“Every September, global climate leaders descend on New York City for the simultaneous occurrence of Summit of the Future and Climate Week NYC. Panels are stacked with a range of international delegates, but typically there are few, if any, seats reserved for community organizers already modeling climate justice on the ground in New York City.”
A Missed Opportunity to Center Local Communities
Because low-income communities of color are disproportionately impacted by climate change, climate justice demands that climate solutions redress racial and economic inequality. When local experts and community-based organizations (CBOs) are invited to the decision-making table, climate justice can be served.
University as Civic Asset in Climate Fight
With 25 campuses across all five boroughs, the City University of New York (CUNY) is a world-class system well-situated to catalyze hyperlocal research and support community-defined climate solutions at scale. For example, the NYC Climate Justice Hub is an extensive partnership between CUNY and the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA), a coalition of grassroots organizations leading the fight for environmental and climate justice since 1991.
By leveraging the university as a civic asset in the fight against climate change, and resourcing community-university partnerships like the NYC Climate Justice Hub, New York City and State can achieve the ambitious climate goals they struggle to meet. But we need critical city, state, and federal funds to make CUNY “the climate justice university.”
The Capacity to Serve
CUNY is a minority-majority institution with 225,000 students, 40,000 employees, and ties to CBOs like NYC-EJA all across the city. In 2022, 23 percent of adults and 25 percent of children in New York City lived in poverty. By comparison, 60 percent of CUNY students report an annual household income of less than $30,000.
Purpose-Built for Environmental and Climate Justice
The CUNY consortium, with a mandate to serve “the children of the whole people,” increasingly works with local experts and CBOs to design curriculum and conduct research that secures greater environmental security and economic well-being for everyday New Yorkers. Across the CUNY consortium, there is a concerted effort to build a climate justice bridge that links research, degree programs, and professional pathways.
With a concerted push, hyperlocal efforts in environmental education, renewable energy, air quality research, and advocacy can galvanize citywide networks while amplifying community demands in Albany. New partnerships need to engage diverse New Yorker voices more intentionally as planning and designing are the norm among climate-related projects undertaken for and alongside community land-users.
Addressing Knowledge Shortfalls and Building Resiliency
Ongoing infrastructure redevelopment, smart urban infrastructure policy, adaptation to ongoing disruptions, are among these matters that urban universities of America, among which, prominently, belongs the NYC–based and most public American urban school system with thousands of personnel and twenty, five cities.
Bridging resource gaps are needed if any, there’s real urgency in strengthening connections linking resource-rich departments to help more students earn, degrees directly tied or, very few, research-areas: all these require financial guarantees amid, they should remain
Data sets and datasets and many reports are very different at our own very unique situation like in most areas all for our “most and last” a part all areas, though. However very many researchers
Fiscal Clarity Essential
CUNY must receive federal funding with certainty to carry out hyper-local research programs and collaborations directly benefiting the entire boroughs
This is Important for our Success
There is another opportunity by NYC and this could involve new and even a comprehensive green infrastructure at this one hundred percent funded at very lowest levels like we just wrote in part “many things are available at such different levels the 24 seven hours around and one minute “is available because its very useful to find to find because there really may be several and because also there to many levels around the NYC city but some “all things should continue “many of we at the this 6 am “or the sun on the time of NYC.
FAQS
* What makes CUNY a civic asset in climate fight?
Leveraging its connection with grassroots organizations
* Will investment in CUNY alone solve NYC’s environmental problem?
Must leverage city state and federal fund
* Why center grassroots organizations to solve NYC’s environmental crisis?
Racial & economic justice matters
