New Playbook Details Minutiae of Resilience
In the midst of a climate emergency already thrusting wildfires, drought, and flooding upon us it is easy to feel helpless and lost. The Greenbelt Alliance’s newly released “Resilience Playbook” seeks to combat that resignation by offering a motivating vision and practical steps for building local climate adaptation and resilience. Worried about heat and how it disproportionately affects certain neighborhoods where you live? This resource gives a step-by-step guidance on how to integrate urban greening into general plans, along with a menu of policy examples, budget priorities, and model climate action plans to catalyze resilience action for citizens, municipalities, and community organizations. Critically, the playbook offers advice on effectively partnering with underserved populations and communities who are often left out of the budget and infrastructure conversations where priorities are decided.
Recommendations and “critical actions to take now” come from the Greenbelt Alliance’s six plus decades of land-use policy advocacy and regional collaboration. Executive Director Amanda Brown-Stevens and Director of Climate Resilience Zoe Siegel also bring experience from shepherding the implementation of the 2018 Resilient by Design competition that spurred fantastic visions of South Bay Sponges, Grand Bayways, and Estuary Commons. This playbook focuses on the more mundane minutiae of resilience: city budgets, general plans, and regulations. A decidedly less sexy, and more Sisyphean task — yet also one that is more achievable, and no less important. Whether the intended audience, ranging from local citizens to government planners to political leaders, uses the plays from this book will be up to all of us.
Other Recent Posts
Wild Pigs Rough Up Bay Area Greens
They tear up landscapes in search of food, prey on native wildlife, and damage streams, and warming could bring them closer to urban areas.
Delta Residents Absorb the Flood Challenge, And Choose Different Ways to Act
Graduates of a shoreline leadership program in Contra Costa County recently pitched their ideas for sea level rise education and adaptation.
Strong Leader, Light Touch: Caitlin Sweeney
Ahead of her retirement earlier this month, the Estuary Partnership director sat down with KneeDeep to discuss her achievements and the future of the Bay.
Unmasking Regionalism
Regional leaders say the Bay Area has built ambitious climate resilience plans. Now comes the harder task: funding and implementing them.
Pacheco Pass Is Getting a Second Wind
In Pacheco Pass, a decades-old wind farm is getting an upgrade that will double CleanPowerSF’s wind energy.
Climate Change, A Scorpion’s POV
From the Sierra Nevada to the Mojave Desert, the state’s native scorpions are losing habitat as heat, wildfires, and development reshape ecosystems.
12 Creek Types: Which One Is In Your Backyard?
Geomorphologist Gregory Pasternack and his team documented 12 types of Bay Area creeks to help residents protect themselves from flood threats.
Could Avocados Be A Transformational Fruit for the Bay Region?
Local growers and activists are planting avocado trees to build climate resilience, local food systems, and alternatives to imported fruit.
Radar Gap Filled on Marin Mountaintop
A new weather radar installation will help the region’s northern counties read incoming storm clouds, hours before they drop their rain.
The Climate Questions Facing Bay Area Voters This Spring
Important details about votes on transit funding, open space preservation, wildfire prevention, and earthquake prep this Election Day.



