Inflation Reduction Act: NOAA Climate Resilience Regional Challenge

The NOAA Climate Resilience Regional Challenge seeks to transform the resilience of

U.S. coastal communities, ecosystems, and associated economies to weather and climate

impacts. Applications submitted for both Track One and Track Two should consider the

following program priorities in the development of their proposals:

Risk Reduction. Building resilience requires implementing adaptation actions that

reduce risk to coastal populations, infrastructure, economies, and ecosystems from

the impacts of drought, extreme heat, sea level rise, floods, and wildfires, and/or other

future weather and climate impacts. For Track One, applicants should assess weather

and climate risks and apply risk information to identity, plan and design future

adaptation actions. For Track Two, applicants should propose a complementary set of

adaptation actions (approximately three to eight) that collectively reduce risk by

increasing community preparedness, decreasing community exposure, and/or

improving community recovery. Proposed adaptation actions can include nature-based

and hybrid green and gray actions. Those adaptation actions should provide co-benefits

and alleviate multiple stressors within communities, such as improving public health,

achieving reductions in pollution burden, enhancing habitat or other environmental

benefits, and providing access to safe parks, natural areas, and waterways. Applicants

must include metrics for risk reduction in their applications.

Regional Coordination and Collaboration. Regional coordination and collaboration,

driven by an integrated, achievable, and ambitious vision for how to improve the

resilience of the region, is critical to addressing weather and climate impacts. All

applicants to both tracks should focus on ensuring that relevant entities are engaged

as collaborators and/or partners in building resilience across states, counties, cities,

and Tribes within the region. Applicants should focus on the identification of shared

needs, priorities, challenges, and strategies that can be addressed by actions at the

local and regional scales. Successful applicants will support public engagement to

inform planning efforts and build effective relationships between government entities

and communities.

Equity and Inclusion. Inclusive and equitable adaptation strategies and actions require

co-development with members of marginalized, underserved, and underrepresented

communities to ensure that benefits flow to them. These adaptation strategies and

actions should include Tribes, tribal priorities, and indigenous knowledge.

Enduring Capacity. Enduring capacity refers to sustaining a level of community

readiness that promotes continuous adaptation to the impacts of weather and climate,

including developing and maintaining specific workforce capabilities and capacities.

All applicants to both tracks should focus on building capacity for adaptation that can be sustained into the future within the region (post-award period) including with community-based organizations and for marginalized, underserved, and underrepresented communities. Successful applicants will also propose efforts to extend anticipated benefits beyond their region through information sharing and transfer of knowledge to other regions. In addition to these program priorities, NOAA will consider other standard factors in evaluating the extent to which applications address these program priorities including:

technical merit; qualifications of the applicant(s); project costs; and outreach and

engagement (See Section V.A. for the Evaluation Criteria and weighting for Track One and

Track Two).

For additional information on the NOAA Climate Resilience Regional Challenge

program, visit: https://coast.noaa.gov/funding/ira/resilience-challenge/.