Q&A: Celebrating Asian immigrant refugee Contributions to Climate Action Series (Part 3) 

Part 3 of 3: Why Asian Immigrant Refugee Communities are Key to a Just Transition in California
APEN’s Christine Cordero explains the important role that Asian immigrant refugee communities can play in making a Just Transition to a regenerative economy a reality for millions of Californians.

 

In the previous entry in this three-part series, Filipino climate justice frontline leader and Co-Director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), Christine Cordero discussed the group’s history and how climate funders and organizers can create a healthier world by centering the wisdom of Asian immigrant refugee communities.

 

In this third part, her discussion with NCRP’s Senowa Mize-Fox centers on the lived examples of how Asian immigrant refugee communities are already doing the work of making Just Transition a reality in places like Richmond, California.

 

Senowa Mize-Fox: APEN focuses on utilizing a just transition framework – what is your vision for a Just Transition for Asian immigrant refugee communities in California?

 

Christine Cordero: So, while we focus on our Asian immigrant refugee population, I did want to say, so that we’re very clear, that we understand the nuances and importance of the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities. We just don’t want to misspeak for any community. We try to be very specific about the groups that we speak of because our community is so big and broad and beautiful.

 

When we’ve talked about it, we want to transition this refinery in Richmond, CA, an effort that ultimately ties us to Just Transitioning California from fossil fuels, and imagining a remixed, regenerative set of economies.

 

We see this vision and we’re getting granular and trying to define that in our specific geographic regions right now. One of the biggest things that we’re looking at as we’re transitioning to this “clean green economy,” is envisioning who pays for that. Who gets to enjoy it? Who can afford to come along in the “clean green economy”? What does a public private investment look like that brings all our communities and workers along to make the transition just and equitable?

 

We’re going to be looking at what are different potential financing and resourcing models for paying for this Just Transition. We’re looking at what community-owned land projects look like, modeling some prototypes of climate resiliency hubs in Richland and Oakland with groups like RYSE Center And Oakland Community Land Trust.

 

RYSE Center is an amazing Richmond youth-organizing organization who run a liberation and resiliency hub that was co-designed by Richmond youth in RYSE and APEN. The youth surveyed themselves and their families for things that they wanted, and the result was a place where they can organize for youth opportunities, jobs, and other economic resources, as well as a place communities can congregate in times of climate-related distress like wildfires or power outages.

 

They also wanted their own closed energy system of solar and battery storage. A lot of our Richmond youth are in intergenerational immigrant families, who when asked, wanted a place that could stay open when the power goes out. They wanted to know what it meant to go to a place that still has power and actually has clean, working air filters. That has refrigeration for elders’ medicines and outlets for health machines that people – siblings or other people that have no help – can plug in for breathing and other things.

 

And so, they designed the center based on what the communities needed. And it is up and running. We’re trying to think about it all the way through. We’re trying to think through what programming looks like. What do mutual aid networks look like in this place?

Imagine if we shoot for a resiliency hub within a mile of every person? Because sometimes people aren’t going to be able to drive to some place.

 

Organizing the Networks We Need

 

Christine: What I have learned from our comrades and homies in New York during Sandy, and in Louisiana during Katrina and Ida was how these mutual aid networks could look like. How close do these resiliency hubs have to be when the streets aren’t going to be navigable. What would that look like? For the Richmond RYSE Center, the solar installation alone costs upwards of $7 million dollars.

 

What does it look like to have a mutual aid network that’s on purpose, versus one you had to do organically? In New York, they had mutual aid networks that popped up organically, but what if we planned to have social infrastructure to care for each other?

 

To me, those are also organizing networks, right? Like, do we know our neighbors, who are the children and the elders that will need to be brought to one of those hubs. In between times of crises, can these networks also support ongoing power building and engagement with our civic infrastructure. People can get more involved in what happens in their neighborhoods. The dream when I think about it are these cultures of communal care which are deeply ingrained into immigrant communities, and particularly Asian immigrant communities have long standing models of caring in communities and village structures? And I don’t think this is just Asian immigrant refugees. I think a lot of our folks still have connections to our communal roots. That and that’s something that’s like, great, how do we get institutional support to maintain this type of social infrastructure?

 

When infrastructure is too big, and it isn’t rooted in communities, it can take too long to get to people in emergencies? Can we consider micro gridding mutual aid networks, micro gridding these hubs and scaling them in a way that feels meaningful The RYSE Liberation and Resilience model in Richmond, and then the Lincoln Recreation Center in Oakland, Chinatown – both have been hubs for community activity. Lincoln Recreation Center is in the process of becoming a climate resiliency hub. That total renovation cost is roughly $32 million. While that might seem like a lot, I think about the billions the federal government is putting into dirty hydrogen and carbon capture. Those are not real solutions, but just an extension of the fossil fuel infrastructure.

 

What if we actually sent billions to climate resiliency hubs and the social infrastructure of mutual aid networks? Imagine what that could look like. We’re not the only ones trying to build what we need now. We’re with a lot of our EJ partners across the state in BIPoC communities that are really looking at converting health clinics, converting community centers into these hubs that can be both powerful during a crisis, but also, in between, in organizing and building community social infrastructure.

 

We’re also exploring how to prevent a classic dynamic that happens in environmental justice. When we make our communities beautiful and livable, often we get pushed or priced out. So, we’re really looking at what community-owned affordable housing and land projects look like.

 

That answer has to be specific to place. In one place, we might be talking about increasing accessibility to additional dwelling units for families to support their elders in in-law units right in the backyard. Whereas in a denser location, in a very concentrated area, maybe we’re looking at multi-unit buildings that can support high density residential living. And so, we’re looking at, is that viable? Can we make that work in a way that’s sustainable? We really want to preserve the cultural heritage and legacy of a place that makes people want to be there, and then make sure people can stay there. So that’s some of our dreams. We believe in the necessity of our folks getting access to the clean green economy and the future that we need, which actually is a remaking of the whole economy. The folks that don’t see themselves as part of the climate and environmental justice fight actually need to. We need to start organizing folks starting to see the intersections.

 

Senowa: This is such a good reminder that it will be okay. There are people who are building this on the ground.

 

Appreciating the Wins

 

Senowa: You have talked previously about funding a Just Transition. What does it mean to fund a just transition for Asian Immigrant Refugee Communities?

 

Christine Cordero: Specific to philanthropy, there are the classic recommendations many movement leaders and I have been saying for decades: Give multiyear, general operating support. Let us do our work. That’s the baseline. The thing that’s more nuanced after that is how to be in a long-term transformational relationship with us and understand this moment of resourcing that needs to happen.

 

 

The climate action window is real. Just as we are having to get bolder in the field, the funders need to be bolder, courageous, and riskier in their investments. And I mean that in all the ways: if you already give three years, give for five or seven years of general operating support. Push whatever edge that is. If you’re funding in silos, start to make the connections between the issue silos, especially when climate disruption is just the most acute symptom of an economy and mismanagement of home (as our folks at Movement Generation say), that isn’t working for most families and communities.

 

Environmental justice frontline communities have always been the canary in the coal mine. When you protect the most vulnerable, you protect everybody. And I think we need to start understanding how climate has, is, and will only continue to disrupt education, health, housing, immigration, etc. Climate funding cannot continue to exist in a silo –it intersects, is intersectional with so many other issue areas. Folks want all these flashy policies, but if you don’t have communities engaged to hold these folks accountable and to implement real power, there’s no shortcut to real power building. There’s no shortcut to people, there’s no shortcut to masses of people getting involved in this work, which is what it will take to shift this to save our species. The planet is going to be alright, it’s about our species surviving so I don’t know who’s getting on board, right? So, I would say that I would say start getting involved, if they haven’t already, started looking into the innovative models around spin down and funding for electoral work, I know this is going to be edgy for a lot of folks, but there are foundations who have figured out how to do it. Learn how to fund the breadth of the work because that’s what it’s going to take to search the system and start investing in innovative land projects that are being anchored by communities. There’s so many. People are dreaming and building the new right now in order to contest for power.

 

So, you know how Just Transition works. People think stop the bad and build a new are separate, but Just Transition is actually building the new on top of stopping the bad. You stopped the bad by building the new right now for what we need. So, I think folks need to see philanthropy and funders actually challenging some of the long-standing traditional definitions of risk and return.

 

It means challenging some of the old thinking about what is thought of as a viable solution. Because let me tell you, they’ve been following the more traditionalist greens and GHG emissions, where are we right now? Where are we? So, folks want to get serious about changing things? What is it, it’s madness to keep doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes, right? So, I think folks need to really think about what it’s going to take to do the shifts we’re talking about. These are monumental remaking of the economy, and how we manage our home, fundamentally. So, we actually have to fund it like we want to win.

 

If you want us to win, you have to fund people power and organizing power within us with the same gusto/fervor that these lobbyists are being funded.

 

 

Philanthropy is honestly just one piece, right, of a larger shift that needs to be made and moving resources. But there is a piece for philanthropy to do. And they do not have the same constraints for instances like the federal investments. So, I think it’s time for everybody to go big and bold.

 

Senowa: Can you talk about one big win that you are particularly proud of?

 

Christine: Yeah, I mean, there are several, the quiet ones you don’t hear about are the ongoing organizing. So, I talked about the resiliency hubs. I think those are huge wins that we’re still fighting for, like our people are still building the solutions on the ground. I would say a big win is we’re fighting for this win right now. But we got California to move 280 million into the concepts of resiliency hubs. And now it’s like show and prove time. That is, what did I tell you our one solar installation was 7 million. So that’s, you know, that’s a good handful of projects, but it’s not enough. And then we won about a billion in climate resilient housing and got to insert things around renter protections and eviction stuff that we’re really proud of, and now we’re defending those wins. So those have been huge. California is making huge investments in the solutions we want that now we have to keep. So, I would say those are, those are a couple big things that were the wins most recently that we’re very excited about.

 

We also won with our other EJ partners in the state, we got California to actually set a goalpost for petroleum phase out. Now whether we can hold them to it, yeah, we were like you we needed we need it, we need to manage this decline. If we don’t do it and leave it in the hands of corporations, they don’t give a shit about frontline communities and workers. So, we’ve seen their model, they will leave and file for bankruptcy and leave us holding the bag on toxic land and water, and no safe social safety net. We’re like, let’s do this on purpose, we actually have a trajectory for it.

 

So, we want some pretty big wins at the state level for the state staying ambitious, obviously everybody’s still on this, like, I know, we all want a silver bullet. Everybody wants dirty hydrogen to be the key. Everybody wants carbon capture to be the thing, those are band aids at best, and they actually still increase GHG. Because when you look at the full lifecycle of energy they use, you still need to, you still need to do solar and wind. You still got to do renewables, if we’re actually going to reduce GHG. And folks make hasty decisions and desperation.

 

And I know we want that to be the answer. I wish it were the answer. It is not. You do a little bit of digging on the science. It is unproven technologies that we’re banking on that will continue to pollute and sacrifice our communities. No, thank you. If we’re going to actually remake the economy, we should do it right this time. Then we have the opportunity to do that if we are willing to kind of dig in.

 

 

Senowa: How can funders learn more about APEN’s work/what is the best way for funders to engage with APEN?

 

Christine: We’re on all the socials and the website. They can reach out to me or our team if they want to learn more. christine@apen4ej.org

 

It’s our first name at apen4ej.org. You can reach us. I would say, you know, look up our stuff. This is a thing for funders. We have 30 years of work on the Internet. Come look at it. And if you want to get with us after looking at it, then come see us. But we have tons of resources and reports, and our comms team is amazing. All our work is out there.

More immediately, our LA launches on May 26. If folks want to get with us around Los Angeles, and any of that stuff they can we’re going to be building out that chapter for decades to come. So, and then our statewide membership, obviously, that I mentioned, like whoever wants to get on board, we’re getting serious about building power in California. So yeah, we’re excited. But I don’t know, I don’t know if there are specific, best ways to engage. Give us money. We need C4 donors. And I mean, you know, there’s some stuff that’s very obvious, but the thing I would say is that can help us more indirectly is we need more funders to be doing funder organizing. We need folks to be in it in their own personal stake within their position in philanthropy. Come become an APEN member.

 

There’s a personal stake for everybody in this, funders included, to me, they can be organizers as well. And I think folks should engage as organizers and get an understanding of who their people are in their community.

 

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It is clear from the Q&A with Christine Cordero that not only is a Just Transition possible, but also there are many people within the Asian immigrant refugee community that have laid the groundwork for a better, more equitable world focused on collective work and organizing. And it is important to fund this work in a way that ensures we all win.

Celebrating Asian immigrant refugee Contributions to Climate Action Series 

Centering Asian Immigrant Refugee Wisdom
is Key to a Healthier Planet 

In part 2 of our Celebrating Asian immigrant refugee Contributions to Climate Action series, APEN’s Christine Cordero discusses the organization’s history and how climate funders and organizers can create a healthier world by centering the wisdom of Asian immigrant refugee peoples.  

In the previous entry in this three-part series, Filipino climate justice frontline leader and Co-Director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), Christine Cordero spoke about the importance of changing narratives around Asian immigrant refugee communities in creating a more equitable and healthier world. In this second part, her discussion with NCRP’s Senowa Mize-Fox centers on APEN’s history and what past campaigns can teach funders and organizers about integrating the wisdom of Asian immigrant refugee peoples.   

Christine Cordero: That’s a great question. Vivian, our other Co-Director, and I recently got to have lunch with one of the founders.   

Senowa Mize-Fox: APEN has been around for almost thirty years now – from your perspective, how has the organizing strategy shifted as the organization has grown?   

Christine Cordero: That’s a great question. Vivian, our other Co-Director, and I recently got to have lunch with one of the founders.   

From its inception, APEN has been really interesting. APEN came out of 1991’s People of Color Environmental Justice Summit, which was a response to the general criticism at that time that the environmental movement was mostly about trees and white people. At that convening, there were a handful of Asian American and Asian immigrant and PIs who were like, ”Where’s the Asian immigrant refugee voice in this? And how that actually needs to get stronger for the environmental justice movement.   

That was the call.   

Multiracial, Multilingual, Multigenerational Placed-based Roots & Actions  

Christine: We have an APEN shirt that says “rooted and resilient.” I know a lot of our communities are like ‘We’re tired of being resilient.’ However, it’s also about being rooted. 

We began very local with young Laotian women in Richmond. It was our Laotian immigrant refugee folks who knew that something was happening with the air and in the water there because it showed in the food people were growing and the health of family members. Many immigrant folks have a deep connection to land through farming practices and growing practices. And then we started to see health impacts in our intergenerational families, on our young women and on their children.

A multilingual warning system needed to be put in place in Richmond. Chevron would flare and the warnings would go out in English. Yet the population spoke multiple languages. So, our folks and APEN started by fighting for something very basic: a multilingual warning system. Then we started to trace problems to the root, looking at how the air was being regulated in the city. Then people start noticing a lot of that happening at the state level. You start asking ‘How do we make sure that these things don’t happen?’ And ‘Who can actually hold these industries accountable?’   

At that point, APEN realizes ‘We have to do work at the state level as well.’   

There were too many things being done to us without us.    

Making Space for & Engaging with Needed Voices   

Christine: The environmental justice movement believes in ‘Nothing about us without us,’ right? So, that being the case, we started to trace the power structure right up into where it needed to go. APEN started engaging in statewide policy because we had to, because that’s where the decisions were being made that affected our families and community. We started engaging in multiple campaigns, trying to convince elected officials of our stances and about what our communities cared about.   

At some point after doing that, APEN, ‘We should be putting people who align with our values into those elected positions making decisions.’ So about 10 years ago, APEN Action started. We didn’t originally want to do voting and electoral work. But again, when you start tracking down what works, where communities need to build power and what is needed to make change, you realize that a lot of it depends on getting more of our folks engaged.   

According to a 2020 NRDC survey, 77% of Asian American voters support stronger policies on climate change. The report quotes APEN, because we did an earlier report that found that upwards of 80% of Asian Americans in the state of California consider themselves environmentalists, compared to like, 40%, [overall] right?  So yes, you have those of us who are connected in our histories of how our people were brought here. Those who know how our practices were in our original homelands, and when getting here, have a deep sense of connection to the environment and climate. Yet, who do you have calling up Asian American or immigrant refugee voters on environmental and climate issues?   

We’re an untapped constituency that already cares about these things. That’s why we’re excited that, after decades of dreaming of this, we’re in a position to start a statewide membership by the end of this year. We currently have community bases in Richmond and Oakland and we’ll be launching LA, Wilmington and the San Pedro area.  

We know that we need a statewide presence. With statewide membership, we will have a broader front of supporters really following our frontline community bases in the agenda we’re setting. We understand that even though not everybody is on that fence line, all of us are impacted by climate disruption?   

If you’ve talked to anybody — and I don’t know that anybody’s denying it at this point – they will tell you that there has been an uptick, an upsurge of folks who really want to find ways that we can act on climate and environmental justice. We’re taking the approach of going bigger by starting at home. That is what it’s going to take to really build an organizing strategy.   

So even on the county level, I was just telling a funder this today, we want to Just Transition the refineries in the whole state and in particular, the one that we’ve been fighting in Richmond. It’s over 100 years old. We want to Just Transition that refinery, our members want it closed. They want something else. They want an economy that actually supports the land and our people.   

And so, what does it mean to dream that out? In California, we just set out some of the most ambitious climate goals, we’re going to reduce our use of fossil fuels by 90%. By 2045, like, it seems far, but that transition is really real. Then we’re looking at a $700 million tax base replacement in Contra Costa County alone. That’s one county, out of the Bay regions. What does it take to protect the social safety net? What do we want in the place of a fossil fuel-based economy?   

Because we sure as hell don’t want a bunch of Amazon warehouses. We don’t want just another polluting industry. So, we’re really asking our folks, what do we want there instead?  

The Chevron refinery is 2900 acres, and a good chunk of that is beautiful waterfront property. What would it look like to heal the land and the water for actual civic use for all of the people in the city of Richmond?   

Those are the dreams we’re putting out there. Because at this point, what do we have to lose?  Let’s do this right. Let’s look at what that transition looks like and how can frontline communities and workers be at the center of it?  

The impact of our work goes beyond being local, regional and statewide. Because Californians are roughly 12.5% of the national population, what we do in California impacts the rest of the country. We try to stretch the field on what is possible. We are trying to do the most visionary stuff in California because we have the conditions to do that, which can then hopefully positively impact the rest of the nation.   

It also means that when we haven’t been able to win big, it can limit what happens in other states, too. We do feel that pressure. We all do our best in the political conditions we have to stretch the landscape and lead to bigger wins.  

Senowa: I love just how you went through that whole vision of what it’s like to build the new. As somebody else who is knee deep in everything. It’s inspiring to really see that vision. So, thank you so much for sharing that.  

Learning & Leading with Our Culture   

Senowa: How does the history and indigenous practices of Asian immigrant refugee communities show up in APEN’s work?  

Christine: I mentioned the Laotian community connection in my previous example. I think the histories of colonization, and more are obviously huge and are a big contributing factor to how we approach our work.   

We have to be organized not just thinking about what is culturally appropriate but what is culturally central to our communities. APEN is amazing in that. Our in-language organizers are amazing. The Laotian immigrant community we work with in Richmond speaks three different languages. Our Oakland base speaks Cantonese or Mandarin.   

So, first and foremost, it shows up in our respect for how we do our organizing work. This is why we’re so excited about the untapped potential of a community and electorate who haven’t been mobilized, and the actions that need to be taken right now in order for our communities to thrive.   

For our LA, Wilmington, and San Pedro area launches, our organizers are doing such a beautiful job of looking at the history of our communities in that region. A lot of it was around how our folks came to work, the opportunity to work. There’s also a long history of our communities, engaging and helping build up the infrastructure of that area. There’s also been a lot of personal investment in communities retaining a kind of cultural heritage.   

And so our LA launch, is going to have a mural that honors this specific history in LA that a lot of people don’t know. We know that we’re part of a larger tapestry of BIPoC folks that have contributed and have built up the region. Our particular slice, we hope, will be additive and engaging.  

So, we try to have culture and art always present. That also means the food! APEN is known for our food at our events and that’s solely from our people. Our people do not congregate without feeding each other. We take a lot of pride in this. We want to make the revolution yummy. It’s yummy. It’s good looking and it should be joyful.   

We want to do a more comprehensive job of weaving this into our work. We know that it’s in our people’s practices to be communal. We have a lot of different practices in our different communities around communal support that we really want to be able to really tap into. To encourage, nurture, cultivate and retain.   

It is very easy in immigrant populations to lose that sense of connectivity over time. American culture is too often about individual atomized nuclear families, which is not actually how most of our communities have lived for hundreds of thousands of years.  

Senowa: Make the revolution yummy! I’m going to quote you on that forever.   

Christine: Please, I’m not the only one. There’s been different versions. There’s the Emma Goldman one that’s like if there’s no dancing in the revolution, I don’t want it! Why would we leave our best stuff behind? We should lead with our best stuff. Our people have flavor. We need to bring the flavor forward!  

Senowa: I know I’m not an Asian immigrant refugee, but yes, the food! But I am a Black person, and my family is from the South. You cannot meet without food.   

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Look for Part 3 of our “Celebrating Asian immigrant refugee Contributions to Climate Action Series,” when Christine discusses what a Just Transition to a Regenerative Economy looks like for in California, especially for Asian immigrant refugee and Hawaiian Pacific Islander peoples.    

 

Part I of 3: Building Asian immigrant refugee power through storytelling & organizing
a conversation with APEN’s Christine Cordero on the importance of changing narratives around Asian immigrant refugee communities and environmental justice.  

As NCRP begins to build its climate justice and just transition (CJJT) movement investment project work, we recognize and honor the intersecting paths of this work across a number of existing frontline communities.  

This Asian American and Pacific Islander [Asian immigrant refugee] Month, we are excited to be sharing expertise from Filipino-American climate justice frontline leader and Co-Director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), Christine Cordero. In this first of a series of three blog posts, NCRP’s Senior Movement Engagement Associate for Climate Justice, Senowa Mize-Fox sits down with Christine to discuss the connection between narrative change and organizing and why it’s such a key part of APEN’s strategy in bringing about a healthier planet for all and a regenerative economy.     

Senowa Mize-Fox: Christine, you come into this role at APEN deeply rooted in narrative strategy and change work, could you elaborate on why this is so important to building power on the frontlines? In Asian immigrant refugee communities specifically?  

Christine Cordero: Narrative strategy is important only inasmuch as you have the organizing strategy, the people, and infrastructure to carry it out. Why is narrative strategy  important for building power on the frontlines? Because when it comes to climate and environmental issues, these things feel really, really big. Often people’s entry point into climate is either individual action or all the ways we are going to die. Neither of those things actually lead to what we need, which is systemic solutions and collective action.  

So, the power of narrative strategy is about how you tell the story. Not just the story about the things we are fighting against, but also the things we are building towards. For example, what would it actually look like to live in a world based on a regenerative economy that works for all people?    

Historically, BIPOC communities have been the environmental justice sacrifice zones for an economy that benefits a few people at the expense of our lives and our health. For Asian immigrant refugee communities, this is a narrative that you don’t often hear—at least in the US. However, when you do this work, you start to understand the bigger picture around these extractions. Whole regimes created war, colonialism, and imperialism to extract the resources of resource-rich places, which for a lot of Asian immigrant communities were our ancestral homelands. War was made there to facilitate economic extraction and exploitation.   

 A lot of folks in APEN’s member base are refugees of wars or economic exploitation in another region. This global extractive economy is why our people have largely been driven into the US or used in the labor of building this “nation state”, and why we still bear the brunt of current injustices. It’s not hard to imagine how people are reminded of these injustices on a day-to-day basis. The real health dangers of the pandemic, the crisis moment around racial injustice in this country, and the anti-Asian hate that was stoked by Trump for years, all echo and perpetuate the violence that people have experienced before. It is very easy to despair, to feel isolated, and to think we can’t do anything about this.   

This is where narrative strategy, in combination with organizing, can help. When I think of organizing, I think of any of the actions we take with regular people, community members, using our own agency and power to shift something. Those two things – our community’s vision of what we want the world to be like and doing something every day to move towards that vision – provide the path for building real power for the frontlines.    

This system was built to keep us isolated and alienated to make it difficult to change our conditions. Narrative strategy and organizing together build power on the frontlines to get to the real solutions that will benefit all of us.  When you protect the frontlines, you protect everyone.   

Vision & Trust  

Senowa: I really love how you frame that and how it is just kind of the building blocks every day you have to do in service of that vision. It’s a good reminder that it doesn’t happen in a day. Things don’t get scaled in a day. It takes a really long time to build this power and a lot of trust.   

Christine: It’s about having a long-term vision beyond the current moment or problem.  

I grew up in Pittsburg, California, which is in Contra Costa County. It’s a place that has five oil refineries and all the corresponding chemical and energy plants that go with that. Back around 2011, before I was at APEN, I got involved with an effort to stop the building of a crude oil depot there, which would have transported crude oil on trucks and rail through our neighborhoods.  

Pittsburg is a small, working-class suburb. We actually were successful in stopping the oil depot, and I remember being at a meeting and we were all super excited. ‘Great! We stopped the oil depot!’ And then I was like, ‘What do we want in its place? Because this is gonna be whack-a-mole. They’re gonna want to put something else in that’s just as bad.’  

And then I remember the dead silence in the room.  

I think we were all just stunned that we won. None of us actually had been given the opportunity — nor did we have the muscle – to think about what comes after. We have to be just as, if not more, rigorous in our practices to build the world we want as our opposition is about exploiting and destroying our communities and the earth. That kind of rigor for what we envision and what we want is actually a skill, a muscle. And a lot of our communities don’t have the time to learn and master it.   

Hope is a discipline, right? Or rather, as Sendolo Diaminah, Co-Director of the Carolina Federation, often says, how can we think of less discipline and more devotion? So, I think about hope as a devotional practice. Like, how can we be devoted to the faith and hope of our people?   

Because our ancestors already went through so much. That’s why we’re here, right?   

Senowa: I love what it sparks. I think that that’s really important. And it’s also just such a good lesson that a just transition doesn’t just mean stopping the bad, right? It’s also about building the new. And when you have communities in survival mode, I can imagine, right? It’s a hard muscle to grow.   

So, thank you for elaborating on that. I really appreciate it.  

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Look for Part 2 of our “Celebrating Asian immigrant refugee Contributions to Climate Action Series,” when Christine delves into what funders and organizers can learn from APEN’s history and the wisdom of Indigenous Asian immigrant refugee and Hawaiian Pacific Islander peoples.    

  

 

Fifty-three years ago, on April 22^nd, 1970, the first official Earth Day was observed. Twenty million Americans took to the streets in a collective effort to bring attention to decades of industrial development, polluted waterways, oil spills, expansion of highways and wildlife extinction.

The significance of this day has changed a lot since then. Collective action has shifted to individual responsibility, and even further to billionaire saviorism. But as the planet continues to heat up, the calls to action have only grown stronger.

Not everyone will feel the effects of this crisis equally. Frontline communities, those living on the frontlines of this crisis who are people of color, and economically disenfranchised will suffer disproportionately. Those with resources can and will adapt. The greatest wealth hoarding offenders, billionaires, are actively pushing out false narratives that they have the solutions that will bring us all with them to their dystopian paradise.

There is no way to sugar coat it. The urgency of this crisis is real and very present in the devastating effects it has on peoples’ lives.

Demystifying Billionaire Funding

The climate crisis can feel insurmountable on top of all the other concurrent crises that we as a nation are navigating – racial, economic, gender, anti-LGBTQ, anti-democracy, and housing to name a few. However, all these crises are connected and a result of our exploitive, profit-driven system. It is this same system that allows billionaires to hoard wealth and power at the expense of those on the frontlines of these interconnected crises.

As most of us worry about surviving these crises, too many self-absorbed billionaires are rushing to play the hero, using their wealth to position themselves as “experts” on any number of angles to the debate. Few are embarrassed by their overpromises that open markets and technological innovation will solve all our climate-related problems. Ironically, the business and philanthropic investments of many of these billionaires often play a very active role in the worsening of these issues. Many are largely interested in “solutions” that are either their own or aligned with their worldview. Worse yet, those preferences often come with extensive personal benefits and profit margins.

So how little are these billionaires giving to frontline communities and movement builders? Let us look at five billionaires who have platformed themselves as experts on solving this crisis, their net worth, and how much they give to the frontlines:

Despite their individual role in contributing to the climate crisis, each of these billionaires spend a tiny fraction of their own money on addressing the issue. An even smaller percentage of the money given to combatting the crisis even goes to climate justice groups.

Frontline Communities, Not Billionaires, Should Be Guiding Funders

The truth is that no amount of positive press or stated best intentions eliminates the fact that many billionaires in the climate funding space actively benefit from the same extractive system that their efforts claim to fight against. The wealth that they hold has been extracted from the same communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis that depend on their philanthropy to survive. Their “expert” status has less to do with solving the climate crisis than it does with exerting power and control.

If Bill Gates, John Doerr, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg wanted to have an active hand in mitigating this crisis, they would stop the exploitative practices that have generated much of their stolen wealth. If these billionaires wanted to reduce emissions and rebuild disinvested communities, they would step back and defer their savior status and decision-making power to those on the frontlines who have always had the practical knowledge and expertise to meet this challenge. Why do those who have harmed frontline communities get to decide how those communities heal?

There is no quick fix that is going to solve this crisis, only frontline community power. Remember, to make the greatest impact, we need to take collective action to hold billionaires and the system they benefit from accountable. That may seem daunting, but here are some ways you can help:

If you are a funder who is actively funding frontline organizations, great! Continue to fund these organizations through multi-year general operating support grants with flexible grant reporting cycles. Get to know the organizations doing the work on the ground. The Climate Justice Alliance is a frontline member led alliance with over 80 member organizations who also has a funder resources page (linked above) and is a great place to start. Other organizations such as the Regenerative Economies Organizing Collaborative and Edge Funders Alliance are working with funders and frontline organizations together to move more resources directly to those most directly impacted and have resources for funders on their websites.

If you are a funder who is unsure where to start, there are philanthropic service organizations and funder networks such as Justice Funders, Neighborhood Funders Group, and the Environmental Grantmakers Association that provide learning spaces for funders who are looking to intentionally fund climate and environmental justice.

If you are not a funder, but want to act, here is a list by region of Climate Justice Alliance’s member organizations and their websites. Get involved on the ground through local events or donate to the organizations directly. Other regionally focused frontline climate justice focused alliances include, Alliance for Appalachia in London, KY; the California Environmental Justice Alliance; New York City Environmental Justice Alliance; and the Oregon Just Transition Alliance to name a few.

Taking effective action against the climate crisis is possible and it is already happening. To fight back against billionaires who are capitalizing on the saviorism narrative, we need a philosophical and material shift in the ways we think about who deserves to control the money. This Earth Day, let us stand together in solidarity with and center those most directly impacted by this crisis. Collectively, we can take back our power.

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Senowa Mize-Fox is the Senior Movement Engagement Associate for Climate Justice at NCRP. Additional research and editing by Spencer Ozer, Stephanie Peng and Jennifer Amuzie.

As panelists attending the Funders Network conference in New Orleans discussed the resources for funding grassroots climate groups, a familiar message range true. Despite the plentiful local and global case studies of successful local efforts that are mitigating some of the worst impacts of climate change, funding of grassroots solutions remained underfunded and overlooked by mainstream philanthropy. According to Candid, “Most philanthropic climate change mitigation funding stays in the Global North promoting top-down approaches, with only 3.75 percent of funding going toward justice- and equity-oriented efforts.”

Calls from grassroots organizations like the Climate Justice Alliance, and funder networks such as Edge Funders Alliance, the CLIMA Fund, and the Regenerative Economies Organizing Collaborative (REO) echo the alarm that NCRP first sounded in its 2012 report, Cultivating the Grassroots. Principally authored by consultant and former Elias Foundation Program Officer Sarah Hansen, the report outlined the practical and moral need to shift resources to local communities and movements in the climate justice fight.

Hansen wrote that despite the increasing pace of social change around the world, the environment and climate movement was failing to “keep up with movements for justice and equality.” What, if anything, has changed since then?

What We Saw Then

NCRP research noted how in 2009, environmental organizations with budgets of more than $5 million received half of all contributions and grants made to all environmental organizations, despite comprising just 2 percent of environmental public charities.

“From 2007-2009, only 15 percent of environmental grant dollars were classified as benefitting marginalized communities, and only 11 percent were classified as advancing social justice strategies like policy change, advocacy, community organizing, and civic engagement. In the same time period, grant dollars donated by funders who committed more than 25 percent of their total dollars to the environment were three times less likely to be classified as benefitting marginalized groups than the grant dollars given by environmental funders in general.”

Hansen zeroed in on the fact that for all the increasing money invested in top-down approaches and funding of national groups, public policy on the issue had barely moved since the mid-1980s.

“By engaging meaningfully at the grassroots level, grantmakers have the opportunity not just to support efforts that are especially strong but to use their work at the local level to build political pressure and mobilize for national change,” wrote Hansen. “Grassroots organizing is especially powerful where economic, social, political and environmental harms overlap to keep certain communities at the margins.”

The report included examples that evidenced the kind of high- impact, cost-effective grassroots organizing that grantmakers could fund towards a more just future. Case studies included looking at the work of Arizona’s Sky Island Alliance, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s New Constituencies for the Environment” (NCE) initiative and a look into Patagonia, Inc’s Environmental Initiatives with grassroots groups like Louisiana’s Bucket Brigade. It also included specific concrete suggestions for how environment and climate funders can engage with this vast potential constituency.

NCRP Executive Director Aaron Dorfman saw in the data a missed opportunity for the sector—to capitalize on the freedom to innovate which their size and wealth often brings.

“They’ve got the freedom to take risks and experiment,” Dorfman told the Public News Service. “Foundations are supposed to be society’s ‘passing gear,’ to really invest in things that might not attract support otherwise.”

Kathy Sessions, then-Director of the Health and Environmental Funders Network agreed.

“This NCRP report underscores how far communities living amidst environmental health hazards have stretched modest investments to protect their families and the places where they live, work and play,” wrote Sessions. “It provides pragmatic guidance for philanthropy to better equip affected communities to raise awareness, strengthen policy initiatives, and mobilize majority support for stronger environmental protection.”

For Senowa Mize-Fox, NCRP’s Senior Movement Engagement Associate for Climate Justice, this report, which predates her time at the organization, echoed a lot of what she was seeing and hearing anecdotally from movements. “Organizations and communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis have become accustomed to working with less, knowing that steady and sustained funding has never been guaranteed. It does not have to, nor should it be that way.”

WHERE ARE WE TODAY?

So what has happened in the 11 years since CTG was published? It’s a mixed bag.

More of the sector generally sees impacted movements, impacted communities and their leaders as having a more central role in climate solutions. Funders like Larry Kramer of the Hewlett Foundation see the contemporary climate philanthropy that emerged since then as being largely successful. “[I]n 2007, the globe was on track for say 5 to 6 degrees of warming by the end of the century which is civilization ending. We are now, between what has been done and pledged, on track for 2.7 to 3.2 [degrees]” (Climate One 2019, 07:40).

Yet imagine what change COULD have occurred in the last decade if the grassroots and marginalized folks who are at the forefront of the environmental justice movement building had gotten an equitable share of the funding pie? While any dip in the rate of warming is cause for some celebration, the sad reality is that an average of 3 degrees of warming will still be catastrophic, especially to traditionally marginalized groups. Until environmental justice resources scale up grassroots solutions and fully support local leadership, we know that the costs of the climate crisis will keep being borne mostly by those who have the least amount of wealth, economic mobility and opportunities.

Just as worrisome, as an Edge Funders report points out, is that “mainstream climate philanthropy is inextricably linked to the green capitalist approach that currently dominates the international climate conversation…. As emissions continue to surge and extreme weather events grow in intensity and frequency, vulnerable groups remain disproportionately affected.” Even though potentially billions of funding was set aside for grassroots groups and environmental justice priorities as part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act federal legislation, groups like the Climate Justice Alliance point out that these government efforts, mirroring philanthropic trends, do more to support the fossil fuel industry than climate justice solutions.

WHAT STILL RINGS TRUE TODAY

No matter how you look at the past, the truth is that way too many local organizations today are being underfunded and ignored across a number of sectors. According to a report issued by Inside Philanthropy, a study led by Building Equity and Alignment for Impact looking at data from 2016-2017 found that only 1.3% of top funders’ grants went to Black, Indigenous and other People of Color-led groups, and 91% of environmental justice funding went to organizations that did not state EJ as their primary mission. Also, the most recent Enviromental Grantmakers Association (EGA) research found that only 7% of all climate grants from their members went to environmental justice groups.

In their place are a growing number of vanity and ill-conceived projects by billionaires donors who often bring little to no expertise or connections to frontline communities. Their focus tends to be on finding large scale “one-size-fits-all” approaches frequently at odds with or actively harmful to grassroots climate justice efforts. Their wealth and influence often hoist up pet projects and favored approaches, regardless of whether they are effective or appropriate in addressing the lived experience of the diversity of communities facing this crisis on the ground. Mostly what billionaire climate influencers are chasing is a solution to the problem of environmental injustice that promises profits for investors.

Locally driven, community-based efforts hold critical lessons and successful examples of how to have a tangible and sustainable impact on the worst effects of the climate crisis. Yet the narrative assumption is that the expertise of tech businessmen like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates at profiting off an exploitive capitalist market will translate into climate solutions that benefit those most impacted by those exploitive systems more than the wallets of a select few.

Coalitions like CJA, the Donor of Colors Network, Edge Funders and REO are encouraging philanthropy to resist that, calling once again for a shift in the way the sector approaches funding decisions around climate. As Edge Funders recently wrote:

“A radically different approach to climate action is urgently needed, and this means radically rethinking philanthropy’s role in the climate debate. One that breaks with predominant framings and with the “one-size-fits-all” strategy that still dominates the climate philanthropy space (and the climate policy space more broadly). One that builds on the lessons learnt during the last 15 years of philanthropic engagement.”

One that started with reports like NCRP’s Cultivating the Grassroots.

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Additional reporting and research provided by Jennifer Amuzie, Senowa Mize-Fox, Spencer Ozer, Stephanie Peng and Ryan Schlegel.