Senator Ron DeSantis pledged $2.5B of funding for environmental issues in Florida. The South Florida community along with the entire State of Florida is investing in resiliency solutions through programs and projects. The theme for this year’s Resilient Solutions Summit was “The Environment is the Economy,” to discuss the significance of communities coming together and partnership developments needed to build an economy around an environmental program that creates workforce engagement, drives education, increases performance, and more.

The rest of Florida is not where Miami-Dade county is around resiliency, but De Santis’ recent initiatives that include the first Florida Chief Science Office and Chief Resilience Officer will help tackle resilient priorities statewide. Mayor Dan Gelber of the City of Miami Beach said, “Buildings are higher, streets are rising...flooding is a surmountable problem, we have been able to answer,” during the Global Solutions & Local Actions Panel, stating how one local city is implementing sustainability initiatives by involving their residents, creating blue/green infrastructure, and through their Miami Beach Rising Above plan.

Nationally, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is setting aside hundreds of millions of dollars toward a new Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. This program is part of reforms passed to acknowledge the shared responsibility of disaster response and recovery that’ll aid to build a culture of preparedness. Protecting our environment affects our businesses. “Coral reefs protect South Florida from storms and millions of dollars in economic loss,” stated Rod Braun, Climate & Coastal Resilience Program Manager, The Nature Conservancy. There’s a sense of urgency in Florida around resiliency. “The most important voice on climate change and sea level rise is the business community,” encouraged Secretary Noah Valenstein of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Protecting natural resources, improving water quality, stopping flood risk, and other results of climate change will improve and help restore the environment in which we live.

Top Investors

Baptist Health South Florida
CareerSource South Florida
Carlton Fields
fiserv.
Florida Power & Light
TD Bank
UHealth
University of Miami
Wells Fargo