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November 2, 2021

Cities are at the forefront of the war against climate change. What can they do to increase resiliency in the face of this existential challenge? Listen to this panel of alumni experts as they discuss these questions and more.

Panelists include:

  • Sanjay Seth MPA 2019, Climate Resilience Program Manager, City of Boston (moderator)
  • Ella Delio MPA 2004, Board Member, Environmental Grantmakers Association; Former Director for Environmental Programs, Greater New Orleans Foundation
  • Jane Gilbert MPA 1994, Chief Heat Officer for Miami Dade County; Managing Principal, Resilience Consulting LLC
  • Carlos Villacis MC/MPA 2002, International Consultant, United Nations

Karen:

Good day, everyone. I'm Karen Bonadio, Director of Alumni Relations and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's alumni talk policy webinar on climate change and city resilience. The alumni talk policy webinar series features HK's alumni and panel discussions about pressing public issues. While we cannot meet in person, technology allows us to convene virtually and we appreciate your patience as we navigate this event remotely. This webinar is being recorded and post captioning is available and can be turned on at the bottom of your screen. I'm happy to introduce the moderator, Sanjay Seth MPA 2019, Climate Resilience Program Manager, City of Boston who will kick off today's important and timely discussion. Thank you.

Sanjay:

Great, thank you. Hi, folks. Thanks for joining us today. As Karen said, my name is Sanjay Seth, MPA 2019, MUP 2019. And I serve as the climate resilience program manager for the city of Boston where I manage the Climate Ready Boston program, which is our city's initiative to prepare for the effects of climate change. I have the pleasure of moderating this conversation and introducing the rest of our panel today. Our panel represents perspectives from Boston, New Orleans, Miami and a range of international cities.

Sanjay:

We're joined today by Ella Delio, MPA 2004, who is president of the EMME group and a board member at the Environmental Grantmakers Association, as well as formerly serving as the director for environmental programs at the Greater New Orleans foundation. Thanks for joining us, Ella. We're also joined by Jane Gilbert, MPA 1994, who is the chief heat officer for the City of Miami, and managing principal at Resilience Consulting, LLC. Lastly, we're joined by Carlos [inaudible 00:01:49] MC MPA 2002, who is an international consultant for the United Nations.

Sanjay:

Before we begin our panel, I'll offer a bit of framing today in the middle of an ongoing COP26 discussion in Glasgow, on global climate action. We're here to talk about cities and the role that local governments and stakeholders play in addressing the climate crisis. Our conversation today will be focused on climate resilience, which is really about understanding how can we best protect our residents, businesses and others from the increasing effects of climate change, including sea level rise, coastal storms, extreme precipitation, extreme heat and other risks. And for some folks who are newer on the call to climate resilience, when we refer to climate resilience, what we're referring to is whether someone is exposed to the risks associated with climate change, such as living in a floodplain or a hotspot, whether someone's vulnerable to small changes in the climate, such as elderly residents, people who are sick or outdoor workers, and what adaptive capacity each person has to protect themselves and their families, such as being able to afford air conditioning.

Sanjay:

Exposure, vulnerability, adaptive capacity, that's what we mean when we talk about climate resilience. And developing climate resilience policies that holistically look at all three of these concepts is, in my opinion, how you deliver equitable climate resilience. So we'll get into all this today. And I'd like to go straight to our panelists, and I'm looking forward to our conversation today. We're going to kick off with a quick lightning round to introduce this topic to the audience. So the first question to our panelists, and I'll go with Jane, then Ella, then Carlos, what does climate resilience mean to you? What does a resilient city look like and feel like to you?

Jane:

Thanks, Sanjay. And that was a great framing. Climate resilience is very much what you explained. It's really the ability for a city and its residents, its communities, its businesses to survive and thrive in the face of the changing and increasing shocks and stresses associated with climate change. In Miami, those are certainly sea level rise and increased flooding risks related not only to sea level rise ut precipitation changes, groundwater levels rising are increasing threats of tropical storms and hurricanes, and extreme heat and actually vector borne diseases. That is overlaid with, we have a majority of our population that's struggling to make ends meet financially, a lack of safe and affordable housing and many other vulnerable populations in terms of health disparities.

Jane:

So a climate resilient city prioritizes looking at those most vulnerable populations, and making sure that they have the physical infrastructure as well as social adaptive capacity to survive and thrive in the face of these. And we've seen a big difference in just the social capacity of a community for instance, in the earlier heatwave in Chicago, can make a difference on a community's ability to withstand the changes of climate threats.

Sanjay:

Great, thank you, Jane. Yeah, balancing the social and the physical and not just focusing on one or the other is important to climate resilience. Next, we're going to go to Ella. Ella, same question to you. What does climate resilience mean to you? What does a resilient city look like to you?

Ella:

I think Jane and you, Sanjay. So hello, everyone. First of all, good afternoon, in the East Coast, good morning, and everywhere else. But what you said, Sanjay and Jane, perfectly captures it. I'll deal more on what a resilient city means to me, or it looks like to me. So I think a resilient city is somewhere where from the neighborhood level until the city level, there are programs, policies, initiatives that are being done to help communities or the city adopt and thrive through climate effects. In my role as the director for environmental programs, we made sure that we invested and gave grants from the grassroots organizations of residents that are organizing on the block level, up to supporting policy, development and programs of the city, even state level.

Ella:

So I think that's really important, having sort of like that sort of micro and macro involvement. So all of those sort of weave together to sort of produce a more resilient city. And I'll give one example, we organized with the Greater New Orleans Foundation, which is the Community Foundation in New Orleans, we organized a festival. New Orleans loves festivals so we called it the Waterfall Fest, which is around how do we adapt to the increasing rainfall and severity of storms. So Waterfall Fest. And we had an academic there from one of our universities here, Dillard University, visit the festival. And he came to one of the tables, exhibit tables and one of the community member's was explaining to him how rain gardens, bioswales and rain barrels would help reduce flooding in their neighborhoods, just the mechanics of it. And he was like, wow, the fact that a resident can can do that and is involved and engaged in that, that was so powerful for him in academics. So that I would say is what a resilient city looks like, when you have that sort of bottom to top involvement.

Sanjay:

Excellent. Thank you all. Yeah, from the block level to the state level, from academics to residents, getting everyone involved is critical to the work. And Carlos, to you now, same question. What does climate resilience mean to you? And what does a resilient city look like and feel like to you?

Carlos:

Hi, hello, everybody. Thank you. When working with [inaudible 00:08:18] usually there are three complementary aspects that we consider, resilience, adaptation and mitigation. So resilience is building the capacity to minimize the impact of climate change, more severe and frequent events, weather events, for example. And to return to normalcy in the shortest possible time. Adaptation is making the necessary changes to be able to not only lead but also prosper under the new conditions resulting from climate change. If I have some time, I'll talk later about the entire region in Peru that is trying very hard to adapt themselves to [inaudible 00:09:06] with about 20% less water than what they have now because of glacier melting. And they are changing and adapting to that.

Carlos:

Finally, it's important to stop aggravating the problem. Stop doing [inaudible 00:09:25] and uninformed decisions and bad investment. So to me, an ideal well prepared society that minimizes the potential impact of climate change, makes the necessary changes to adapt to the new conditions and stops aggravating the problem. So all of those things have to be done, and with the participation of all the sectors of society. That's to me, what we try to achieve.

Sanjay:

Excellent. Thank you, Carlos. And yeah, I think what you lift up especially is, there's this question of, at least in the United States, how climate change amplifies systemic inequality and racism, environmental justice and health disparities. And when you think about resilience, not everyone experiences climate change equally, or will experience climate change equally. So we have probably one of the best opportunities to address the chronic unfairness in access to affordable housing, dignified and stable employment, safe and reliable transportation, and intergenerational wealth building opportunities as we help prepare our communities for all the threats like climate change.

Sanjay:

So we're moving to our next question, which is really about how do we actually get this work done? A recent climate central report showed Boston and Miami tied at 6th for cities in the United States for areas with the highest Urban Heat Island intensity, meaning how the city is built, and how it stays hot, it gets hot and stays hot in a way that affects residents health. And New Orleans was by far the highest in the country. So first, we'll turn to Jane. You are our country's first chief heat officer, and there's not necessarily a template for you to follow even if there's a lot of work ahead. So can you share a little bit with us, how did your role come about? And how have you approached doing the work of protecting residents from extreme heat?

Jane:

Sure, thank you. I think heat came as an elevated concern later than our other climate threats. Miami is known internationally for its threat to sea level rise and hurricanes. But when I was chief resilience officer for the City of Miami, we did a lot of neighborhood by neighborhood outreach to unpack what people's biggest concerns were related to climate change, and what types of ideas they had of what we could work on together to build our resilience. And heat came up a lot in those conversations. And then last year, a coalition of community based organizations did a series of focus groups and surveys in our most socio economically vulnerable neighborhoods throughout the county, and heat was one of the top two concerns, heat and displacement, actually.

Jane:

So the mayor heard that, our new county mayor, and Miami-Dade County was the first community partner for the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center. And our mayor was in a conversation with Adrienne Arsht about extreme heat internationally. And really, the idea of a chief heat officer was born out of that conversation. Since then, my role started in June, which is our heat season. And so I wanted to hit the ground with really expanding public awareness through traditional and social media, in various languages, working with our National Weather Service on our daily hazard reports, working with our parks and libraries, our most public facing institutions for in face education, our summer camps, etc. And even our own county outdoor workers, making sure they had the information they needed to be protected.

Jane:

At the same time, we did just a big survey of interviews across stakeholders, our university, community based partners, health care sector and within different departments within the city and our city partners. And created a heat health toolkit which we've now come out with, which is really going to serve as our foundational framework for heat-health task force that's going to start two weeks to do planning across the big areas. A chief heat officer, many cities have been addressing, Boston included, Phoenix, LA, Seattle now are addressing and have been addressing heat, New York. But to have someone who wakes up every day and that's their sole job, and is charged with working across departments and across sectors to address interventions, is really the difference that a chief heat officer can bring.

Jane:

And so our whole planning process is actually hosted out of our community based foundation. So that ties to the philanthropic connection that government has, because they're an ideal convener as a trusted convener, between government, private sector, community based organizations, the community at large to address these different areas. Whether it's emergency management, housing, our urban heat islands, etc, we're going to bring the expertise and stakeholders in each of those areas together and identify actions we can do in the next three years really to address this work.

Sanjay:

Thanks, Jane. Yeah. You've talked about emergency management, you've talked about housing, workforce, the amount of things that heat touches is really immense. And the role of foundations and philanthropy is critical both in Miami and in Boston especially. Our work with our foundations is critical to moving our work forward, in addition to the state and other partners. So turning to Ella, who can give us even more on philanthropy. Let's dig into that a little bit. Ella, can you take us more into what you've seen in the role of philanthropy. How do you personally view the role of philanthropy in climate action? And what have you seen work best in terms of the roles that philanthropy can play in moving the work forward?

Ella:

Sure. Thanks, Sanjay. Well, first of all, when I started at the foundation, I think one of the roles that philanthropy is good that playing is sort of just helping, I guess, normalize or sort of introduce innovative and equitable solutions to climate resilience. When I started in 2014, when you talk about green stormwater infrastructure here in New Orleans of all places, they just thought of parks. That's it. That was in the documents in our master plan. And what we did as a foundation with the support of our partners [inaudible 00:16:43] Foundation on the national level, was sort of help educate various stakeholders in our city, from city government officials, to community leaders, to nonprofit leaders about just living with water and how other cities, we brought them to Philadelphia, to Milwaukee and Austin to just show them how other cities dealt with green stormwater infrastructure. Sort of how do you finance it, how the city government sort of implement policies and enforce it.

Ella:

So all these things. And that started the process of just putting that concept of green infrastructure in our city. At that time, one of the people that we brought to those cities was council member, LaToya Cantrell, and now she has been our mayor for almost four years and up for reelection this month. And sort of that trip, I would believe helped pass our first stormwater regulations here in New Orleans, in terms of requiring new development and redevelopment to take on one inch and a quarter of their rainwater on their property. So I think that's one role that local philanthropy can play, sort of getting the first movers at the beginning. And now, basically almost all projects in New Orleans, the construction projects, have a resilience component in it, which is amazing.

Ella:

So second role, I would say, like Jane mentioned, the convening role. That's definitely a role that local philanthropy has played, convening various players that normally would not get together. But I would even sort of push that a little bit farther and say, I think recently, I would say sort of in the last five to seven years, I think philanthropy has been more courageous in not just convening people, but lifting up the power of those most impacted on that table. Not just having them at the table, but actually lifting up their voices, so that those in government and those in business realize the power of those most impacted, communities of color, community based organizations.

Ella:

Here in Southeast Louisiana, we sort of in a way, the Greater New Orleans Foundation, sorry, my previous employer, did that by sort of just putting together a coalition of community based organizations that were serving communities of color in the coastal areas, as well as environmental organizations so that they would have more power when meeting with state government, with county government here with regard to the coastal issues that most impact their lives. And then lastly, I would say one of the best ways that philanthropy has moved forward climate resilience solutions is just learning from each other.

Ella:

Since Katrina, many cities and states have come to us to just ask for advice. Even with wildfires, people from California, from the West Coast would call us and say, how did you do this, after Katrina, in terms of the recovery, the rebuilding. And so we realized, so we would field these calls and sort of, there's really something to be said about learning from each other. Even for us, because every year we still have our hurricanes, we just had Ida. So we basically started this initiative called When Waters Rise, which is basically a convening of local funders and even national funders nationally, to discuss, what are funders roles in contributing to equitable disaster recovery, rebuilding and long term resilience.

Ella:

One thing we've realized is, the billions of dollars, millions of dollars that go to disaster recovery, mostly go to just the recovery efforts and not really getting to the root cause of why there is a disaster So one of the things that we espouse to funders, don't just invest in sort of the immediate recovery, put a percentage of your funds to the sort long term resilient solutions. And obviously as we said, sort of just making sure that there's always the equity lens when you start your investments from the beginning. I think that's one big lesson for Katrina, you mentioned, sort of the intersectionality with the social issues and the racial issues that existed before the hurricane happened. So we've had those convenings with the regions across the nation, from Miami, to New York, to New Jersey, to California, and I think that's helped even for us here in New Orleans to learn how to better respond to disasters and rebuild more equitably and sustainably.

Sanjay:

Excellent. Thanks, Ella. One thing that stood out for me in what you shared is this idea of courageous convening, not just convening for its own sake, but convening with a mission. Convening to lift up communities, convening to share knowledge and help people think, you're kind of an instigator, what's that first step they can take that leads them in a new direction, like thinking beyond parks in terms of green stormwater infrastructure.

Ella:

I love that word, instigate.

Sanjay:

And just make sure we have Carlos in the conversation, Carlos this is a good transition, I think, thinking about sharing learning between cities. I think Boston depends clearly on our relationships with our partner cities, New Orleans, New York, and Seattle, elsewhere to share knowledge. And since the announcement of Jane, our panelist, as chief heat officer, many other cities are also considering this. And there's this kind of network of folks working in this space. And I know you're aware of many cities that are engaging this with your role within the United Nations and with other cities, to help spread best practices and share knowledge. So given your experience, it'd be good to hear which cities you've worked with internationally, that you think are particularly good, doing a good job, or really good at sharing knowledge or taking in lessons from other cities. Can you take us into some of the examples that you're most proud of or that you think are good for our audience to hear about?

Carlos:

Well, thank you very much. Maybe I will talk about this, not only one, but five cities that are working together to adapt themselves to climate change in an effort that really was very rewarding to me to see the changes, all the work that they did. So this is in a region in Peru, southern part of Peru, Arequipa. Just to give you some background, Peru is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change because of the lack of rains and the dependency of the country in water from the glaciers. It doesn't rain in Peru very much so all the water comes from the Andes.

Carlos:

Arequipa is a region in the south. The area is extremely arid and relies on the Andean rivers for water supply. Agriculture is the main economic activity in that region. Unfortunately, over the past 50 years, the ice crust of the Coropuna Volcano, which is the one providing water to the region, has disappeared. About 54% of that in volume during the last 50 years. So the region is already facing really serious problems, lack of water for consumption, for agriculture, flash floods due to the melting of the glacier, increase of poverty due to the impact to their livelihood. So it's a really, really difficult thing.

Carlos:

So what we did was, using historical data, we tried to study the process of melting of the glacier and we estimated what will be the water availability in 50 years from now. And we found that will probably be almost about 20% less water 30 years from now. So comparing that with the future water availability with the water demands of the cities, so we have a real evidence base of the adaptation needs, how much we need. In the future, we are going to have this much less water and we need to adapt to that. So they started working together, around five municipalities using the results of those studies, incorporated climate change adaptation into their development programs. How the cities will develop in the next 30 years to use only the available water, that they now that will be available in 30 years.

Carlos:

The Ministry of Agriculture prepared the guidelines on climate change adaptation for agriculture, including instructions for sustainable water use and cultivation of drought resilient crops. And we wanted to reach a long lasting impact. And we worked with the Ministry of Education, using the information provided by the studies, with the Ministry of Education, we prepared textbooks to introduce climate change adaptation into elementary schools. We trained the teachers, and now climate change adaptation is taught in a very public school. Also, the government of Arequipa looked at the strategy, the climate change adaptation strategy that we developed as law to ensure that the climate change awareness and considerations are incorporated in every decision making process.

Carlos:

And I think one of the best things was that we put technology transfer and capacity building as a priority in the project. So as a result, five other regions in Peru are replicating the process just using the experience with the local people, using the experience of what Arequipa did. So what we can learn from this? First thing, this was a joint there for by all the sectors of society, and this is the way that things. It wasn't only one agency working, it wasn't only one group, it was everybody, all the ministries, everything. And the people. Secondly, there was a clear understanding of the program. So we can set up evidence based goals and measure them. We knew the size of the problem and we could be very specific one that. And third, the technology transfer and the capacity building to promote replication and sustainability of these efforts. So those are the three main lessons that I got from this.

Sanjay:

Excellent, Carlos. It's great to hear about regional coordination between cities, thinking about integrating this into education and curriculum and law and actually having measurable outcomes, to really make sure that you're achieving your goals especially when it's something like water where there's no plan B for that. So we're going to move into one more structured lightning round before having open panel questions. So the next question, this is an opportunity to kind of share what you think our audience really needs to be focusing on, some of the hardest problems are the greatest opportunities. So to each of our panelists, starting with Jane, then Ella, then Carlos, what is the greatest challenge or opportunity in climate resilience that cities have to have consequential action on adaptation and resilience? And Jane, that's to you first.

Jane:

Sure. Well, when we talk about the priorities of being both carbon mitigation and climate resilience and economic opportunity, and our most vulnerable, I think figuring out how to finance both housing retrofits and new, safe and affordable housing is one of the biggest priorities that any city faces. It also is a great opportunity for government, private sector, community based organizations, philanthropy to collaborate on solutions and also generate good jobs and address some of these social determinants of health. Because housing is where it starts.

Jane:

Certainly, the whole area of infrastructure finance is a very interesting area and needs to be addressed. Whether it's with federal support, or private sector support, state level support, we're going to need a massive shift in how our built infrastructure, our transportation infrastructure and our stormwater infrastructure is designed, and built. And they're aging in many of our areas, at least here in the US. And I can only imagine it's even more challenging in the cities that Carlos is working with. So I really think that addressing housing first as an infrastructure, but our overall infrastructure, financing and delivery is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity.

Sanjay:

Yeah, agreed. Home is where it happens, especially with climate resilience. So you're exactly right, Jane. And Ella, to you.

Ella:

Sure. No, I agree with Jane, definitely with housing. But here in New Orleans, since I started in the planet resilience world, one big opportunity, and it is also a challenge, is really sort of the workforce development component of climate resilience. Here in New Orleans, 52% of African American men are underemployed or unemployed. So that's been sort of one of the key issues that our foundation has been focused on. Not just in the environmental field but also our other sort of programs, how do we help sort of improve that figure and really get more jobs on the ground, especially in communities of color?

Ella:

So what we did was we actually started with sort of the numbers. Like how many jobs? New Orleans, as Sanjay and Jane know, has been fortunate and getting some federal funding for our climate resilience projects here in terms of stormwater and streets. And we computed, with the help of BW research partnerships in San Diego, in Boston, how many jobs would come out of these projects. And not just how many jobs, but which jobs. What type of jobs would come out of it, so that could inform the training needs that universities and colleges would offer to our city residents. And what we found out is that the projects over three years would produce 1100 jobs.

Ella:

And then specifically, we identified what are the bottlenecks in terms of jobs. We identified supervisors, crew heads as sort of the bottleneck, so that sort of we're prepared to sort of fill in those jobs once the project's really go full blast. So that's been a really big opportunity for us here. And it's a challenge because basically, we have to get the various organizations involved in the workforce part as well as the city and state because incentives are also provided by the state for our workforce, have to get together and sort of create that sort of seamless system to make all of that work. Sort of make sure that there's enough people to get trained for the [inaudible 00:34:05] provided that we have the right content to train them. So all of that is happening right now here in New Orleans, and we're really excited about it.

Sanjay:

Thanks, Ella. It's good for folks to know that addressing the impacts of climate change is good for the economy, and it's an opportunity to protect our workforce and actually have a more inclusive workforce. And I think you just have to be, as you said, really intentional about working with community colleges, developing pipelines and knowing what jobs. And I want to turn it over to Carlos now for this lightning round. Your answer to the greatest challenge or opportunity for cities in getting this work done. We've heard housing and workforce and infrastructure finance, what else do you want to add to the conversation?

Carlos:

Yeah. First, the opportunity. Climate change affects everyone. No people of one party or only the experts, or the rich or the poor, everybody is affected by this and everybody benefits from reducing the impacts of climate change. So this is a great opportunity to bring everybody to work together. When everybody benefits, it is easier to bring everybody to work together with a common goal, for a common cause. The challenge is precisely to bring everybody to work together, and to forget their personnel, political interests, this is the thing. And the only way to achieve that is with proper information, with evidence based solutions. So stating that there is a problem is not enough.

Carlos:

We have to propose concrete solutions that have to explain clearly what the benefits for everybody, because everybody benefits. And that has to be clear what the benefits are, what the process is going to be, and what the roles and responsibilities of every sector of society. So everybody has a role, everybody has something to contribute, and something to a benefit. So that has to be clear, and you get engagement from everybody. And probably as you saw in the example that I presented, to me, one of the best investment is in education. If children have this concept in their formation, it will be so much easier to work in the future. Than now, most of the people in charge, sometimes they don't even care about these things. So it's investing in creating this as part of the culture, the education of everybody is the best investment I think.

Sanjay:

That's excellent. Thank you, Carlos. Yeah, it's an all hands on deck approach, including the generations coming up right now. So we're moving into our last question before Q&A, and this is open to all panelists in any order. But given the billions that are currently planned to be spent on climate resilience, this is very US centric, but in the upcoming infrastructure legislation as well as a wide range of philanthropic work, and many other supports in this area, state level supports, city investments, this is an experienced panel, and what should our audience know about what does or doesn't work when you fund climate resilience investments and when you build capacity in cities? What have you seen work or fail when it comes to how we fund finance and build the capacity to get this work over the finish line?

Jane:

Well, I'll start. I'll just give an example of a federally funded initiative that we've been going through here from the Army Corps of Engineers recently, where they're doing a study of how to protect our city from storm surge. And one, the challenge was defining the task too narrowly. So we have water coming from all sides. We have water coming from the sea, from the ground, from precipitation and from the Everglades. And the proposed design was a wall. So when infrastructure investments defining the, when FEMA says we're going to protect you against this, it needs to define it more broadly as to how you're going to address that solution.

Jane:

Secondly, they didn't do enough community engagement. Any infrastructure project should be required to have robust community engagement from the get go so that you get the buy in. And they need to do it in a way that one, is going to enhance ecosystem services not detract from them. We need a shift in thinking of how we design our infrastructure, whether it's a house, or it's a stormwater system, or it's an emergency management facility, it doesn't matter. We need to reduce greenhouse gases, be more environmentally sustainable, as well as be more resilient in our design.

Jane:

So I think as we think about these infrastructure investments, whether they're in transportation or housing or stormwater, they really need to prioritize engagement, prioritize thinking more holistically about what you're trying to achieve. So that you're protecting the environment, you're addressing that inclusive economic opportunity that it could be maximizing that, and delivering on the resilience protection. So those are my thoughts, and they're not easy to do. At the local level, it's a shift of thinking of how we procure projects, how we actually implement them. But part of the constraints comes from the funding sources at the federal level. And if we're constrained on that level, it also makes it more difficult.

Ella:

I'll add on. Jane focused on the infrastructure investments, I'll talk a little bit about capacity building in cities. I think one thing I've learned is definitely, I think it's important to have a strong resilience, sort of, not necessarily a department, but sort of resilience infrastructure in the city. Whatever works for that city, because I'm sure it's different for each city. Because once that's weakened, it exudes just uncertainty in the whole city amongst other stakeholders, nonprofits, community leaders. Like what's happening? Sort of turnover or decrease in staff. And I know that this is a new concept, the fact of having the resilient infrastructure in cities is sort of relatively new this past decade. But how do we sort of, I guess, cracking the nut of how do we make sure they are that strong in each city? So that's one.

Ella:

The second thing is, just because of the nature of government. Naturally, leaders change, staff leave. I think, sometimes when you build capacity and you make investments in certain people and those people leave, then sometimes your left in the [inaudible 00:42:09] And this is a lesson from a local funder or local philanthropy perspective. So how do you make sure that that's continued? And I think, obviously, that's the infrastructure, what I talked about first helps. But the second thing that helps is sort of this civic infrastructure outside of government that holds city government accountable, and makes sure that sort of what was promised what was important before stays, important. Whether that's racial equity, centering racial equity, sort of focus on workforce.

Ella:

And that's different for each city, sort of what's most important. Obviously, racial equity and equity in general is important across the board. But sort of having that civic infrastructure on the ground, which is normally community based that sort of hold the leaders accountable, I think that's important. And we have that. We actually sort of started that here in New Orleans. It's called the Climate Action Equity Advisory Group. We started that right before our current mayor started, and we didn't know that she was even going to be mayor then when we started that