The Critical Role of Community-Driven Adaptation and Resilience Building: Bright Spots and Lessons from the State of California

Across the globe policymakers and institutional stakeholders see that approaches where outsiders deploy top-down solutions for communities facing complex local challenges and where climate change, poverty and weak systems overlap, consistently fail to create the desired impact. While public engagement is often part of local processes, recognition of the importance and power of community voice and agency to address power imbalances and systems of exclusion requires deeper and more fundamental shifts in the design of public initiatives. Governments and stakeholders across the world need to rethink the role of communities in problem identification and solution making and accelerate reforms and investments to center community voice and agency. California’s Transformative Climate Communities program is a powerful example of government valuing participatory decision making and community-led resilience planning and action. After an introduction to community engagement in the context of key California adaptation and resilience policies, the chapter showcases California’s Transformative Climate Communities program, features the initiatives on the ground in cities of Fresno and Stockton, and offers concrete advice for other governments as they design and undertake similar initiatives.