Minnesotans are already experiencing the impacts of climate change—warmer winters with fewer days of ice on our lakes, storms with more rain, more humid heat waves, etc. Threats like flooding, drought, extreme heat, and poor air quality endanger our homes, jobs, health, and livelihoods, and jeopardize the things Minnesotans love most about the state. All these changes also cost people money and are bad-for-business.1
To keep our homes safe and loved ones healthy, Minnesota must prepare for these changes. By working together across governmental units, businesses, organizations, and individuals, all Minnesotans can play a role in this work. Taking action to build climate resilience will strengthen our state now and for future generations, ensuring Minnesota remains a great place to raise a family.
The aim of increasing climate resilience is for all Minnesotans to live in a place prepared for climate change. This means affordable energy so people can keep cool in the summer and warm in the winter; streets that don’t flood; a sustainable supply of water; tree-lined streets that help mitigate excessive heat events; hospitals, schools, and natural spaces that can withstand extreme weather; first responders who are well-resourced for disasters; etc. State agencies and many others across Minnesota are already working on advancing climate resilience, with a focus on equipping communities most at risk with the tools they need to be prepared.
Goal: Minnesota communities and lands are climate resilient.
Measurable goal for 2027: Ensure that 100 percent of Minnesotans live in homes and places where resilience actions are being taken within their community by 2030.*
Source: Climate Adaptation and Resilience Planning Survey, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Minnesota Management and Budget—Management Analysis and Development
*For the purposes of this goal measure, “home” is defined broadly to include the environment and community in which one lives; it is also inclusive of individuals experiencing homelessness. Likewise, “community” is not limited to cities or units of government but is interpreted expansively to refer to the people and groups with whom one interacts and/or identifies. In addition, it is important to note that “resilience actions” can be taken by individuals as well as by communities or governments. The dataset used for this measure is the best proxy metric currently available. However, it is important to recognize that it does not represent the entirety of the goal (e.g., it does not include resiliency actions taken by individuals or communities outside of governmental units, etc.).
Technical notes: All Minnesota local governments and all Tribal governments sharing Minnesota’s geography were invited to participate in the surveys conducted in 2016, 2019, and 2022. A respondent was designated as being engaged in climate adaptation or resilience planning if they selected any of the plan/planning types in survey questions about climate adaptation or resilience planning efforts. In a small number of cases each year, MAD designated a respondent as being engaged in planning based on their written comments. The percent of governmental organizations with at least one climate adaptation or resilience planning efforts is calculated by dividing the aggregated number of organizations engaged in any planning efforts by the total number of invited organizations (since the denominator includes invited organizations who did not respond to the survey, it is likely an undercount of the total percent of organizations with at least one planning effort). The number of governmental organizations is calculated in aggregate with all previous years in recognition that survey questions about planning are not time dependent (e.g., an organization might have responded in 2019 that they had one or more relevant plans, but then not taken the survey again in 2022). In aggregate across the 2016, 2019, and 2022 surveys, 1219 unique governmental organizations were invited to participate, of which 698 responded at least once and 521 had at least one relevant planning effort. For more information on the methodology of the Climate Adaptation and Resilience Planning Surveys, see the 2016, 2019, and 2022 reports and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s climate adaptation survey data website. The target for this goal comes from one of the measures of progress for resilient communities, as defined in Minnesota’s Climate Action Framework (2022, p. 42).
References:
1 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II [Pörtner, H.-O., Roberts, D. C., Tignor, M., Poloczanska, E. S., Mintenbeck, K., Alegría, A., Craig, M., Langsdorf, S., Löschke, S., Möller, V., Okem, A., Rama, B. (Eds.)]. (2022). Climate Change 2022: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Cambridge University Press. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/
2 State of Minnesota. (2022). Minnesota’s Climate Action Framework. https://climate.state.mn.us/sites/climate-action/files/Climate%20Action%20Framework.pdf
3 U.S. Global Change Research Program. (2021, March 2). Glossary. U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit. https://toolkit.climate.gov/content/glossary
