The powerful U.S. Office of Management and Budget has instructed government agencies to consider the impacts of climate change on facility construction and maintenance in their 2017 budgets.
“OMB is asking all federal agencies to consider climate preparedness and resiliency objectives as part of their Fiscal Year 2017 budget requests for construction and maintenance of federal facilities,” wrote Ali Zaidi, associate director for natural resources, energy and science. “Why? Because making our federal facility investments climate-smart reduces our fiscal exposure to the impacts of climate change.”
Zaidi’s blog post noted that many of the 560,000 Department of Defense facilities around the world could be vulnerable to hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and drought. Closer to home, “just last week, the National Park Service identified more than $40 billion in national park infrastructure and historic and cultural resources put at risk by sea level rise.”
