Submit a pitch: “Community Resilience and Response to Extreme Weather and Fire”

Climate change is intensifying. Recent extreme weather events across the country, including fire, floods, hurricanes, extreme heat have challenged people and places and forced many to move. Where do they go? What do they do? And how do they respond to the physical destruction of their communities?

This series will focus on the sustainability of people and places in the face of climate injustices. We will focus on communities at the margins who are most impacted across geographies which include vulnerable people and places. This includes lower income populations, communities of color, and white marginalized communities.

At present the cost of the recent impacts from the fire is estimated at a minimum 250 billion dollars upwards of 13,000 structures and counting have been destroyed. We highlight the increasing emergence of climate refugees, people who are forced from their homes and communities due to unprecedented extreme weather and its impacts.

People with means may face similar climactic events but have the economic means to respond, move and relocate. After any major disaster most people leave an area if they can and move to where they have family and friends, but the marginalized do not. This series explores the impact on poor, middle and upper classes as well and their mobility and rebuilding efforts to maintain communities. The social and human capital of communities vary for economically marginalized people and the responses of resilience and coping strategies are key to survival. These are stories of sustainable community power and resilience built on local knowledge networks.

In this Spark Magazine series, we will tell the story of sustainable resilience across geographies. We invite scholars who can share the challenges and the strength of these communities when faced with extreme weather events. Please consider the following questions and offer insights that can help Spark Magazine readers and their communities collectively to be resilient in the face of extreme weather:

• How do communities come together to navigate challenges given shifting power dynamics and environmental justice, and economic biases that favor economically advantaged people and places.
• What role does historic redlining play in this process of where communities formed and are these places more at risk than others?
• What hardships are people experiencing as a result of climate challenges? Are they displaced? Do they lose access to employment or small businesses? Is there food insecurity? Do they lose access to institutions that sustain the community such as schools or places of worship?
• What are the actions taking place? Who is helping and who is hindering? How are people working together?
• How are communities responding to these environmental crises in the face of change and what are the unique features and local knowledge and networks that emerge to create sustainable resilience across geographies?

Dr. Sheila Lakshmi Steinberg, director at the Institute of Sustainability Center and professor of geography and environmental studies at California State University, Northridge will curate this series.