Baltimore’s Community Resiliency Hub Program: A Model for Advancing Climate Justice and Preparedness
摘要
Since 2015, the City of Baltimore (the City) has been growing and facilitating a network of frontline, service-based, and mission-driven organizations that are dedicated to enhancing the resilience of the city’s most climate-vulnerable neighborhoods. The City cultivates relationships with and aligns capacity-building resources for these community-trusted organizations providing daily services for vulnerable community members with the goal that in times of climate emergency, the organizations have the knowledge, training, confidence, partnerships, and capabilities to continue operating and providing essential resources for those who are most impacted. This concept has evolved into Baltimore’s Community Resiliency Hub Program (CRH Program, or program), a nation-leading model for community-based resilience where local government and community-based organizations in underserved communities are working in close coordination to build place-based resilience before, during, and after disasters. Community Resiliency Hub Partners (CRH Partners, or partners) receive support from the city in many forms including high-quality emergency preparedness supplies, energy efficiency upgrades to their buildings, back-up power capabilities (solar power and battery storage, if feasible), emergency preparedness and response training, connections to grant funding opportunities, and focused support, resources, and communications from the city. The City works with CRH Partners to enable them to serve as a safe space where vulnerable neighbors can gather in times of emergency; access reliable power for their essential devices; receive supplies, food, and drinking water; and store medications sensitive to temperature, among other things. CRH Partners can also serve as community-based staging areas for emergency and recovery personnel as well as conduits for critical resource distribution to the community. After successfully supporting community needs throughout heatwaves, floods, the COVID-19 Pandemic, and other local incidents, CRH Partners in Baltimore have proven to be well-positioned and highly successful at providing life-saving resources to vulnerable and hard-to-reach individuals, demonstrating that they can be an effective solution to advancing climate justice and preparedness. Other cities and communities can learn from the successes and challenges of Baltimore’s community-based resilience hub model and employ these lessons in their own communities.