Fostering a More Connected and Resilient Cali Baja through the Binational Resilience Initiative
Sea levels are projected to rise up to one foot by 2050 across the coastal Cali Baja region. For residents, this translates to more frequent and significant coastal flooding, compounded by an increased probability for extreme precipitation events. These shocks will pose increasing damage to the human, economic, physical, and natural assets that help shape the region’s identity and way of life. In order to mitigate the impacts of a changing climate in the context of other urgent complex resilience challenges—including affordability, shifting economic trends, regional inequities, and development patterns—innovative regional-scale coastal resilience solutions are necessary. Yet, a lack of flexible and adaptive financing strategies presents a persistent barrier to implementing innovative coastal resilience projects in the border region. This challenge is not unique to the Cali Baja region, nor is it limited to coastal projects. As in other regions, insufficient resources, onerous regulatory requirements, and the difficulty of tailoring financing to dynamic project needs that can leverage pooled resources from multiple jurisdictional partners and multiple sectors all hinder the implementation and innovation of coastal resilience projects.
In July 2020, Resilient Cities Catalyst and the San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative (SDRCC) convened diverse global and local experts for the San Diego Region Coastal Exchange. Over the course of this sequence of virtual convenings and small group working sessions, participants explored innovative design options that address coastal resilience challenges. Among the many challenges facing the region, the Exchange participants identified the difficulties associated with funding and financing coastal resilience solutions as a top priority. In response, Exchange participants coalesced around the development of a resilience fund, which would aim to address financing obstacles by steering a variety of funding streams from philanthropic, private, and public partners to address some of the critical challenges that hinder the financing of innovative coastal resilience projects. The resilience fund would couple best-in-class research and modeling with multiple, sustainable funding streams to support the testing, piloting, and scaling of high-impact coastal resilience projects across the region.
Since the Exchange, momentum has built among local partners to make the fund a reality and its scope has expanded. Leveraging global best practices, RCC and SDRCC partnered with the San Diego Foundation to engage with local partners to build out a detailed fund design. Through this process, the interconnectedness of Baja Norte and the greater San Diego region became increasingly evident — ultimately resulting in a partnership with the International Community Foundation.
The fund, now known as the Binational Resilience Initiative, launched in October of 2022 with an initial focus on coastal resilience given the pressing urgency posed by sea-level rise and resulting coastal erosion. Ultimately, however, the Initiative will support an array of high-impact projects that address the region’s diverse resilience challenges. The Initiative has the potential to serve as a global model for innovative resilience financing—ultimately strengthening capacity in the Cali Baja region to leverage multiple funding sources across jurisdictions to pilot and scale higher impact projects more quickly, while also promoting equitable regional resilience.
Learn more about the Initiative