--- title: no place is resilient alone canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/no-place-is-resilient-alone markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/no-place-is-resilient-alone.md subtitle: "a town's resilience starts upstream of the town. the unit that works is the region, and every place in it" category: ensurance --- # no place is resilient alone *a town's resilience starts upstream of the town. the unit that works is the region, and every place in it* Quito's 2.7 million residents are supplied from the páramo, the high, wet grassland of the Andes above the city. New York's water comes mostly from the Catskill and Delaware watersheds, among upstate towns with councils of their own. Denver's reservoirs sit below forested slopes that have burned. Run a city, a utility or a county and you know the shape of this: what keeps your people supplied and safe often sits across a line you do not control. **Regional resilience** is the capacity of a region's cities, towns, farms and shared living systems to absorb a shock and keep working as a whole. It treats the watershed and the forest as common ground, kept by the people who live on it and supported by the places that depend on it, because no city limit holds all of it. The páramo holds water and lets it go slowly; the forest holds the slope and the snow. They do that work whether or not anyone pays. [**Ensurance**](/?from=guide) is one way the people who depend on them can pay for their keeping. It is not the páramo, and it does not stop a fire or a drought. ## the city limit is not the system The United Nations disaster risk office put it plainly in its 2017 scorecard for cities: "Many ecosystem services that are relevant to the city's resilience may be provided well outside its geographical area." In 1973, in the paper that made the word prominent in ecology, C. S. Holling wrote that a resilience approach would emphasize "the need to view events in a regional rather than a local context." The loss that reaches a city often starts outside it, as [the loss started outside the property line](/guide/the-loss-started-outside-the-property-line?from=guide) shows for one flooded factory. ## cities that already pay upstream These are examples, not endorsements, and none is a partner of ours. **Quito, Ecuador.** FONAG, Quito's water protection fund, was "established in 2000 through a 1% environmental surcharge on water bills by the city's water utility, EPMAPS," according to the Green Finance Institute, and its funding later reached 2% of water tariffs. The money goes to forest restoration, sustainable agriculture and erosion control on the páramo. Mongabay calls it the world's first water fund. This post draws on the fund's and the city's side of the story and does not speak for the people who live and work on the páramo. **Denver, Colorado.** The 1996 Buffalo Creek fire burned 12,000 acres immediately upstream of a Denver Water reservoir. Fires including Buffalo Creek and the 2002 Hayman fire required more than $27.7 million in restoration and repairs, according to the Colorado State Forest Service. Denver Water and its partners began From Forests to Faucets in 2010; by October 2025 it had spent $96 million, split evenly between Denver Water and its partners, and the utility says debris flows from land burned nearly 30 years ago still cramp the reservoir's storage. **New York City.** The Catskill/Delaware supply provides about 90% of the city's water and is the largest unfiltered supply in the United States. A 2020 National Academies review credits a watershed protection program with letting it meet water quality standards without a filtration plant, and counts $2.5 billion spent on that program since 1997, about $100 million a year. In 1993 the city estimated that filtration could cost as much as $6 billion to build and more than $300 million a year to run; an expert panel appointed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it could cost as little as half. The figures are in different years' dollars and do not subtract cleanly. A kept watershed is not a safe one. Denver's forests burned, and New York still disinfects its water and occasionally treats it for storm turbidity. :::johnson **a town's resilience starts upstream of the town.** Quito, Denver and New York each pay toward keeping ground beyond their limits, year after year. [see how a regional body can run this →](/solutions/regional-collaboratives?from=guide&topic=resilience) ::: ## small cycles inside larger ones Living systems are nested. Holling's 2001 paper, and the 2002 book by Gunderson and Holling, call this nested picture *panarchy*. Holling put it this way: "Each level is allowed to operate at its own pace, protected from above by slower, larger levels but invigorated from below by faster, smaller cycles of innovation." For a place, it means part of a town's resilience is lent by the larger, slower system around it, and the town's quick choices either feed that system or draw it down. [Place, purpose, people at any size](/guide/place-purpose-people-at-any-size?from=guide) follows the same nesting. ## every place is upstream of someone A city drinks from the hills and sends its stormwater and treated wastewater on to someone below. Every place has [two lists](/guide/every-account-has-two-lists?from=guide): what it depends on, and what depends on it. Upstream ground is not the city's backyard. It is somebody's home, farm, forest and tax base, with its own council, plans and rights. When New York moved to buy land and set new rules in the watershed, residents feared that development would be stifled, property values would drop and the local tax base would erode, according to the National Research Council's 2000 review. The agreement that followed was signed on January 21, 1997, after 18 months of negotiation, by the city, the state, the EPA, the Coalition of Watershed Towns, environmental groups and some 70 upstate towns and villages. Farmers were not directly part of those talks; a separate program was set up with them. So payment across the line is a relationship, not a purchase of someone else's land. Buying has a place, but no city can own its way to resilience. The ground is too large and too lived-in, and the people who keep it know it best. What lasts is paying for the keeping, on terms set together, with the upstream place's right to say no intact. ## the free-rider problem Water off a kept forest reaches everyone downstream, whether they paid or not. So each place has a reason to wait for another to pay, and the one that pays first protects neighbors who did not. That is the free-rider problem. A harm sent downstream is a different problem. An upstream place can send runoff, sediment or smoke to its neighbors at no cost to itself, which [the spillover effect in nature](/guide/what-is-a-spillover-effect-in-nature?from=guide) takes up as leakage. The cities above used three tools: a charge on the water bill, a cost split between partners and a signed agreement. In our view, none removes free riding; a region decides how much of it to live with. ## what regional resilience needs that a town cannot do alone **A shared map,** drawn with the people who live on the ground and held where they can correct it: what each place gives and receives, in what condition, kept by whom. A 2018 business case by The Nature Conservancy for the Greater Cape Town Water Fund estimated that invasive plants cost about 55 billion liters of water a year, "nearly two months of Cape Town's annual water supply," and that spending R372 million (South African rand) on clearing priority sub-catchments would bring expected annual gains of 100 billion liters within 30 years. That is the Conservancy's own estimate from a business case, not a measured result, and its unit is the catchment, not one town. **A way to pay across the line.** A tariff, a split or a standing agreement; where there is no tariff, a tax or a levy can do the same job. New York's subprograms all derive from its 1997 agreement and later federal filtration avoidance determinations. Whether ratepayer money may be spent outside a service area is for each utility's board and counsel. [Regional resilience plans](/guide/regional-resilience-plans?from=guide) covers the planning side. **A record that outlasts a budget cycle:** who paid, what was done, where, and the ground's condition now, kept longer than any council's term. ## how places link up on ensurance On **ensurance**, a place, a people or a purpose can hold an account in its own name, at any size from a parcel to a bioregion. An account is not title, and it does not settle whose ground a place is. One account can hold another's certificate, so a city's account could hold the certificate of the watershed it depends on. A town can also list the ground it keeps inside a regional market, as [a town joins its region's resilience market](/guide/a-town-joins-its-regions-resilience-market?from=guide) describes. A tariff and a signed agreement do much of this without a ledger. What a shared public record adds is that anyone in the region can read who paid and what was kept, for longer than one council's term. No region named in this post has set this up. If yours has no account yet, [suggest one](/specific/create?mode=suggest&agent=risk-resilience.ensurance&from=guide), see which places already have accounts in [explore](/explore?from=guide), or go back a step to [how to build resilience for a place](/guide/how-to-build-resilience-for-a-place?from=guide). ## a leap back, and what it became Resilience began as a leap back: Latin *resilire*, to spring back. Engineers asked how much energy a plank or a beam can take in and give back without being bent for good. How fast a system returns was ecology's stability, which Holling in 1996 named engineering resilience. He asked living systems a different question: how much can it take and still be itself. For a place, the answer is mostly alive. The páramo, the floodplain, the marsh, the canopy, the soil and the forest let a place stay itself through a bad year, within limits, and they do it best while they are kept. Resilience for a place is that keeping. And because the ground that does it runs past every city limit and every property line, the keeping is shared, upstream and down, by the people who live on it and the people who live from it. ## frequently asked questions ### what is regional resilience? Regional resilience is the capacity of a region's cities, towns, farms and shared living systems to absorb a shock and keep working as a whole. It treats watersheds, floodplains and forests as shared ground, kept by the people who live on them and supported by the places that depend on them. ### why can't a city be resilient on its own? Much of what keeps a city supplied and safe sits outside its limit: the watershed that feeds its taps, the forest above its reservoir, the floodplain upriver. ### does paying upstream mean buying upstream land? Not necessarily. New York buys some land from willing sellers, and Mongabay reports that Quito's fund buys land next to the protected páramo. New York's 1997 agreement also funds programs for the watershed communities' economy, and some 70 upstate towns and villages signed it. ## sources [UNISDR/UNDRR, *Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities: Preliminary Level Assessment*, May 2017](https://preparecenter.org/wp-content/sites/default/files/unisdr_disaster_resilience_scorecard_for_cities_preliminary.pdf) — Essential 05 on natural buffers; ecosystem services "provided well outside" a city's area [Holling, C. S. (1973), "Resilience and stability of ecological systems," *Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics* 4: 1–23 (IIASA reprint)](https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/26/1/RP-73-003.pdf) — "View events in a regional rather than a local context," p. 21 [Green Finance Institute, Quito Water Fund](https://www.greenfinanceinstitute.com/?p=35672) — FONAG established in 2000 through a 1% surcharge on water bills by EPMAPS, later 2% of tariffs; páramo supplying 2.7 million residents [Mongabay, May 27, 2020, "In the Ecuadoran Andes, protectors of the páramos guard their water source"](https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/in-the-ecuadoran-andes-protectors-of-the-paramos-guard-their-water-source/) — The world's first water fund; land purchases next to the protected páramo [Colorado State Forest Service, February 28, 2017](https://csfs.colostate.edu/2017/02/28/forests-faucets-partnership-renewed-expanded/) — Buffalo Creek (1996) and Hayman (2002) fires; more than $27.7 million in restoration and repairs; From Forests to Faucets began in 2010 [Denver Water, TAP, October 31, 2025](https://www.denverwater.org/tap/taking-wild-out-wildfires) — 12,000 acres burned upstream of the reservoir; $96 million spent, split evenly; debris flows still cramping storage [National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2020), *Review of the New York City Watershed Protection Program*, Report Highlights](https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/25851/NYC%20Watershed%20-%204%20Pager.pdf) — Largest unfiltered supply in the US; Catskill/Delaware about 90% of supply; $2.5 billion spent since 1997, about $100 million a year; subprograms derive from the 1997 agreement and filtration avoidance determinations; disinfection and storm turbidity treatment still needed [National Research Council (2000), *Watershed Management for Potable Water Supply: Assessing the New York City Strategy*, Executive Summary](https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/9677/chapter/3) — The city's estimate of up to $6 billion for filtration and the EPA panel's dispute; residents' opposition; the 1997 agreement and its signatories; willing-seller land buying; the farmers' separate program [The Nature Conservancy (2018), *The Greater Cape Town Water Fund Business Case Summary*](https://www.nature.org/content/dam/tnc/nature/en/documents/GCTWF-summary-11.14.18.pdf) — A 2018 business case: water lost to invasive plants; expected gains from clearing priority sub-catchments; R372 million [Holling, C. S. (2001), "Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems," *Ecosystems* 4: 390–405](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-001-0101-5) — Nested levels, each at its own pace [Redman, C. L. and A. P. Kinzig (2003), "Resilience of past landscapes," *Conservation Ecology* 7(1): 14](https://ecologyandsociety.org/vol7/iss1/art14/print.pdf) — The nested framework Gunderson and Holling (2002) called panarchy ## the series 1. [resilience means to leap back](/guide/resilience-means-to-leap-back?from=guide) — **Read first:** The word's root, its travels, and the question that changed in 1973 2. [bounce back to what?](/guide/bounce-back-to-what?from=guide) — A beam returns to its shape; a lake or a reef pushed too far becomes something else 3. [what makes a living system resilient](/guide/what-makes-a-living-system-resilient?from=guide) — Many kinds doing one job, spare capacity, connection and the slow things nobody watches 4. [the resilience a place already has is alive](/guide/the-resilience-a-place-already-has-is-alive?from=guide) — The floodplain, the marsh, the canopy and the soil as infrastructure 5. [how to build resilience for a place](/guide/how-to-build-resilience-for-a-place?from=guide) — Six steps, starting with the living systems a place already stands on 6. [no place is resilient alone](/guide/no-place-is-resilient-alone?from=guide) — Why the unit that works is the region, and every place in it