Olympia participates in UN-sponsored climate change resilience program

Olympia made another climate commitment by joining the Race to Resilience program, a global initiative of the United Nations that aims to build resilience for four billion vulnerable people globally to climate risks.

Mayor Cheryl Selby announced the city's participation at the council meeting on Tuesday, October 25.

Selby and Olympia's Climate Program manager Dr. Pamela Braff briefed the council members on their trip to Malmo, Sweden, where they participated in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) World Congress 2022 in May.

ICLEI is a global network of more than 2500 local and regional governments committed to sustainable urban development. The organization supports sustainability policy and drives local action for low emissions and equitable and resilient development.

According to Selby, Olympia is one of the four pilot communities conducting climate risk and vulnerability assessment and implementing high-impact resilience action. Travis County, Texas, Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee, and Oberlin, Ohio, also joined the Race to Resilience program.

The mayor added that the Race to Resilience, which focuses on adaptation, is a sibling campaign of Race to Zero, which is all about mitigation. 

In November 2021, Olympia joined the Cities Race to Zero campaign, a global movement to rally leadership and support from businesses, cities, regions, and investors for a healthy, resilient, zero-carbon transition for sustainable growth.

"Our downtown is at significant risk of sea level rise. It is vital that we must protect our city's cultural, historical, and economic core. That is also why they picked us. We've shared with them some of the steps we have taken through our Sea Level Rise Response plan, but there's much more that we can do to help our city adapt. The Race to Resilience program will provide a roadmap for us to assess and take action," Selby said.

According to Selby, the three-day ICLEI event had 625 participants from more than 50 countries and 200 virtual participants.

About 44% of attendees were local and regional government representatives. Other participants included academia, research institutes, the private sector, civil society, and non-government organizations.

Selby said the climate event allowed them to connect and establish partnerships with people worldwide. The event also taught them about best practices and new ideas to enhance the city's climate initiatives.

Braff shared some of the highlights of the climate event that showcased solutions and resources, which she said could be helpful for Olympia in implementing the climate sustainability plans, including the Google Environmental Insights Explorer and the Circular City Action Framework.

The Google Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE) platform is free and relatively new. It was developed to help cities and regions measure and evaluate greenhouse gas emissions and sources. She said the developers are currently working on mapping street-level air pollution and mapping urban tree canopy.

"This is useful because we spend a lot of time measuring greenhouse gas emissions each year and evaluating where they are coming from and how we take action. This help speeds up that process so that we can spend less time measuring and more time acting," Braff told the council members.

Circular City Action Framework introduces cities and regions to all of the strategies and actions available and can be used for sustainable development at the local level. It has policy toolkits, case studies, examples, and models that communities can use and access.

Braff added that they also had a workshop on designing streets for active mobility, where they looked around Malmo to see what they built to make it accessible for biking, walking, transit, and all the different ways people get around town.