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Introduction
On April 20, 2010, the explosion that occurred at the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling unit in the Gulf of Mexico caused the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The well spilled an estimated 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, injuring natural resources on which people’s livelihoods depend and causing disruptions to their communities. As one response, in 2013, the Gulf Research Program (GRP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine was created to “enhance oil system safety and the protection of human health and the environment in the Gulf of Mexico and other U.S. outer continental shelf areas by seeking to improve understanding of the region’s interconnecting human, environmental, and energy systems and fostering application of these insights to benefit Gulf communities, ecosystems, and the Nation” (NRC, 2014, p. 6). Box 1-1 defines key terms used in the report.
Recognizing the importance of tracking community resilience to inform planning and action for healthy and resilient coastal communities, GRP commissioned a consensus study to inform the development of its human health and resilience portfolio. The study report, Building and Measuring Community Resilience: Actions for Communities and the Gulf Research Program (NASEM, 2019), states that the “GRP has a rare opportunity to alter the resilience trajectory of Gulf communities through a community resilience framework, community engagement, a learning collaborative, and longitudinal, transdisciplinary studies that inform decision making” (p. 9).
In response, GRP developed a new initiative, Enhancing Community Resilience (EnCoRe), which operates out of GRP’s Gulf Health and Resilience Board (GHRB). Initial activities of the EnCoRe initiative included appointing an oversight body and developing a set of profiles of communities along the Gulf of Mexico and the coast of Alaska that could advise EnCoRe in ways recommended in the 2019 report.
In 2021, GRP asked the National Academies’ Policy and Global Affairs (PGA) division to undertake a study to develop and recommend guiding principles and criteria for community participation in EnCoRe (see Box 1-2). The committee includes experts from a variety of organizations, with expertise in areas such as planning, community resilience and engagement, the natural and built environment, public health, program development and evaluation, and social and behavioral sciences (committee biographies can be found in Appendix A). At the time this new study was sponsored, and throughout the study, National Academies staff and the committee were not divulged of EnCoRe’s plans for implementing the program. As reflected in the study’s statement of task (Box 1-2), this report considers the possible implications of selection criteria and guiding principles for EnCoRe’s approach to carrying out the program but does not develop recommendations regarding implementation.
STUDY CONTEXT
The settlement language that establishes GRP’s terms for the Gulf of Mexico endowment specifies that GRP will focus on the Gulf of Mexico and the outer continental shelf of the United States, which includes Alaska, with a particular emphasis on the Southcentral region and other areas of Alaska with intensive offshore hydrocarbon extraction. Enhancing resilience in these regions will be an important focus of GRP’s work going forward.
Communities across the Gulf region and coastal Alaska vary in demographics, economies, cultures, natural and other hazards, stressors, and histories, and as such also vary in the expression of the six community capitals that underlie community resilience: natural, built, financial, human, social, and political (NASEM, 2019). The EnCoRe initiative seeks to engage directly with a heterogeneous group of communities across these regions to build capacity and advance efforts that result in healthier, more resilient communities. Some outcomes of EnCoRe are envisioned as new or enhanced networks, peer-to-peer learning, and the sharing of lessons learned and best practices in health and community resilience that can be expected to contribute to improved whole-community and whole-region outcomes. EnCoRe is unique in focusing on and highlighting the interconnection between hazard resilience and health. As the human health impacts of climate change grow, EnCoRe can both raise awareness about impacts and connections, and intentionally convene representatives from multiple disciplines at the
community level.1 Thus, the selection of communities is central to both the design and the success of EnCoRe, and this committee focused on developing clear, well-supported guiding principles and selection criteria with the goal of enabling EnCoRe to establish effective partnerships that can help build capacity and strengthen community resilience over time.
GOALS AND ORGANIZATION OF THIS REPORT
This report is based on three main data streams: (1) the experiences and expertise of its committee members, discussed and deliberated, as relevant to the study’s statement of task; (2) an examination of past and ongoing resilience, capacity building, and public health efforts in Alaska, the Gulf region, and nationally, as examined in closed sessions with staff, and as presented in open sessions in the form of public data-gathering panels by community members and representatives from relevant organizations, institutions, and agencies; and (3) evidence-based literature.
This report seeks to reach two main audiences. The primary audience is GRP, for whom the report provides specific guiding principles and selection criteria that GRP should follow for developing partnerships that will enhance community resilience and health in Alaska and the Gulf region. The report is also intended for decision makers at institutional and community levels who are interested in adopting a community-centric approach to resilience, capacity-building, and public health efforts. Above all, the intent of this report is to elevate the importance of the equitable distribution of resources when supporting, developing, maintaining, and sustaining community resilience partnerships. The report also highlights the ongoing need for the equitable establishment of procedures to ensure that the people most impacted by the partnership have access to, and can provide input into, fair and transparent decision-making processes. Furthermore, this report builds on the foundational consensus report completed by the Committee on Measuring Community Resilience (NASEM, 2019), which highlighted that community resilience takes on “highly localized dimensions,” which requires tailored “relevant and achievable goals” (p. ix). Given that the field of community resilience is nascent, and taking into account the array of existing definitions and measurement tools, this report also highlights the importance of robust measurement within and across projects and regions, in order to facilitate the development of this field and sustainable outcomes.
The following chapters lay the groundwork for selecting communities for participation in the EnCoRe program. Chapter 2 describes historical and theoretical foundations, and contains findings and recommendations aimed at helping to orient community selection and engagement
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1 Importantly, EnCoRe’s efforts will need to continuously adapt to changing conditions, such as natural disasters, that might increase in frequency and/or severity as a result of climate change—an understanding that is currently reflected in a variety of existing GRP programming and efforts. As one example among many, GRP announced in October 2019 that it would award $10.7 million in grants to four Gulf Coast community resilience projects. For more information about these grants, see https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2019/10/national-academies-gulf-research-program-awards-10-7-million-in-grants-to-four-gulf-coast-community-resilience-projects (accessed February 10, 2023).
within the changing context of the resilience and community engagement efforts. Chapter 3 examines relevant past and ongoing resilience and public health efforts, and highlights lessons learned from these resilience-strengthening efforts that should inform selection and engagement. Chapter 4 reviews and describes the recommended criteria for selection and guiding principles for identification, selection, and engagement. Chapter 5 describes critical considerations for the EnCoRe initiative as relevant to its stated intent (NASEM, 2019), and highlights the broader importance and potential of EnCoRe as a mechanism for sustainable and equitable change.
