Are you looking for a collaborative approach to building community resilience?

Building on experience gained by working with communities over the past 10 years, our team has developed the Whole Community Framework to help communities build resilience in the face of changing climate conditions.

The Whole Community framework starts with understanding the community’s most valued resources, then develops local climate change projections and a cross-sector vulnerability assessment. Once vulnerabilities are assessed and impacts prioritized, strategies are developed to address the priority vulnerabilities and increase their community’s resilience across all sectors and populations.

A systems view is key to developing these strategies. Thoughtful development of collaborative, and cross-sector strategies can lead to a whole suite of synergies – cost savings, new partnerships, complementary efforts, and less community conflict.

A community may utilize the Whole Community framework in one of two ways: a) through a professional services consulting engagement with the ClimateWise team at Geos Institute, or b) by utilizing the Climate Ready Communities assisted do-it-yourself program.

If your community prefers a consulting engagement, the typical path is an RFP for climate resilience planning as a whole or just for key components of the process, such as to develop a vulnerability assessment. See our suggestions for developing your RFP here.  

We also welcome questions if you are just getting started with developing your RFP. Email Geoff Weaver at geoff@geosinstitute.org

If your community’s resources for climate resilience planning are limited and/or you prefer to build capacity in this area rather than utilizing a consultant to guide the process, we suggest you consider our Climate Ready Communities program. Here is an overview of the program, and most communities with an interest in this approach begin by downloading the comprehensive Practical Guide to Developing Climate Resilience.