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In late 2024, as part of a bipartisan funding bill, Congress authorized $110 billion in disaster recovery funds across federal agencies. Following Congress’ appropriation, The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced how their $12 billion tranche of disaster recovery funding would be divided among disaster-impacted communities at the city, county, and state levels. This funding, known as Community Development Block Grants for Disaster Recovery or CDBG-DR is intended to be flexible and allow recipients to design programs that respond to the local post-disaster needs. Usually CDBG-DR programs fall into one of three categories: housing, infrastructure repair, or economic revitalization.   

Disasters and the complicated process of recovering from them can deepen pre-existing inequality–a study of FEMA disaster aid on a county level found that awards exacerbated the racial wealth gap. The longer communities must wait for disaster funds to flow, the greater the financial and emotional strain on households.

Now that CDBG-DR funds have been allocated, there’s an enormous opportunity across 23 states and one territory not just to rebuild, but to create more equitable and resilient communities in the face of growing risk.  

What climate leaders and program administrators can do  

Following years of pressure by disaster survivors and advocates, HUD recently changed its program requirements to make disaster recovery more equitable. As cities, counties, and states that received CDBG-DR allocations create their required action plans to submit to the federal government, they should keep in mind the following recommendations alongside input from disaster survivors.    

Stick to 70%  

Federal rules around CDBG-DR funding require that 70% of funds be spent on activities that benefit low-to-moderate income households who find it harder to recover from increasingly severe and frequent disasters. Recipients of CDBG-DR funds can request to have that threshold lowered to 51%. An audit of CDBG-DR programs from 2001-2019 found that 137 of 193 grantees reviewed had reduced their requirement to 51%. At a time when more and more Americans are experiencing damage and displacement from extreme weather as a pocketbook issue, it’s critical that public officials from local governments all the way up to HUD staff honor the 70% requirement.   

Dovetail and Accommodate to Deepen Impact  

Disasters don’t occur in a vacuum–those that struggle to access long-term recovery assistance are often facing multiple challenges, something program administrators acknowledge, but find difficult to address.  In order to design and implement impactful long-term recovery, investments should be made in accommodations that ensure equitable access to recovery resources like providing transportation and home visit options for mobility-impaired residents and ensuring language accessible program materials.    

In addition to providing accommodations, administrators should also dovetail disaster recovery applications with trusted local programs that already reach vulnerable populations to deepen impact. A key challenge when homes are damaged or lost during a disaster is to ensure that eligibility requirements are inclusive and don’t worsen disparities. 

Take for example, the residents of heirs’ properties–where homes are passed down through generations without legal title. Heirs’ property is a common practice in Black communities born out of discrimination by lending institutions and the government and can make navigating disaster recovery programs especially difficult.

Following years of advocacy, including a lawsuit by disaster survivors in North Carolina, the federal government now requires programs to allow for alternate means of demonstrating ownership. After identifying heirs’ properties through disaster recovery efforts, survivors could be “funneled” into legal clinics to resolve their title issues and safeguard family wealth. Administrative pipelines between disaster programs and other services for populations that struggle to access aid hold enormous potential to improve public health outcomes and advance economic and racial justice.  

Remember Renters 

Across the country, more people rent their homes than ever before.  Despite a long-term trend in increased rentership and heightened political urgency around the affordable housing crisis, renters receive less initial disaster aid compared with homeowners. In the days and weeks after a disaster, renters may face dubious evictions and illegal price gouging when trying to secure alternative housing. 

While long-term recovery programs can’t prevent these costly and stressful experiences, they can be designed to be more responsive to renters’ needs. This might look like increasing the supply of meaningfully affordable housing by deepening subsidies for new development, repairing or providing resilience upgrades to existing affordable housing without pricing out tenants, preserving long-term affordability by transferring rental properties into a community land trust or investing in legal services for renters.   

A drop in the resilience bucket  

CDBG-DR funds will not meet all the resilience or housing needs of disaster impacted communities.  Other parts of the $110 billion disaster spending package passed will address different types of recovery efforts–from improving water systems to repairing public facilities and supporting agricultural recovery.

Still, this funding is a drop in the bucket.  Communities across the country deserve proactive and equitable investment in the face of growing climate risk and an affordable housing crisis. Until there’s the political will to make those life-saving investments–and to curb emissions to limit how much worse fossil-fueled climate disasters get–every drop in the resilience bucket counts and should be invested in ways that have the most equitable impact.

Their feathers, roosting behaviors and adaptability help birds survive the cold, “nature’s proving ground.”

The order is the latest Trump administration effort against Biden-era initiatives that intended to promote electric vehicles and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Towns and dams built on the assumption the surrounding ice would never melt are facing disaster

In the early days of the global warming debate there was a lot of optimism from the oil lobby about the upsides of the temperature increase for northern climes. One example, that has come to pass, was that warmer weather would create conditions for a flourishing wine industry in England.

Some scientists, particularly Russian advisors to the Kremlin, saw a strategic advantage in climate change. They calculated that a warmer climate would improve conditions for growing key food crops further north, particularly wheat. This would benefit Siberia. Droughts in the US would cut food production there, further altering the balance of power in Russia’s favour.

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Labour is constantly torn between its self-image as a party of radical change and its fear of alienating voters with the wrong kind of radicalism

When Keir Starmer became Labour leader he was unpractised in politics. For advice, he naturally turned to someone who had done his job before and with whom he had a good personal rapport: Ed Miliband.

As Starmer grew in confidence he stayed friendly with Miliband, deferential to his status as a veteran of government and appreciative of his sincere enthusiasm for the energy and climate brief. But the new leader was also ruthlessly focused on winning power, and increasingly alert to toxicities in the Labour brand. He was persuaded that the journey to Downing Street could be completed only by jettisoning policy baggage and paying less heed to people associated with past failure.

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Mete Coban, 32, says climate policy will bring ‘social, economic and racial justice’ to deprived communities

Working-class people and those from ethnic minorities will benefit most from a range of environmental policies being implemented in London, the capital’s deputy mayor has said.

Mete Coban, 32, grew up in a council flat in the borough of Hackney and saw for himself the difficulties the lack of green space, poor or overcrowded housing and polluted air can cause.

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The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists shifted the hands of the symbolic clock to 89 seconds to midnight, citing the threat of climate change, nuclear war and the misuse of artificial intelligence.

A rule known as the endangerment finding requires the E.P.A. to regulate greenhouse gases. It has proved resilient against earlier attacks.

After a flood destroyed their town, Kentucky residents faced the agonizing choice of whether to stay or to relocate to new communities built on former strip mines.

Exclusive: Monash University study suggests those who rely more on newspapers and public broadcasters more likely to score highly on ‘civic values’

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Those who believe global heating is a conspiracy get most of their information about news and current events from commercial and social media, according to a study by researchers at Monash University.

The study, led by Prof Mark Andrejevic and Assoc Prof Zala Volcic, found that those who relied on social media as the main source of news scored lower on a measure of “civic values” than people who relied on newspapers and non-commercial media.

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The oil company plans to build natural gas power plants that will be directly connected to data centers used by technology companies for artificial intelligence and other services.

Businesses like Suay Sew Shop are trying to salvage piles of damaged textiles – and warn of the dangers of climate impact and overconsumption

At Suay Sew Shop in Los Angeles’s arts district, mounds of clothes are piled high in a warehouse. The T-shirts, socks, jackets and denim are surplus donations from the LA wildfires that community groups across the city were unable to distribute because they had too much already, or because the items were dirty, damaged or poorly made.

Instead of letting the clothes go to a landfill, where they can cause a host of environmental problems, Suay has rescued 50,000lbs of textiles so they can be cleaned, sorted and upcycled by professional designers and sewers. Since LA currently has no permanent textile recycling or collection, it’s up to groups like Suay to save as many textiles as possible before they get dumped or exported.

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As the risk of extreme flooding increases with climate change, an effort is underway to relocate hundreds of flood survivors to unique higher ground.

Climate crisis and pollution reported as possible reasons for dramatic fall in numbers of cockles, clams and mussels

A “catastrophic” collapse in shellfish numbers is being reported by Spanish fishers in Galicia, with some stocks falling by as much as 90% in the space of a few years.

Galicia is Europe’s principal source of shellfish and, after China, the world’s biggest producer of mussels, which are farmed in the estuaries.

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Chancellor reassures Labour colleagues that climate concerns go ‘hand in hand’ with economic ambitions

Rachel Reeves has told MPs the government needs to go “further and faster” to increase economic growth, as Downing Street sought to reassure people concerned about the environment that net zero and increasing output go “hand in hand”.

The chancellor has unnerved some Labour MPs and green campaigners with her increasingly punchy rhetoric about growth being a priority over preventing climate change, as she strives to improve the UK’s anaemic forecasts and drive up living standards.

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An economic shift raises alarming questions about government vision, priorities and commitment to transformative policies

To hear Labour’s economic message, one might wonder if Downing Street has developed an unlikely admiration for Liz Truss. Given its focus on growth through cutting planning regulations, reducing welfare budgets and removing dissenting bureaucrats, some believe Labour is in danger of echoing not just the spirit but the substance of Ms Truss’s brief, ill-fated tenure. For a party that rose to power criticising the Tory right’s ideological misadventures, this shift in tone is striking.

Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves may see Labour’s sinking poll ratings as reason to align with their opponents, adopting policies – like curbing legal challenges to planning decisions – few rightwingers would contest. In a speech later this week, Ms Reeves plans to give the go-ahead for a third runway at Heathrow, a divisive choice even within Labour that has earned support from the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch.

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Energy secretary insists there is ‘no contradiction between net zero and economic growth’ in hearing at Commons committee

The hearing has stopped for a short break. Heather Hallett, the chair, tells Badenoch that her evidence will be finished by lunchtime.

Keith is now asking Badenoch about the fourth report produced by the Race Disparity Unit. It was produced in December 2021.

Relevant health departments and agencies should review and action existing requests for health data, and undertake an independent strategic review of the dissemination of healthcare data and the publication of statistics and analysis.​​

Government is not necessarily great at delivering these systems. They tend to be big boondoggles for the private sector, but there are private sector companies that can deliver this. There need to be caveats around that.

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Oil and gas executives welcomed President Trump’s early moves on energy policy, but many said they did not plan to increase production unless prices rose significantly.

Some $35 billion is aimed at building small solar sites in rural areas and other improvements. The World Bank chief called the project “foundational to everything.”

More than 100 people evacuated from their homes as Storm Herminia hits Britain after Éowyn

A major incident has been declared in Somerset after more than 100 people were evacuated from their homes because of flooding, while roads were blocked, trains delayed or cancelled and schools closed, as stormy weather once again battered parts of the UK.

Rest centres were set up for people forced to leave their homes in three Somerset towns – Chard, Ilminster and Somerton – with some residents reporting levels of flooding not seen for years. Highways teams dealt with almost 50 incidents.

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