Abstract
Climate change has accelerated the frequency and severity of natural disasters globally and wildfires are no exception. In part, wildfires have intensified due to climate change, short-sighted fire suppression policies, and the rapid influx of people and development in hazardous regions. Like other natural disasters, wildfires will continue to pose an ever-increasing threat to communities nationally. And the federal government's default approach of providing aid after disaster strikes will only continue to become more unsustainable as climate change worsens. Yet, proactive measures that exist to mitigate risk—such as hazard mapping and financial assistance to support adaptation and resilience at the local level—are often underfunded or, increasingly, nonexistent. This Note argues that federal aid should prophylactically prioritize risk reduction. By helping local and state governments identify at-risk regions through hazard mapping and conditioning future aid on proactive resilience efforts, Congress can ensure that federal spending reduces, rather than reacts to, the damage that future natural disasters will cause.
Citation
Meghan Hodges,
Slowing the Burn: Incentivizing Safer Development through Wildfire Hazard Mapping,
75 Duke Law Journal
133-170
(2025)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol75/iss1/3