Climate change assessment highlights urgent impacts

On Dec. 22, the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs released an assessment of how the Commonwealth will be affected by climate change and related hazards through the end of this century.

The “Massachusetts Climate Change Assessment” draws on the best available climate science to evaluate 37 climate impacts across the state, broken into five sectors: human, infrastructure, natural environment, governance, and economy.

The governance sector encompasses impacts to state and local government-owned facilities, government finances, and demand on government services. In this sector, the assessment identified the three most urgent impacts:
• Reduction in state and municipal revenues, including reduced property tax base due to coastal and inland flood risk
• Increase in costs of responding to climate migration, including planning for abrupt changes in local populations
• Increase in demand for state and municipal government services, including emergency response, food assistance, and state-sponsored health care

The assessment recognizes that smaller municipalities with a more limited tax base may be disproportionately burdened by growing demand for essential services as a result of climate change. The report finds that coastal communities alone could face an annual property tax revenue loss of more than $100 million by 2090, with losses disproportionately affecting Environmental Justice communities.

The assessment will help to inform the first five-year update to the State Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Plan, which is due this coming fall. The original plan, adopted in the fall of 2018, integrated hazard mitigation planning with climate change impacts and adaptation strategies. This first-of-its-kind statewide plan followed changes in precipitation, sea level rise, rising temperatures, and extreme weather. Accompanying climate change projections highlighted the importance of risk reduction and resilience across the state.

The process to update to the State Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Plan is underway. For more information, visit the Massachusetts Integrated State Hazard and Climate Adaptation Plan website.