Balancing climate resilience and adaptation for Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS): Building institutional capacity.

Although the Caribbean's Small Island Developing States (SIDS) minimally contribute to global greenhouse gas emissions, they face disproportionate climate risks and are particularly susceptible to systemic economic threats posed by climate change and subsequent increases in climate variability. Historically, strategic programs and investments have sought to develop more robust and adaptive engineered systems to absorb climate threats. However, such initiatives are limited and under-resourced in the SIDS' context. This article reviews existing climate strategies in the Caribbean and then critically examines current gaps and barriers relating to climate impact knowledge, needs, and implementation. This examination can assist Caribbean SIDS leadership to identify opportunities to transition from a vulnerability-reducing mindset to one of resilience and transformative adaptation to improve long-term economic outlooks, social welfare, and environmental stewardship despite recurring and escalating climate risks. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2023;00:1-19. © 2023 SETAC.

Rethinking the design of resilience and adaptation indicators supporting coastal communities.

As resilience and adaptation considerations become mainstreamed into public policy, there is an overarching desire to measure and quantify metrics and indicators that seek to evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness, and justness associated with outcomes of such processes. While much research has sought to develop specific indicators that may serve as proxies for these considerations, less research has focused on those normative aspects of indicator design that support a variety of goals associated with the accuracy, reproducibility, proxy value and multi-stakeholder translation of indicators, among various other goals and values. This perspective article sets forth a range of potential considerations that may be useful for those who seek to design and develop novel resilience and adaptation indicators ("RAIs"). These considerations are explored through a range of hypothetical examples that may be applicable to coastal communities that seek to address the practical challenges facing the design, execution, management and modification of RAIs.

Relationship among state reopening policies, health outcomes and economic recovery through first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.

State governments in the U.S. have been facing difficult decisions involving tradeoffs between economic and health-related outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite evidence of the effectiveness of government-mandated restrictions mitigating the spread of contagion, these orders are stigmatized due to undesirable economic consequences. This tradeoff resulted in state governments employing mandates at widely different ways. We compare the different policies states implemented during periods of restriction ("lockdown") and reopening with indicators of COVID-19 spread and consumer card spending at each state during the first "wave" of the pandemic in the U.S. between March and August 2020. We find that while some states enacted reopening decisions when the incidence rate of COVID-19 was minimal or sustained in its relative decline, other states relaxed socioeconomic restrictions near their highest incidence and prevalence rates experienced so far. Nevertheless, all states experienced similar trends in consumer card spending recovery, which was strongly correlated with reopening policies following the lockdowns and relatively independent from COVID-19 incidence rates at the time. Our findings suggest that consumer card spending patterns can be attributed to government mandates rather than COVID-19 incidence in the states. We estimate the recovery in states that reopened in late April was more than the recovery in states that did not reopen in the same period- 15% for consumer card spending and 18% for spending by high income households. This result highlights the important role of state policies in minimizing health impacts while promoting economic recovery and helps planning effective interventions in subsequent waves and immunization efforts.

COVID, resilience, and the built environment.

This article provides a perspective on the reciprocal relationships between public and private sector resilience planning activities and the ongoing COVID responses in the U.S. Through the lens of the built environment, this article provides selected insights into how various disaster, organizational, and engineering resilience activities have likely positively shaped COVID responses within the healthcare sector. These positive influences are contextualized within extensive efforts within public health and healthcare management to calibrate community resilience frameworks and practices for utilization in everything from advancing community health to the continuity of facilities operations. Thereafter, the article shifts focus to speculate on how ongoing experiences under COVID might yield positive impacts for future resilience designs, plans and policies within housing and the built environment. Through this perspective, the article hopes to explore those often overlooked aspects of the physical and social parameters of the built environment that may be understood as providing opportunities to inform future disaster, public health, and climate change preparations and responses.