Resilience Cohort

Resilience Cohort

The Environmental Resilience Institute’s Resilience Cohort program helps Indiana city, town, and county governments to measure and reduce local greenhouse gas emissions and implement climate resilience strategies.

Participants join a cohort of peers, and each local government receives one-on-one guidance, attends cohort training webinars, gains the opportunity to host a McKinney Climate Fellow, and more. Through this program, more than 30 local governments in Indiana have conducted community-scale greenhouse gas inventories. Many have adopted or are finalizing climate action plans to reduce emissions.

2024 Resilience Cohort

In 2024, ERI is partnering with local governments on two tracks: a climate action accelerator track and urban green infrastructure track.

Climate action accelerator participants are being trained in “Strategic Doing,” a framework for tackling complex problems, like sustainability, where solutions require extensive collaboration.

Urban green infrastructure participants are conducting community-wide tree canopy assessments and planting trees in areas that will benefit the most from investment.

Strategic Doing — a strategy for harnessing community capacity across local organizations — is one method for making measurable, sustained progress in the face of complex challenges. The process lends itself well to implementing climate action plans that offer defined goals but little guidance on how to achieve them.

Through the climate action accelerator, local government staff are being trained in the Strategic Doing process and are piloting the model on one high-priority action from their climate action plan.

Participants include Columbus, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Gary, West Lafayette and Evansville.

 

Local governments on this track are developing a plan to replenish air-cooling tree canopy. Participating communities are gathering public input, identifying high-priority tree planting areas, and receiving training in tree planting and maintenance. They also are receiving 100 trees to jumpstart the implementation of their plans.

Participants include Warsaw, Elkhart, Richmond, and Evansville.

Pathways to resilience

Planning for climate change involves two equally important pathways: climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation. The first focuses on mitigating the cause of global climate change—greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. This aspect of climate planning involves assessing or measuring GHG emissions, planning reduction strategies, and implementing those strategies. The second half of holistic climate planning focuses on adapting to the climate change impacts that are unavoidable, many of which Hoosier communities are already feeling.

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Climate change adaptation planning involves assessing vulnerabilities to climate change impacts, planning strategies to build resilience to those impacts, and implementing these strategies. All climate planning strategies should be co-developed with the community, centering equity in their approach.

Program history

The Resilience Cohort program launched in 2019 with the goal of helping Indiana communities take steps to address climate change locally. Past programs have guided communities through creating greenhouse gas inventories, developing climate action plans, expanding urban green infrastructure, and more.

2023 Resilience Cohort

In 2023-24, ERI piloted a full-year cohort focused on assessing the climate risks and vulnerabilities communities are facing and developing a climate resilience plan that identifies strategies for adapting to those risks and vulnerabilities.

In this phase of the program, participants received technical assistance and support from ERI and Geos Institute, following Geos Institute’s Climate Ready Communities planning framework. Participants also received equity and environmental justice training and one-on-one coaching from Hoosier Environmental Council.

Participants included Bloomington, Carmel, Columbus, Gary, Monroe County, New Albany, South Bend, and Terre Haute.

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2022 Resilience Cohort

In 2022, ERI ran two program tracks, one focused on climate action planning and the other on developing urban green infrastructure. Both programs included an in-depth equity training and one-on-one coaching, while translation services helped participants conduct more inclusive public engagement.

In this program, participants utilized their greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories to develop emissions reduction targets and identify strategies to achieve these reductions with input from residents and other stakeholders. 

Participants received in-depth support from ERI and ICLEI, a leading nonprofit organization for local government sustainability. Using their GHG inventories as a baseline, communities modeled expected emissions reductions associated with various strategies, helping them compile strategies to meet their reduction targets. 

Some communities focused on their local government operations, prioritizing high-impact actions to achieve emissions reductions, while others are producing community-scale plans focused on emissions reduction strategies across buildings, transportation, industrial sectors, and more. 

Participants included Fishers, Huntington, La Porte, Merrillville, South Bend, and two multi-jurisdiction coalitions—one that included Lafayette, West Lafayette, and Tippecanoe County, the other a three-county planning effort led by the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission and supported by many town, city, and county governments. 

In this program, participants assessed their local tree canopy and worked with residents to develop equity-centered tree planting plans. In the face of more extreme weather in the Midwest, urban trees can help mitigate flooding, cool air temperatures on hot summer days, and provide habitat for wildlife. Unfortunately, not all residents have equal access to the many benefits urban trees provide.  

By looking at issues like access, urban heat islands, and sociodemographic factors, communities identified priority areas to plant trees, helping ensure a more inclusive, resilient future for their residents. Program participants also produced grant application materials to begin implementing their planting plans. 

All participants worked with McKinney Climate Fellows to advance their plans and received technical support and guidance from ERI, Davey Resource Group, and many other urban forestry experts from Indiana and the Midwest. 

Participants included Fort Wayne, Fishers, Huntington, Lafayette, Merrillville, Tippecanoe County, Terre Haute, West Lafayette, and Zionsville.

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2021 Resilence Cohort

In 2021, ERI led two program tracks, one focused on measuring greenhouse gases and the other focused on implementing greenhouse gas reduction strategies.

In this program, local governments conducted community-scale greenhouse gas inventories. This process involves collecting data on the amount of energy consumed in a community, the carbon emissions associated with energy supplied to the electric grid, a community's vehicle type and fuel usage distribution, and more.  

Some communities also completed inventories of emissions from their local government operations, setting them up to develop strategies to reduce direct emissions from government operations. 

Communities received in-depth training from ERI and ICLEI, a leading nonprofit organization for local government sustainability, through training webinars and one-on-one technical assistance.  

Participants included Cedar Lake, Chesterton, East Chicago, Hammond, Highland, Hobart, Huntington, Indianapolis, Lafayette, Lake County, Lake Station, La Porte (city), LaPorte County, Merrillville, Munster, New Albany, New Castle, Portage, Porter County, Schererville, South Bend, Terre Haute, Tippecanoe County, and Valparaiso. 

This program focused on implementing common strategies from climate action plans: increasing the use of solar energy, accelerating electric vehicle deployment, and reducing energy use in water and wastewater treatment. In each of these three focus areas, communities receives training and technical support from industry experts, including the Great Plains Institute, the Electrification Coalition, and the US Department of Energy. 

First, communities learned how to lower barriers to residential solar energy in their communities, working towards designation in the SolSmart program, a national program that recognizes local governments who make it faster, easier, and more affordable to go solar.  

Next, communities learned how to accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) in their communities. Participants hosted events to increase awareness, distributed surveys to better understand barriers, assessed the electrification options for municipal fleets of vehicles, and began developing EV plans. 

Finally, guided by experts from the US Department of Energy (DOE), program participants learned how to utilize DOE tools to benchmark, monitor, and reduce energy use in water and wastewater treatment—a major source of local government emissions. The implementation program also included in-depth equity training and one-on-one coaching, as well as translation services to facilitate more inclusive public engagement. 

Participants included Bloomington, Carmel, Elkhart, Fishers, Fort Wayne, Gary, Goshen, Lafayette, Michigan City, Richmond, West Lafayette, and Zionsville.

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2020 Resilience Cohort

In 2020, ERI worked with ten local governments to develop climate action plans, building on greenhouse gas inventories produced the previous year.

In this program, participants utilized their greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories to develop GHG reduction targets and identify strategies to achieve these emissions reductions with input from residents and other stakeholders. 

Participants received in-depth support from ERI and ICLEI, a leading nonprofit organization for local government sustainability. Using their GHG inventories as a baseline, communities modeled expected emissions reductions associated with various strategies, helping them compile strategies to meet their reduction targets. 

Some communities focused on their local government operations, prioritizing high-impact actions to achieve emissions reductions, while others produced community-scale plans focused on emissions reduction strategies across buildings, transportation, industrial sectors, and more.

Program participants included Carmel, Elkhart, Evansville, Fishers, Fort Wayne, Gary, Goshen, Richmond, West Lafayette, and Zionsville.

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Richmond, Carmel become latest Resilience Cohort communities to adopt climate action plans

2019 Resilience Cohort

In 2019, ERI launched the Resilience Cohort program, working with 14 Indiana cities, towns, and counties to produce greenhouse gas inventories.

In this program, local governments conducted community-scale greenhouse gasinventories. This process involves collecting data on the amount of energy consumed in a community, the carbon emissions associated with energy supplied to the electric grid, a community's vehicle type and fuel usage distribution, and more.  

Some communities also completed inventories of emissions from their local government operations, setting them up to develop strategies to reduce direct emissions from government operations. 

Communities received in-depth training from ERI and ICLEI, a leading nonprofit organization for local government sustainability, through training webinars and one-on-one technical assistance. 

Participants included Bloomington, Carmel, Columbus, Delaware County / Muncie, Evansville, Fishers, Fort Wayne, Gary, Greencastle, Goshen, Michigan City, Oldenburg, Richmond, West Lafayette.

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