TNC and FEMA

In the U.S., the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is responsible for responding to natural disasters -- like floods and wildfires -- and providing technical and financial hazard mitigation support. This support is primarily distributed as grant funding through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) programs.

In June of 2019, TNC California formally partnered with FEMA Region 9 to develop resources to help communities navigate FEMA programs and advance projects that incorporate nature-based solutions and natural infrastructure to reduce hazard risk and to expand the use of FEMA Hazard Mitigation Assistance funding to support these strategies.

See all TNC-FEMA reports and Related Products below. 

Climate change poses severe threats to coastal communities and the ecosystems on which they depend. Warming ocean temperatures increase the magnitude and frequency of storm events and cause back-to-back coral bleaching events, allowing less time for recovery amidst these threats. Coral reef ecosystems in the United States support fisheries, tourism, and coastal protection. The complex and stable structure of coral reefs protects against natural hazards by reducing wave energy. However, as reefs degrade, their effectiveness decreases. There is a clear need for active hazard mitigation actions to retain the critical ecosystem services of coral reefs.

To advance these efforts, TNC and partners assessed the feasibility of accessing federal hazard mitigation dollars for CR4 by selecting a U.S. coral jurisdiction within FEMA Region 9. For the study, they evaluated the technical feasibility, community buy-in, and cost-effectiveness of CR4 projects at 15 sites on Maui, analyzed the flood reduction benefits of coral reefs using FEMA’s Flood Assessment Structure Tool (FAST), and conducted a preliminary benefit-cost analysis.    

The preliminary results show that CR4 is a cost-effective hazard mitigation strategy. However, the lack of rigorous National Structure Inventory (NSI) data will be a limiting factor for several jurisdictions, and there is need for stronger alignment between hazard mitigation and coral management priorities for the coral jurisdictions in FEMA Region 9. Further, coral restoration operations will need to establish CR4 best practices and techniques. Finally, unanticipated or unallowable project costs may limit the term and scale of future projects, and cost share requirement can be cost prohibitive, especially for lower resourced communities. 

Partnerships like this with FEMA allow us to move closer to our shared interest in maximizing and facilitating the use of expanded mitigation dollars for nature-based strategies. Partners on this study included the Coastal Science and Policy Program at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC), and Radbridge LLC (formerly Earth Economics).  View the full report, appendix, key takeaways and Maui case study.