Last week the public got a glimpse of how a $55 million Indiana University initiative is helping communities prepare for climate change. But the Environmental Resilience Institute Toolkit is just one piece of a larger effort that should become more visible in the next few years.
IU President Michael McRobbie announced the Prepared for Environmental Change initiative as the second recipient of the university’s Grand Challenges funding in May 2017. Grand Challenges is a program that will provide at least $300 million over five years to help solve large-scale problems through interdisciplinary collaboration and public-private partnerships.
Changes in temperature and rainfall have already begun to impact the state’s economy, said Ellen Ketterson, a distinguished professor of biology at IU tasked with leading the Prepared for Environmental Change initiative. IU wants to help communities not only prepare for but also benefit from those changes, she said.
One of the first steps toward that end is the Environmental Resiliency Institute Toolkit or ERIT, a database of case studies that will continue to grow. It’s based on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Change Adaptation Resource Center, also known as ARC-X.
“The idea for the database was a resource for mayors wanting to understand how climate change would affect them,” said Janet McCabe, assistant director for policy and implementation for the environmental change initiative. “How they can anticipate, adapt and be more resilient.”
McCabe, who is also a professor of practice at IU’s McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis, was familiar with ARC-X from her time as an EPA administrator under the Obama Administration. Worried the database might not survive under the Trump Administration, she saw an opportunity to preserve it and help the people of Indiana by emphasizing resources for the mayors of small and mid-size cities in the Midwest.