Many climate impacts cross jurisdictional boundaries and the resources to prepare and build resilience vary between communities. As both a local government and regional service provider, King County is uniquely positioned to work across jurisdictional and organizational boundaries to tackle the complex challenges that climate change brings. Building capacity for local action and regional collaboration on climate preparedness can help to leverage limited resources, reduce duplication of effort, facilitate institutional learning, and improve action outcomes.
What's at stake
Remaining siloed in our work can lead to inefficient use of resources, disjointed planning, missed opportunities, sub-optimal outcomes, and a perpetuation of inequities that disproportionately affect communities living with low incomes and BIPOC communities.
A better outcome
We envision a future where climate preparedness efforts across King County and the Puget Sound Basin have been strengthened through strong internal and external collaborations and partnerships. We are seeing outcomes where the sum of the whole is greater than the parts, and where a person’s ability to be safe and thrive in a changing climate is not dependent on whether they happen to live in a community that has the resources to prepare for climate change.
What we've done to get here
- Launched, co-chaired, and secured $2 million in grant funding to grow the work of the Puget Sound Climate Preparedness Collaborative, a network of local and county governments, tribes, regional agencies, and other organizations in the Puget Sound Basin working together to build community, economic, and environmental resilience to the impacts of climate change.
- Expanded the focus of the King County-Cities Climate Collaboration to include climate preparedness, creating additional opportunities to coordinate local jurisdictional work on climate change.
- Integrated climate change into King County hazard mitigation planning
- Developed a climate change health impacts surveillance system to track the impact of climate change on health and inform future actions.