Unemployed people, senior citizens, households in poverty, children, people in mobile homes, and overcrowded houses in northern Santa Barbara County are the most vulnerable to climate change, according to a recently released county assessment.
These frontline populations are going to experience climate impacts to a more severe degree, county Long Range Planner Whitney Wilkinson said.
“Because of their nature, they are already having a tough time. They are probably less equipped, have fewer resources, or not as up to date with the resources available to them. They do not have the ability to adapt or recover when climate impacts strike,” Wilkinson said.
A draft of the county Planning and Development Department’s Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment (CCVA), which highlighted North County’s most vulnerable populations, is now open for public comment. Called the One-Climate Initiative, the county wants to hear community concerns about climate change’s impact and ideas that could make residents’ lives easier, Wilkinson said.
“Many of us are going to feel the effects of climate change. We are already seeing massive wildfires and smoke in our air, and we are experiencing another drought. It’s incumbent upon us to be informed in order to be fully prepared,” she added.
The assessment is the result of a multi-year effort to improve local communities’ ability to adapt to changing conditions. The planning department analyzed how climate-related hazards—like extreme heat or sea level rise—impact Santa Barbara County residents now and in the future, Wilkinson said.
“It can be hard to read this stuff; it can seem like this impending sense of doom, but there are things we can do,” Wilkinson said. “We want to make sure everybody is on the same page and everybody is operating off of the same information.”
The draft looked at county subregions and analyzed their assets: Populations, economic drivers, infrastructures, ecosystems and natural resources, and key services, Wilkinson said.
“Those are all things being impacted by climate change. Within each report, each asset is evaluated to how vulnerable it is depending on the environmental hazard,” she said. “The next step [for community members] is to get involved and make concerns known to decision makers that impact our communities. Let them know what you need to be safe and how to recover once those incidents occur,” Wilkinson said.
Wilkinson said the department will present the assessment to the Board of Supervisors on Nov. 9, and it plans to start implementing an adaptation strategy early next year for the 2030 Climate Action Plan. Submit comments to climatechangeassessment@countyofsb.org by 5 p.m. on Oct. 22.
This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 7, 2021.