A program helping communities lead their own climate resilience journey, with expert tools and support.
Small and mid-sized communities are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, but often lack the budget or bandwidth to take action. That is why we created Climate Ready Communities. It is a proven resource to help local leaders cut climate pollution and adapt to a changing climate.
Based on over 15 years of hands-on work with communities through our ClimateWise initiative, Climate Ready Communities provides a step-by-step roadmap for developing climate resilience plans that reflect local needs, values, and realities. Centered around a free guidebook, this program helps communities understand their climate vulnerabilities and sources of greenhouse gas emissions, develop strategies, and create an actionable climate resilience plan.
Climate Ready Communities supports both adaptation and mitigation planning within the framework of climate resilience, so your community can act on climate from every angle.
What is the Climate Ready Communities program?
Whether you are just starting out or looking to refresh your climate strategies, the Climate Ready Communities program is a powerful resource.
A proven framework to assess risks, identify emission sources, develop strategies, and build a climate resilience plan
Real-world-tested planning strategies and tips in the Practical Guide to Building Climate Resilience
Templates and tutorials to make it easier
A cohort process that provides personalized, expert support
Guidance that works for small, rural, and under-resourced communities
A Guide Born from Community Demand
Climate Ready Communities started with a question: Can you help us? Local leaders across the country were ready to take action on climate, but did not have the skills or funding to get started.
At the time, there was no off-the-shelf solution, so we created one. Drawing on our years of one-on-one support through the ClimateWise initiative, we packaged everything we knew into the comprehensive Practical Guide to Building Climate Resilience and offered it free of charge to anyone who needed it. Since 2019, it has been downloaded over 2,000 times.
We also heard loud and clear that communities were no longer separating climate adaptation work from their efforts to cut climate pollution, and they needed the program to include both. So, in 2025 we partnered with the Great Plains Institute to expand the program to support comprehensive climate resilience planning that includes both adaptation and mitigation. The latest edition of our Practical Guide to Building Climate Resilience integrates all we have learned since releasing the first edition in 2019.
We are currently updating the Practical Guide to Building Climate Resilience to include integrated mitigation strategies, building on the same trusted framework communities have relied on since 2019.
A Support Model to Meet Community Realities
In 2023, we partnered with the Environmental Resilience Institute at Indiana University to pilot a cohort model of communities working through the guide together. This effort helped us understand how to streamline the experience, refine the materials, and support success through a structured group model.
For communities that want this type of additional support, Climate Ready Communities now includes a cohort process led by an expert facilitator. Participating communities work through the planning steps together, learning with and from each other as they move their communities toward their climate resilience goals. In addition to the guidebook, cohort members also have access to templates, tutorials, and expert facilitation from our team.
The Quick Start Process
While anyone can use the Climate Ready Communities guide on their own or by participating in a cohort, we know some communities need to take immediate action, even before they have a full climate resilience plan.
The Quick Start Process is a model designed specifically for under-resourced communities that have the support of a Navigator and are ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work. This facilitated quick start process focuses on identifying and prioritizing climate resilience actions that are already approved in existing plans as the first step.
Through this process, cohort members:
- Understand more clearly their climate risks and emissions sources
- Identify existing climate-related strategies already embedded in local plans
- Prioritize the implementation of existing strategies
- Identify any gaps and develop new strategies
- Create a practical, actionable climate resilience plan
This model builds momentum quickly, identifying existing strategies buried in local documents, clarifying gaps, and outlining actionable next steps. It is designed for communities just starting out with a Navigator in our Climate Ready America initiative.
Want to learn more?
Are you are just getting started or wondering how to get started building climate resilience in your community? You’re not alone. Explore the Climate Ready Communities program to see if it is right for you.
Ready to Get Started?
If your community is ready to take the next step and you want to explore whether a cohort is forming in your area, we would love to hear from you.
Samantha Medlock is President of Climate Risk Advisors, helping communities and organizations advance equity, sustainability, and resilience. Her career began chasing floods as a local official in Texas Flash Flood Alley—a hands-on experience that still shapes her approach to climate and disaster risk management.
Arsum is the Senior Adaptation and Coastal Resilience Specialist for the National Wildlife Federation’s Southcentral Region. In this role, she advances climate adaptation efforts, with a focus on nature-based approaches to address the impacts of climate change and extreme events across the Gulf region. She has authored and co-authored numerous publications on climate impact assessments and adaptation solutions. Additionally, she regularly participates in state-based coastal resilience and hazard mitigation planning across the Gulf, collaborating with regional and local stakeholders.
Frank is the former President of the Reinsurance Association of America. Frank currently serves on the Advisory Board of the OECD’s International Network for the Financial Management of Large-Scale Disasters, the RAND Center on Catastrophic Risk Management and Compensation, and the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner III Center for Insurance and Risk Management Advisory Board.
Jim is a multilingual world traveler. Based in Bavaria during the 1970s, Jim spent most of this period in India, Afghanistan and Nepal, where he founded and operated a charitable medical clinic serving Tibetan Refugees. He settled in Oregon in 1983 on a forested ranch in the Umpqua National Forest.
Dr. Micah Hahn is an Associate Professor of Environmental Health in the Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. She received her joint PhD in Epidemiology / Environment and Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MPH in Global Environmental Health from Emory University. Subsequently, she was a postdoctoral fellow for the CDC Climate and Health Program, and in this position worked collaboratively with the CDC Division of Vector-borne Diseases and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Her research focuses on understanding the health impacts of climate change and working with communities to develop locally-relevant adaptation and resilience-building strategies. Dr. Hahn is also on the Management Team of the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center.
Michael is a former Founding Principal of Resilient Cities Catalyst, a global non-profit helping cities and their partners tackle their toughest challenges. He is currently the Executive Director of Climate Resilience Academy at the University of Miami.
Dr. Quintus Jett is a consultant, educator, and strategist for public causes. He has a doctorate in Organizations & Management from Stanford University, and a two-decade faculty career which spans schools, departments, and programs of business, engineering, liberal studies, divinity, and public and nonprofit management. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Dr. Jett launched a volunteer project in New Orleans, which enlisted residents, students from over a dozen colleges and universities, and hundreds of others to field map the city’s Gentilly district, Lower Ninth Ward, and New Orleans East. Dr. Jett is an innovator in higher education, bridging the divide between academic research and the other priorities of the modern university, including student access and diversity, community engagement, and providing foundations for life-long learning in today’s rapidly changing world.
Scott is Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. He has written about 100 publications in the peer-reviewed climate literature, is a former editor of the Journal of Climate, and served for five years as founding Science Chair of the North American Carbon Program.
Linda has many years of experience in disaster preparedness and resilience. She has been an elected official on the Linn County Iowa Board of Supervisors, Chair of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the East Central Iowa Council of Governments, the statewide Mental Health Developmental Disability and the Linn County Board of Health. Langston is a former president of the National Association of Counties (2013-2014).
Ken works with families and organizations as a mediator, organizational consultant, trainer and facilitator. Along with his passion for helping people prepare for and reduce climate change, Ken also volunteers as a mediator through Mediation Works and is passionate about supporting youth through mentoring with Boys to Men of Southern Oregon.
Matthew is a retired high school teacher who was once honored as Oregon High School Social Studies Teacher of the Year. Before his teaching career he was in the restaurant business in Portland. He is also a lawyer who has been a member of the Oregon State Bar Association since 1980.
Andrea is the Resilience Policy Advisor for the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency. She works across state agencies and with local governments to increase the state’s resilience to the impacts of climate change.