NC Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan

The NC Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan calls for each cabinet agency to develop an Agency Resilience Strategy report, updated annually in March, with guidance from the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency. The reports build on the activities listed in the Plan’s State Agency Resilience Strategies and describe the agency’s latest understanding of its climate vulnerabilities and risks. The reports outline the agency’s current and planned actions to increase resilience and report progress on implementing strategies.  As of October 2022, Cabinet agencies have combined the annual reporting on Executive Order 80, Executive Order 246, and the Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan actions into Climate Strategy Reports, submitted to the Climate Change Interagency Council.

The N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR) launched the NC Resilience Exchange, an interactive resource to help local and state leaders easily search the abundance of climate resilience information available and identify what will be most useful in their area. The Exchange offers funding opportunities, a directory of experts, interactive mapping tools, model ordinances and more in a one-stop-shop that is relevant to North Carolina communities.

The Exchange fulfills a priority initiative named in the 2020 North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan. The site also includes a focus on natural and working land solutions, which will help communities achieve the strategies identified in Executive Order 305 and the Natural and Working Lands Action Plan, which is part of the 2020 Resilience Plan.

NC Resilience Exchange

The Interagency Resilience Team (IRT) was established in the June 2020 Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan. The Plan states (page 7-14):

“The Chief Resilience Officer will convene an Interagency Resilience Team, which will include at least one resilience lead from each agency. These leads should be staff experts from each agency who have the authority, capacity, and expertise to collaborate on resilience work among agencies. This team will provide a coordinating structure for tackling interagency resilience issues. It also will support the development and release of updates to the North Carolina Resilience Plan in collaboration with the Climate Change Interagency Council. Ideally, this team will include representation from all state agencies, not only cabinet agencies.”
 
The North Carolina Office of Recovery an Resilience first convened the IRT in September 2020, and it has met roughly monthly since then. The agendas include a round of updates from team members on any ongoing resilience work, new projects, and questions for the group. Agendas have also included deep dives on resilience issues such as updating the Enhanced State Hazard Mitigation Plan, how state agencies can take advantage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a review of Natural and Working Lands resilience efforts, the project to update the state’s Low Flow Statistics, and the state’s Broadband update. Because the IRT is comprised solely of state agency staff, its meetings are internal and not public. The IRT consists of 58 members from 11 state agencies.

NC Resilience Exchange

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