ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how a Resilience Coordinating Coalition (RCC) can ensure a “just transition” during the climate emergency by engaging residents in creating safe, healthy, just and equitable climate-resilient physical/built, economic, and ecological conditions in their community. It first discusses the importance of addressing these structural factors by explaining how unhealthy, unsafe, unjust and inequitable local conditions can produce widespread mental health and psycho-social-spiritual problems. The chapter then discusses the need and offers suggestions for building supportive local physical/built conditions with a focus on transportation systems, housing, and public spaces. It then focuses on methods to create supportive local economies by promoting locally-owned and operated businesses that provide living-wage jobs and transition to a cradle-to-cradle economic model. The chapter moves on to discuss how RCCs can engage residents in regenerating local forests, streams, and other ecological systems. It emphasizes that all these efforts must prepare local systems for and adapt them to the impacts of a disrupted climate system, and that when residents see progress it will increase healthy hope and faith in the future. The chapter closes by discussing the need to ensure a just transition in all these areas, which means both the risks and benefits of changes must be distributed equally across the community.
