New Jersey Future to work with regional campaign for resilience

July 14th, 2020 by Peter Kasabach

Ensuring a resilient New Jersey is a core tenant of New Jersey Future’s mission. For the past year, I have been co-chairing the Coastal Resilience Task Force that has been supported and managed by the Waterfront Alliance. The Task Force worked to develop recommendations for climate adaptations, investments, and policy changes to boost resilience in the New Jersey and New York region.

The Task Force’s job is now over and the work has pivoted toward the creation of the Rise to Resilience action-oriented policy campaign. New Jersey Future is proud to be an inaugural member of the important and growing Rise to Resilience coalition, a group of New Jersey and New York residents, leaders in the business, labor, and justice communities, volunteer organizations, scientists, and environmental advocates. The coalition launched on July 10 with a virtual rally with over 300 attendees.

The Rise to Resilience campaign was created to advocate for local, regional, and national solutions to the climate change challenges threatening our communities. Hurricane Sandy devastated our region eight years ago, and a coherent future-oriented plan to adapt to climate change has yet to be developed. Meanwhile, our communities continue to experience the impacts of the climate crisis. It is time to invest our time, energy, and resources into a fair, effective, and timely adaptation strategy for New Jersey and our region and then to implement it.

The following are some of the specific goals that New Jersey Future will be working toward and that overlap with the campaign:

Develop strengthened flood risk disclosure laws in New York and New Jersey.
Establish a clear governance system to oversee the implementation of statewide resilience policy.
Ensure that the Climate Resilience Plan and New Jersey Protecting Against Climate Threats (NJPACT) per Executive orders 89 and 100 effectively incorporate climate resilience into statewide policy.
Establish a state sea level rise standard to guide all tidal planning and investment decisions.
Amend the municipal land-use law to ensure that all local master plans incorporate climate vulnerability assessments and resilience measures.
Incorporate climate change risk into state Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) permits and stormwater rule updates.
Develop and include measurable targets in the forthcoming State Climate Resilience Strategy to provide direction and accountability.
Establish a state-endorsed model vulnerability assessment for use by municipalities.

New Jersey Future has already been working on many of these issues, and looks forward to continuing this work with such an extensive coalition to make New Jersey more resilient.