As part of our Climate & Land Use Technical Assistance Program, we worked with Florida-based community organization, Incubate Neighborhood Center (INC), to raise awareness about the ways that climate change is impacting their community’s infrastructure, insurance rates, and economic opportunity. In this video, business owners, government officials, and regional resilience partners talk about how flooding is impacting everyday life and how they envision both the state and federal governments addressing these issues to create healthier, more prosperous, and more resilient communities.
In St. Lucie County, Florida, located on the state’s Atlantic coast and crisscrossed by several canals and waterways, flooding is a perennial concern. The region, however, is one of the fastest-growing places in the entire country. The speed of this development, combined with the increased threat of storms and flooding due to climate change, means that local leaders must manage the many stressors on both their infrastructure and the economy.
Residents of St. Lucie County experience a myriad of social and economic disparities. Fort Pierce, where INC is based, is a Justice40 Community, meaning that its history with environmental injustices makes it a place of priority for federal investments in more equitable infrastructure. Climate change, unfortunately, tends to amplify these historic inequities, disproportionately affecting communities that have been disinvested in and that have the least capacity to respond and recover.
For Fort Pierce residents, investments in infrastructure that can mitigate the impacts of climate change are an important part of ensuring that marginalized communities in the region are receiving the benefits of St. Lucie County’s rapid growth. Hear directly from community members on the importance of these topics in our video, “Building for Florida’s tomorrow: Bridging climate resilience with economic opportunity”.