Enterprises featured in the Building Resiliency Through Green Infrastructure report are creating a blueprint for other cities to follow as they work to protect their communities from the effects of climate change.
Hosted by: Green Infrastructure Leadership Exchange, The Summit Foundation, and The Democracy Collaborative
Creating climate resilient cities means more than investing in infrastructure—it means tackling economic and racial inequality that leaves disinvested communities on the frontlines of climate damage. Watch as a panel of practitioners explores how building green stormwater infrastructure (harnessing nature's innate ability to manage runoff) can be a key intervention point for also building community wealth, creating a vibrant economic system where democratic ownership and control creates more equitable outcomes.
The Green New Deal would address climate issues and simultaneously attempt to resolve systematic economic inequality. While politicians are necessary for the change, the final word should not be left to them. "Let’s encourage politicians to champion a just transition to a better future, but let’s not leave it all up to them. To build an economy that is appropriate for life on a finite planet, we need to listen to the young climate strikers and implement their rallying cry," Sarah McKinley writes.
Many of the proposals to help curb climate change fail to address the long incentivization of fossil fuel extraction. Incentives should be moved toward production and use of renewables if any valuable change is to happen.
Tacoma is looking to model a community wealth and development program after the greenhouse built in Cleveland through Green City Growers.
“Plain and simple, it works,” Ted Howard, a Clevelander, told Tacoma’s anchor institution representatives last September. Howard now serves as president and co-founder of The Democracy Collaborative, which provides research, support, and evangelism around this idea of institutions pooling their power for their communities.
The Green New Deal presents the opportunity to reclaim public ownership of the energy sector in a way that would not only be more cost efficient and equitable but would also protect the environment by incentivizing people over profit.
The Green New Deal bill stands against a daunting task: to produce net zero emissions by 2050. Johanna Bozuwa explains how privately-owned utilities are incentivized only for profit and not to care for the environment.
“So being pushed towards taking climate change seriously and shifting towards renewables… those are all things that are contrary to the investor-owned utility model that makes money specifically off of what they call capital infrastructure and guaranteed rate of return.”
In a discussion of the UK's considerations to nationalize or renationalize many services, a report by Carla Santos Skandier, Research Associate for the Next Systems Project with the Democracy Collaborative, is featured explaining the path that nationalizing fossil fuels might take in the U.S. The deprivatization of the fossil fuels industry is especially important as it would have large effects on climate and environment policy, as well.
How investments in the green infrastructure needed for climate resiliency can be leveraged to build community wealth with worker cooperatives and social enteprises.
Community investment strategies can root institutional capital in underserved communities and catalyze local energy democracy, making it a fitting next step for university fossil fuel divestment campaigns
Reinvestment presents a unique opportunity for universities to partner with their local communities to promote equitable economic development and energy democracy. Campaigns’ embrace of community investment would strengthen the crucial role that divestment movements play in fostering long-term system change. This strategy creates a powerful opportunity to engage young people in new economy work while leveraging the resources of some of our most powerful institutions to shift financial capacity from the extractive economy to a new energy system. Read more about The Student Divestment Movement’s Next Frontier: Community Investment ...
