coupled social ecological systems (both social and ecological scientists)
• Need more involvement of social scientists in developing and evaluating solutions. Includes anthropologists, sociologists, scientists, community organizers
• Not JUST physical scientists — it is a human and social problem

San Francisco Bay Area

• Adaptation strategies and guidance
• Carbon neutrality
• Economic and financial information/data
• Effective coordination, partnerships, and collaboration

San Joaquin Valley

• Climate impact data
• Sector-specific research and data
• Economic and financial information/data
• Technical assistance and capacity-building

Southern Sierra

Results were not summarized  by CNRA and OPR, but listed individually

• Need a good, locally-usable and frequently updated, online map of where highest fire risks are to better prioritize protection actions (vulnerable communities and leverage resources, etc.)
• We already have a map of wildfire risk, but we need a map or understanding of the soil types that are most at risk: water holding capacity and suitability or likelihood of natural reforestation. Where are the most valuable soils so they can be preserved most aggressively?
• Funding and technical support for the Eastern Sierra Council of Governments JPA
• Rural communities, like those in the Southern Sierra, are often struggling to address current pressing or State mandated needs (public health, housing, much less economic development, etc.), particularly after COVID. Local leadership will need technical assistance and funding to develop resiliency plans and implement them

Table 20: Statewide Landscape Analysis Survey

REGIONAL RESILIENCE LEADERSHIP

STATE GRANT PROGRAMS

FINAL THOUGHTS