In the past year, the United States has bowed under the weight of extreme coastal storms, wildfires, floods, drought, and other climate-exacerbated hazards. Now a new task force has been established to help ensure those hits will be easier to take in the future.

An executive order issued this month aims to prepare the nation for the impacts of climate change, including finding ways to incentivize climate-resilient investments, manage land and water resources, create tools for climate change resilience, and plan for climate-related risk. Along with those efforts, a Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience will add a federal component to the work states and municipalities have been tackling without assistance.

“We're going to need to get prepared,” President Barack Obama said in June. “States and cities across the country are already taking it upon themselves to get ready. We’ll partner with communities seeking help to prepare for droughts and floods, reduce the risk of wildfires, protect the dunes and wetlands that pull double duty as green space and as natural storm barriers.”

The 26-member task force—which includes governors, mayors, county officials, and tribal leaders—will advise the administration on the steps needed to implement the goals stated in the order (Climate Science Watch has a goal-by-goal analysis of the order here) and overcome the barriers they currently face.

“We really do need to hear directly from the communities and from those who are sort of on the front lines of dealing with the impacts of climate change,” said Nancy Sutley, head of a White House environmental council, told the New York Times.

Political pundits have noted the order is something of an end run around Congress, which is often deadlocked on climate issues.

“What’s really interesting about this task force is that it is really codifying, it’s laying down the policy for the Obama administration for the sort of stuff that he can’t do though Congress because Congress will not cooperate with his policy goals on this front,” Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News said in an interview with PBS Newshour.

Still, by making that play, the administration has given states and municipalities a resource for getting things done on a local level, Talev said.

“For the most part this is an opportunity for local governments to assess how climate change may affect their infrastructure and to make that added case for funding and federal assistance,” she said.