Capitalizing on Historic Climate Investments - Part 1
Shout out to my friends and partners who participated in Capitalizing on Historic Climate Investments: Joanne Kilgour - Ohio River Valley Institute, Joylette Portlock - Sustainable Pittsburgh, Charlie Lyons - Clear Point Communications, Amar Puri - Energy Foundation. who are making meaningful impacts in the climate and clean energy space from Western PA across the Commonwealth and beyond.
Last week, I moderated a panel on Capitalizing on Historic Climate Investments about Seizing Opportunities: Building Capacity to Create Equitable and Sustainable Economic Transition.
As the moderator, I had a unique opportunity to hear all these perspectives and these three themes emerged from our conversation:
“Be Community Driven” - Equitable economic transition means that meaningful community engagement is important throughout the process – from input about which programs to prioritize to developing an application and through to implementing awarded funds.
“Boots on the Ground” - Lawyers, financial planners, accountants, and community outreach staff are essential elements in the ecosystem of a local government’s effort to draw down federal climate investments. Philanthropy and non-profit organizations can help meet this demand for local governments.
“Check Your Ego in the Eco…system” - The capacity to co-develop increases coalition power. Every stakeholder in the ecosystem should have space to think bigger and take risks.
What does this mean? It means that the key to our success in building an equitable and sustainable economic transition comes down to investing the time to identify all the essential stakeholders in a local and regional economic ecosystem and being relentless in asking for help.
Ask faith and community leaders for their perspective and recommendations on meeting community needs.
Ask lawyers and financial planners to volunteer their time to get deals done with project developers.
Ask philanthropy and advocacy groups to fill capacity gaps – many are funded to fill gaps for local governments and planning organizations.
At Viewpoint, we are organizers at our core. As organizers, we view challenges as opportunities and we build networks to scale capacity to take advantage of opportunities including working with local governments to pursue federal funding opportunities that align with their local climate action plans.
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