Pacific Northwest Maps Reveal Climate Inequities

Published: Friday, February 26, 2021

Residents of 152 cities and towns in the Pacific Northwest are particularly vulnerable to climate-fueled wildfires. Residents of 60 other communities are most susceptible to floods. And people living in 75 towns are most liable to suffer — maybe even die — because of heat waves.

That’s according to an analysis released Wednesday by news agency InvestigateWest and planning firm Headwaters Economics. It drills down to towns where, for example, sparse tree canopies and older residents make communities more susceptible to heat waves than younger populations in leafier places.

The analysis looks at likely climate disasters and examines factors such as the number of people with disabilities, how many live in poverty, the proportion that rents their home and how many of the vulnerable are people of color.

In short, the analysis pinpoints how the human toll liable to be taken by climate change spreads far across the map, especially into rural areas of Washington state and Oregon. It highlights where circumstances such as income and race will — without targeted action — place communities at greater risk as climate change advances.

It’s just the latest in a series of studies to create new data-driven methods to identify and address unequal environmental risks.

“You can have neighborhoods right next to one another and one may be twice as bad off during a flood. Not because they’re more flooded. But because their housing is worse,” said Michael Brauer, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health, whose team in August 2020 released a climate vulnerability index looking at how socioeconomic and other factors can affect vulnerability to climate-fueled natural disasters.

These demographic maps are identifying environmental unfairness, engaging communities and beginning to spur the redesign of government programs to target limited government resources where they can have the greatest impact.

InvestigateWest commissioned Headwaters to produce maps zeroing in on communities whose characteristics leave them most exposed. The work is part of a yearlong reporting project, “Getting to Zero: Decarbonizing Cascadia.” Headwaters drew on data from the U.S. Forest Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Census Bureau and a group of federal agencies called the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics consortium.

The maps produced by Headwaters for InvestigateWest display vulnerability to fire, floods and extreme heat.

One observation that jumps out of all three maps: Climate vulnerability is to be found across Oregon and Washington. It is widespread in rural areas.

While these climate vulnerability maps allow rural residents and leaders to see what a changing climate means for their communities, that does not guarantee they will believe that climate change is responsible.

Take the Town of Grand Coulee, in the high desert of Washington’s Okanogan region. It is one of only two communities that the InvestigateWest/Headwaters research shows to be simultaneously extra susceptible to fire, flooding and extreme heat. (The other is The Dalles, a small Oregon city in the Columbia River Gorge that found itself dangerously close to several destructive fires during Cascadia’s record-shattering 2020 wildfire season.)

Grand Coulee Mayor Paul Townsend told InvestigateWest he has “a hard time” seeing the connection between climate change and natural disasters, such as the wildfires that threatened his community in 2020.

“I have mixed emotions about the whole climate change issue,” Townsend said.

Nor does better information guarantee that action will follow. Townsend, for one, acknowledges that Grand Coulee has vulnerable residents. But he said in the case of a disaster, better information would be of little use without state and federal support.

“Some people have no financial resources for any kind of shelter. And, of course, our city revenues don’t have any margin for helping with that,” said Townsend.

Washington state officials are working to alert rural citizens to the threat.

Last month a reporter from Wenatchee asked the head of Washington’s Energy Policy Office what help the state’s newly released decarbonization plan offered to rural citizens, such as farmers and ranchers who use a lot of diesel fuel. Glenn Blackmon had a specific answer, noting the plan’s call for production of clean fuels, including hydrogen likely to be generated by utilities in eastern Washington.

But his first response served as a warning.

“If we’re not successful in addressing climate impacts, rural areas will be among the hardest hit with things like wildfires,” Blackmon said. — Peter Fairley, InvestigateWest/Associated Press