The Equitable Resilience Framework: An environmental justice strategy for community-led resilience planning

The Equitable Resilience Framework (ERF) strives to make planning for climate change more equitable, just, and effective, and to generate long-term economic, social, cultural, and environmental transformations. “Resilience” is a desirable stance of preparedness in the likely future of unpredictable climate and weather, constituting an explicitly different approach than top-down technocratic solutions (such as hardscaping or levee engineering). The ERF is developed as a methodological guide for resilience planning that combines a capabilities approach with enhanced tradeoff analysis and knowledge convergence to bring community, academic, industry and policy stakeholders together in generating and implementing resilient solutions. The ERF addresses the technocratic shortcomings that have historically guided resilience projects. By reconceptualizing the linkages between resilience and equity in communities the ERF gives researchers and practitioners better theoretical and practical tools for applying resilience to interconnected social systems across different timescales. The ERF aims to facilitate just solutions while empowering communities that are often overburdened by environmental injustice and climate change impacts.