Impact of Youth Education on Green Stormwater Infrastructure Recommendations to Increase Equity and Resilience in Marginalized Communities
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 150, Issue 9
Abstract
Marginalized communities disproportionately experience the impacts of climate change, including more intense flooding and longer recovery times from disasters. Youth, particularly those belonging to marginalized communities, are consistently underrepresented in infrastructure planning decisions despite being the group most impacted by the long time scales of climate change, water management, and community infrastructure decisions. This paper investigates the novel perspectives that youth bring to planning processes and resulting impacts on recommendations for green stormwater infrastructure solutions to address flooding and community-scale factors important to achieving disaster resilience. Particular attention is paid to the infrastructure benefits prioritized by youth and characteristics of selected locations for infrastructure solutions. Further, the capabilities possessed by youth to effectively advocate for specific community infrastructure changes are not well researched, and the education and resources required to transform youth advocacy into action are not well understood. Through mixed methods, including quantitative and qualitative data and analysis, this paper explores the impact of youth education on building advocacy and the ability to create implementable stormwater infrastructure designs. The research is based on the development and implementation of a new interdisciplinary program called Youth Advocacy for Resilience to Disasters (YARDs). Funded by the National Science Foundation, the YARDs program teaches youth about natural disasters, resilience, data communication, green infrastructure, and presentation skills. The curriculum was developed by interdisciplinary researcher teams, combining civil engineering, sociology, urban planning, digital media, and education research. The program was piloted as a weeklong summer program for middle school students, and later implemented as a semester-long program. Both implementations focused on students developing green infrastructure recommendations that address flooding and other student-identified risks to communicate to community decision makers. The methods are readily transferable to other potential youth programs in areas impacted by flooding with expansion to additional communities facing different combinations of disasters.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are proprietary or confidential in nature and may only be provided with restrictions. These include the student information, responses, and outcomes from the study.
Acknowledgments
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation’s Civic Innovation Challenge under NSF Award ID’s 2133233 and 2042600. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We also want to acknowledge members of the team who participated in the creation of the YARDs program including Dr. Nisha Botchwey, Timothy Cone, Dr. Yanni Loukissas, Dr. Mildred McClain, Storm Robinson, Mustafa Shabazz, Mohsin Yousufi, as well as the teachers and students (left anonymous for confidentiality) who contributed to the success of the project.
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Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 150 • Issue 9 • September 2024
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This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Received: Jul 6, 2023
Accepted: Feb 12, 2024
Published online: Jun 27, 2024
Published in print: Sep 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Nov 27, 2024
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