Climate Change: Considerations for Geographic Combatant Commands PKSOI Paper | Page 25

relevant “socio-environmental” consequences of climate change.54 The coordination and collaboration
with the various unified action partners – especially
interagency players at which SOUTHCOM has excelled—would be particularly useful if leveraged
in a scenario planning exercise to better determine
risk-based priorities for climate change resiliency
investments.55
In addition to technical support that aids a partner nation’s building long-term resilience to climate
change impacts, a GCC can benefit from USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) to share
methods and tools useful in HA/DR.56 Assigned
OFDA representatives proved extremely helpful to
the SOUTHCOM Commander during the January
2010 Haiti earthquake crisis by providing daily updates on USAID activities and facilitating coordination and decision-making to achieve unity of effort between USAID and SOUTHCOM during this disaster
relief effort.57 Technical exchanges tied to the funding
sources discussed below can enable partner nations
to employ well-developed U.S. technologies for early
warning communication systems integrated with
standard operating procedures to execute evacuation
plans from population centers to reduce the scope of
human casualties [the risk of which increases as climate change induces more intense storms]. USAID’s
“Thomazeau’s Disaster Contingency and Mitigation
Plan”—part of a larger USAID strategy to support the
Cul-de-Sac floodplain communities—is an example of
a proactive development initiative developed in collaboration with Haitian Civil Protection Committee
members, the private sector, state institutions, local
assemblies, and community-based associations.58 The
extent to which a GCC and USAID can assist a partner

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