$5 Billion in Climate Resilience Funding Has Vanished — Here Is Where to Find What Is Left

On April 4, 2025, FEMA announced it was ending the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program and cancelling every application from fiscal years 2020 through 2023. Three billion dollars in undisbursed funds were returned to the Treasury. Overnight, hundreds of communities lost the funding that was supposed to protect them from the floods, wildfires, and heat waves that are already arriving with increasing frequency.

BRIC was just the beginning. The Flood Mitigation Assistance program was cancelled for 2025. The Hazard Mitigation Grant Program stopped approving new allocations. And across the broader climate portfolio, the Trump administration has frozen or attempted to cancel over $23 billion in clean energy and climate grants allocated under the Inflation Reduction Act.

For municipalities, nonprofits, and tribal nations that had built their resilience strategies around federal funding, the ground has shifted. But it has not disappeared entirely. A patchwork of surviving federal programs, state-level initiatives, and emerging funding mechanisms still exists — and the organizations that adapt fastest will be the ones that stay protected.

What Exactly Was Lost

The scale of the funding disruption is worth understanding precisely, because it shapes which alternatives matter.

BRIC (cancelled): The single largest federal resilience grant program. In its final cycle before cancellation, BRIC allocated approximately $583 million. The cancellation of prior-year applications returned an additional $882 million in previously allocated but undisbursed awards. FEMA characterized the program as "wasteful" and "politicized."

Flood Mitigation Assistance (cancelled for 2025): Historically funded by National Flood Insurance Program policyholders and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Primary source for flood-proofing, elevation, and buyout projects in repetitive-loss communities.

Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (frozen): New allocations stopped in April 2025. The program has not been officially terminated, but no new grants are being approved. Existing awards continue to disburse.

IRA Climate Grants (frozen/cancelled): Over $23 billion in clean energy grants that the administration has attempted to cancel. The Climate Pollution Reduction Grants, which had funded state and local climate action plans, are among the programs affected.

In the Bay Area alone, over $270 million in resilience funding evaporated — including $50 million for the SAFER Bay flood protection project in Menlo Park, $50 million for San Francisco's Downtown Coastal Resilience Project, and over $70 million in wildfire resilience projects for Napa and Sonoma counties. California statewide lost between $765 million and $870 million in BRIC-funded hazard mitigation projects.

A coalition of 20 states has filed suit challenging FEMA's authority to cancel BRIC retroactively. The outcome is uncertain, and waiting for courts to act is not a resilience strategy.

Federal Programs That Still Exist

Not everything was cut. Several federal funding streams remain operational, though some with reduced budgets or altered priorities.

Climate Smart Communities Initiative. As Granted News reported, CSCI just opened a $2.2 million grant round with 21 awards ranging from $75,000 to $115,000. Applications close March 12, 2026. The program requires three-way partnerships between an adaptation practitioner, a community-based organization, and a local government. It targets communities under 300,000 population that are highly vulnerable to climate impacts.

CSCI is small — $2.2 million does not replace $583 million. But it is open, funded, and accepting applications right now. For communities that have never applied for resilience funding before, the structured partnership model and $75,000-$115,000 award range makes this an accessible entry point.

FEMA Pre-Disaster Mitigation (remaining IIJA funds). While BRIC was cancelled, some pre-disaster mitigation funding allocated under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act continues to flow through other FEMA mechanisms. These funds are not subject to the same cancellation authority because they are tied to the bipartisan infrastructure law rather than annual appropriations.

HUD Community Development Block Grants — Disaster Recovery. CDBG-DR funds continue to be allocated following presidential disaster declarations. These grants support long-term recovery and resilience projects in declared disaster areas. While not proactive (you need a disaster first), they remain a significant funding source — over $2 billion was allocated in recent cycles.

USDA Rural Development grants. Several USDA programs fund infrastructure resilience in rural communities, including the Community Facilities program, Water and Waste Disposal grants, and the Rural Energy for America Program. These are not climate-specific but can fund resilience-related infrastructure.

EPA Environmental Justice grants. The EPA's EJ Collaborative Problem-Solving and EJ Government-to-Government programs continue to fund projects that address environmental and public health challenges in disadvantaged communities. Climate resilience projects that frame their work through an environmental justice lens may find opportunities here.

NOAA habitat restoration grants. NOAA continues to fund coastal resilience through its Transformational Habitat Restoration and Coastal Resilience Grants. The most recent cycle offered $100 million for projects between $750,000 and $10 million — substantial awards for coastal communities. As Granted News reported, NOAA's habitat restoration portfolio remains active with near-term deadlines.

The State-Level Surge

The most significant shift in the climate resilience funding landscape is the emergence of state programs designed to fill the federal gap. Thirty-three states have undertaken formal resilience planning since 2008, and the pace of state investment is accelerating precisely because federal funding has become unreliable.

Colorado has been the most aggressive. Using $50 million from its federal Climate Pollution Reduction Grant implementation award — funds that were allocated before the freeze — Colorado created the Local IMPACT Accelerator Grant Program. The first round in January 2026 awarded $21.6 million to 17 projects, with awards averaging $2 million each. That is a meaningful program by any standard.

Colorado also funds Regional Grant Navigators through the Governor's Office — free consultants who help municipalities identify and apply for resilience funding. Over $70 million in grants have been awarded statewide for wildfire prevention and extreme heat response through various state mechanisms.

California has the largest state resilience apparatus, though it was also the most dependent on federal BRIC funding. California requires municipal resilience planning with state funding support and has allocated billions through its own climate adaptation bond measures. The loss of federal funding creates gaps, but the state infrastructure to deploy alternative funding exists.

Massachusetts has a similar mandatory planning framework. Both California and Massachusetts together account for over 24 percent of all municipal resilience plans in the country.

Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina — all Republican-voting states — have adopted resilience plans or appointed chief resilience officers. Thirteen states now have chief resilience officers, and 15 have established dedicated resilience and adaptation offices. This is not a partisan issue at the state level, even if it has become one at the federal level.

New York's Climate Resilience Grant Program is offering $650,000 in its 2026 cycle for land acquisition and planning projects. Individual awards cap at $50,000 for planning and $25,000 for capacity-building — small, but targeted at organizations that have never received resilience funding before.

Municipal Innovation in a Post-BRIC World

With federal funding unreliable and state programs unevenly distributed, some municipalities are building their own resilience financing mechanisms.

Local tax measures are the most direct option. Sales taxes, parcel taxes, and general obligation bonds can all fund resilience infrastructure. The political challenge is real — asking voters to raise their own taxes to replace federal funding that was promised and then taken away is a difficult message. But communities in wildfire and flood zones are finding that voters respond when the alternative is unmitigated risk.

Regional coalitions are another model. The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, established in 2009, coordinates resilience planning across Miami-Dade, Broward, Monroe, and Palm Beach counties. By pooling resources and expertise, member counties achieve economies of scale in planning, data collection, and project implementation that individual municipalities cannot.

Green bonds and resilience bonds offer a market-based financing option for larger projects. These instruments have grown significantly in the past three years, though they require credit ratings and project scales that may be beyond the reach of smaller communities.

A Practical Strategy for the Next 12 Months

The communities that will navigate this transition most successfully are those that diversify their funding portfolios rather than searching for a single replacement for BRIC.

Immediate actions (March 2026):

• Apply for Climate Smart Communities Initiative grants before March 12.
• Inventory all state-level resilience programs in your jurisdiction. The NCSL Federal Resilience Funding tracker maintains a current list.
• Identify IIJA-funded programs that remain operational — these are legally distinct from the cancelled appropriations programs.

Short-term (Q2 2026):

• Engage your state's chief resilience officer or adaptation office if one exists. Thirteen states now have these positions — they exist specifically to help local governments access funding.
• Frame climate resilience projects through lenses that align with surviving federal priorities: environmental justice, rural infrastructure, coastal habitat restoration, community facilities.
• Build the three-way partnerships (practitioner + CBO + government) that programs like CSCI require. These partnerships take time to formalize, and having them in place when the next application window opens is a competitive advantage.

Medium-term (2026-2027):

• Monitor the 20-state lawsuit challenging BRIC cancellation. A favorable ruling could release some of the $3 billion in returned funds.
• Develop local financing mechanisms (tax measures, bonds, resilience districts) as permanent supplements to grant funding. Even if federal programs resume, the lesson of 2025-2026 is that dependence on a single funding source is a vulnerability.
• Participate in state and regional resilience planning processes. The 272 sub-national entities that have already published climate resilience plans since 2005 form a network of practice. Learning from peer communities — what worked, what failed, what funders responded to — is as valuable as any consultant.

The disappearance of $5 billion in climate resilience funding is a crisis, but it is not the end of the story. The communities that treat this moment as a signal to diversify rather than a reason to stop planning are the ones that will be best positioned when — not if — the next disaster arrives, and when the next funding window opens.

Tools like Granted can help you track the surviving federal programs, state initiatives, and foundation opportunities that remain available while the federal landscape continues to shift.