Exposing disparities in flood adaptation for equitable future interventions in the USA

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Climate Change Adaptation
• Public Policy

Background:

• Governments are implementing climate adaptation solutions for increased flooding.
• Effective policies must consider climate justice and benefit all communities.
• Evaluating adaptation requires assessing equitable distribution of benefits.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the equitable effectiveness of flood adaptation interventions.
• To identify disparities in savings from flood adaptation based on community demographics.
• To inform future climate adaptation policies for greater equity.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a FEMA dataset of approximately 2.5 million flood insurance claims in the USA.
• Employed CAUSALFLOW, a causal inference method with deep generative models.
• Estimated treatment effects of flood adaptation interventions considering income, race, population, flood risk, education, and precipitation.

Main Results:

• Flood adaptation programs yield significant household savings ($5,000-15,000).
• Savings are unevenly distributed across communities, with disparities based on income and race.
• Low-income communities experience declining savings with increased flood risk, unlike high-income communities.
• Predominantly white, low-income communities receive over $6,000 more per household in savings than other low-income communities.

Conclusions:

• Flood adaptation savings are not equitable across different socioeconomic and racial groups.
• Current adaptation strategies may exacerbate existing inequalities.
• Future flood adaptation efforts must prioritize equitable support and climate justice for all communities.