Community-Centered Resilience: Lessons from Louisiana

The document details the LA Safe program, which combined state-led data from the Coastal Master Plan with grassroots engagement to develop land-use strategies and fund resilience projects in coastal Louisiana. It emphasizes the importance of building trust through leadership programs like 'Lead the Coast' and the necessity of integrating long-term adaptation planning into state agency operations to address the 'existential emergency' of land loss.

• Louisiana faces an enhanced effect of relative sea level rise because the land is sinking while seas rise, leading to a 'skeletal condition' of the state's coastline compared to its 1960 shape.
• The LA Safe initiative focused on a six-parish area that, prior to 2017, accounted for 8.5% of all historic National Flood Insurance Program payouts (excluding Orleans Parish).
• The LA Safe process utilized a community-led design, involving 71 public outreach events and over 2,800 participants to develop a 'crowd-sourced land-use plan' and select 10 investment projects.
• To ensure equitable engagement, the 'Lead the Coast' program trained local residents as facilitators, providing them with stipends of $15 per hour to lead difficult conversations about land loss and relocation within their own communities.
• The program's financial investment totaled approximately $5 million to $5.5 million, with the state contributing $4 million and the Foundation for Louisiana spending about $1 million to $1.5 million.
• Adaptation planning in Louisiana is categorized into three levels of emergency: 'real' (immediate disaster aftermath), 'conceptual' (managing changing systems and benchmarks), and 'existential' (shifting worldviews and the potential disappearance of communities).
• There is a significant disconnect between short-term disaster recovery funding and long-term adaptation planning, as state and federal agencies often operate in rigid 'lanes' that do not align with multi-dimensional local needs.
• The 2017 Coastal Master Plan was the first state document to openly acknowledge that land cannot be built more quickly than it is being lost and that some communities may not exist in 10 to 50 years.

APA

Environmental and Energy Study Institute (2019). Community-Centered Resilience: Lessons from Louisiana. https://www.eesi.org/files/transcript_110619.pdf

Chicago

Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Community-Centered Resilience: Lessons from Louisiana. 2019. https://www.eesi.org/files/transcript_110619.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Environmental and Energy Study Institute |title=Community-Centered Resilience: Lessons from Louisiana |date=November 2019 |url=https://www.eesi.org/files/transcript_110619.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{environmentalandenergystudyinstitute2019communitycentered, author = {{Environmental and Energy Study Institute}}, title = {{Community-Centered Resilience: Lessons from Louisiana}}, institution = {Environmental and Energy Study Institute}, year = {2019}, month = nov, url = {https://www.eesi.org/files/transcript_110619.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }