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There's a thin line between fertilizing and over-fertilizing. Too few nutrients and your tomatoes and corn never really take off. Too many, and your artichoke and broccoli can suffer. We suggest using organic fertilizers to boost plant growth by feeding the soil. We also encourage you to test your soil every few years so you can know what nutrients your soil needs. 

Organic fertilizers are most effective when used strategically rather than just dumped on a plant. You need to time it right, determine the optimal amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, and bear in mind that perennials don't need as many nutrients as annuals.

Time your fertilizer use

Spring: Perennials benefit from a side dressing of nutrients in the spring just before new spring growth begins to push through the soil. In the early spring, add a nitrogen heavy fertilizer to really help your plants take off. You don’t need much or you’ll get leggy plants that flop over.

Mid-season: Sometimes plants need a little extra help when they start producing flowers and fruits. So much energy goes into ripening food that plants get stressed and weak plants emit distress signals that attract pests. Give your flowering perennials a boost in phosphorus to prevent stress and help fruits ripen faster.

Fall: Be careful not to add too many nutrients just before the winter rains set in or they’ll likely wash away. Excess nutrients drain into waterways, promoting harmful algal blooms that suck the oxygen out of water and kill aquatic life. If you do fertilize in the fall, ditch the nitrogen and phosphorus and focus on potassium-based fertilizers.

Know your numbers

If you walk down the aisle of a gardening center, you'll likely be faced with a sea of numbers like 10-10-10 or 20-0-5. So, what do they mean?

The three numbers on fertilizer bags represent the concentration of minerals in the mix: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K). The higher the number, the higher the amount. A mixture of 20-0-5 has four times more nitrogen than potassium, for example, and no phosphorus to speak of. Keep the numbers straight by remembering the key phrase, “up, down, and all around.”

• Up: The first number refers to the amount of available nitrogen or the plant-boosting "up" factor. If you want to quickly add lush growth above ground, go for a nitrogen-heavy fertilizer. Be careful not to add too much or you could have vigorous growth at the expense of below-ground root development. 
• Down: The middle number signals the concentration of phosphorus. A fertilizer with more phosphorus will maximize fruit and flower production, giving you nicer rose blooms and tastier cucumbers. Switch from nitrogen-rich fertilizer to a high-phosphorus fertilizer like bone meal once the first flowers appear on my plants. This encourages my fruits and veggies to ripen faster, which is particularly important if you live where the growing season is short.
• All around: The last number indicates the amount of potassium in the mix. Adding a potassium-rich fertilizer can help your plants fight disease, pests, and stresses from cold, heat, and wind. Consider using a potassium-rich fertilizer like greensand when you tuck your plants in for the winter to help them survive the cold.

Using organic fertilizers

To use these organic fertilizers, simply mix them into the top three inches of your soil before planting and once more midway through the growing season. Do the same for established plants, except add a little to your plant base in the spring.

Any of the following can be used as a stand-alone soil conditioner. You can use two or three different types of organic fertilizers that have particularly high concentrations in nitrogen, phosphorus, or potassium throughout the season to address different concerns. If you'd like to keep it simple and rely on one all-purpose blend, go with homemade compost or purchase a pre-made organic mix from your local garden center.  

Good all-purpose fertilizers

• Homemade compost: Store-bought fertilizers are expensive, but compost can be free. In fact, if you have to pay to get your trash hauled away, composting can save you money by reducing the amount of waste you throw out. Composting is also great for the climate because it doesn't require resource-intensive production methods and diverts strong greenhouse gases that come with the decomposition of organic wastes in landfills. See this composting guide for tips on how to create fertilizer from food, yard waste, and more.
• Mycorrhizal Inoculant (0-0-0): Mycorrhiza (My-cor-rye-zay) is a group of fungi that forms valuable relationships with plants roots. A network of mycelium or long white strings akin to fungal roots attaches to plant roots and enormously increases plants ability to absorb nutrients and water. This isn’t a true fertilizer because it has no nutritional content, but it helps plants to get more out of the soil and helps life in the soil capture carbon. Mix it into compost and mulch piles so that when you spread them in the spring, you inoculate the whole garden.
• Fish Emulsion (5-2-2): Fish emulsion is a liquid fertilizer made from byproducts of the fishing industry. Use this well balanced and fast acting fertilizer all season long on heavy feeders. It does have a very fishy smell, but a few drops of lavender oil can help mask the odor.

Jumpstarting spring growth

• Manure compost: Manure from herbivores and poultry is a great source of nitrogen and organic matter and generally packs more punch than homemade compost. Get it from a nearby farm or buy ready-made composted manure from your local garden store. Manure should be composted for at least three months to kill weed seeds and diseases before adding it to a garden. If that's not possible, you can minimize the risk of weeds by using manure from chickens instead of from horses or cows whose digestive tracts don't eliminate viable weed seeds. If you have your own chickens, simply compost the manure with their bedding material like wood shavings or sawdust. The combination of green manure with brown bed material produces the perfect ratio of nitrogen to carbon for composting. 
• Blood Meal (13-0-0): This dry powder made from cows' blood is a fast-acting source of nitrogen. Use it in soils with a serious lack of nitrogen to jumpstart spring growth. You can add too much, making your soil acidic, so always test your soil. If you’re looking to boost nitrogen mid-season, use plant-based alternatives like alfalfa meal (3-1-2) because it is gentle and supplies other beneficial nutrients that help feed soil microbes that support our crops and capture carbon.

Maximizing production

• Bone Meal (3-15-0): Bone meal is made from ground up animal bones and is widely used to replenish phosphorus and calcium. You can mix bone meal with composted manure for a potent all-around fertilizer for spring. In the fall when you plant flower bulbs and garlic, add bone meal to the bottom of the holes to help promote fall root growth before the winter freeze.
• Greensand (0-0-3): Greensand is a very popular fertilizer collected from the ocean floor or ancient seabeds. This dry powder is a great source of iron, potassium, magnesium, and dozens or other trace minerals. Greensand is great for breaking up clay soils and adding water retention to sandy soils. It’s very gentle so you can’t add too much. You can even use it around seedlings and sensitive plants.
• Guano (12-12-2.5): Guano is made from the droppings of seabirds and bats. It is usually harvested from coastal cliffs and dry caves where the droppings can sit and decompose. Not only does guano add nutrients, but it is full of microbes that help to deter parasitic soil creatures like nematodes. This organic fertilizer has been collected for hundreds of years and you can buy it as an odorless powder.

Fighting pests and climate stress

• Kelp meal (1-0-2): Kelp meal is made from dried ocean seaweed and is full of nutrients, especially potassium. You can buy a bag of it or get permission to collect it from your local beach. Kelp is an exceptionally renewable source of potassium, growing up to three feet per day in ideal ocean climates. You can use kelp meal to treat tired soils that have been intensely cultivated and spray it on plants to help them deal with heat stress in the summer and fight against pests.
• Mulch: Organic mulches like leaves, wood chips, sawdust, and even newspaper add nutrients to your soil while stamping out weeds and protecting your soil from sun, wind, and erosion. Mulch materials are generally carbon rich, so consider sprinkle some alfalfa or blood meal onto the soil before layering on mulch.

Article originally published on Stone Pier Press, written by Acadia Tucker, a regenerative farmer, climate activist, and author.

The key to a successful Climate Victory Garden is preparing your soil. This is where crops gather nutrients to grow your food and where carbon is sequestered as part of the climate solution. Whether you’re updating a current garden, replacing your lawn, or just covering a weedy area, your garden soil needs to be prepared and enhanced for planting.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you need to buy expensive bags of soil from the store. The easiest and most inexpensive methods for preparing the ground are to broadfork and sheet-mulch your garden area.

Note: these processes are best done in the fall, but it can take an entire season to gather supplies, so do your research and plan ahead!

Using a broadfork

The broadfork, also called a U-fork or grelinette, is a tool for manually breaking up densely-packed garden soil like hardpan to improve aeration and drainage. An important part of Climate Victory Gardening is protecting soils and limiting the amount you disturb them. This allows the microorganisms in the garden soil to better hold onto carbon. But, some soils need to be loosened up to create space for roots and more abundant life that make for a healthy garden. A broadfork helps you do this with the least possible disturbance.

Before using the broadfork, consider testing your soil to see what it may be lacking, and add nutrients as recommended while loosening the soil.

To use a broadfork, plunge the tines into the earth, jump on the horizontal bar, and rock back and forth to loosen the soil. Then move forward a couple feet to repeat the process until all the garden soil is aerated. This is preferable to tilling and completely turning the earth over because it’s less disruptive to life in the soil.

That said, this is a substantial tool and one you likely won’t need often. Your best bet is to find one at a local tool share program or contact local garden groups to see if you can borrow one.

Once you’ve aerated the entire area, you're ready to plant. Or, build up your soil health even more with sheet-mulching or lasagna gardening methods.

Sheet-mulching and lasagna gardening

Lasagna gardening, also known as sheet-mulching, is best for when your garden soil isn’t terribly hard or compacted (if it is, consider using a broadfork first). It’s a free way to build rich, healthy soils and is a good option if you have an abundance of weeds or are unable to physically turn your soil with a broadfork.

This method gets its name from the delicious layers or sheets of organic matter that you’re creating to feed the organisms in your garden soil. As these layers decompose, they feed soil life and make nutrients more accessible for the plant you grow.

These layers can be applied directly on top of grass or weeds (except particularly resistant and invasive weeds like crabgrass, which need to be removed by hand). Cover the area with cardboard and/or 3 to 5 layers of newspaper and wet it down to keep it from blowing away. The next layer can be any organic material that you would use in a compost pile. Alternate layers of green materials, like grass clippings and raw vegetable peels, with brown materials like dried leaves, straw, or shredded newspaper. Think of green layers as more wet ingredients and browns as drier. Continue to alternate the green and brown layers until your garden bed is 18 to 24 inches high. Finish with a layer of mulch and thoroughly water the area.

Timing and gathering materials

If you want to plant immediately after layering your lasagna garden, consider using more soil-like ingredients in your layers than paper and cardboard. Otherwise, it’s best to plant when the layers have started to decompose or to cut out areas to plant. Because of that, these garden soil preparations might be best done at the end of a growing season. Preparing your land in the fall gives these materials a chance to age and decay into garden soil over the winter.

That said, it could take an entire season to collect enough materials for lasagna gardening, so start gathering today! You can save newspapers and cardboard, but avoid glossy paper, tape, and staples. If you don’t have these materials at home, recycling bins can be good sources. Toss food and yard wastes in your compost pile (or keep in the freezer), noting that you can use these materials to layer even if they’re not fully decomposed. In the fall, collect dry leaves.

Pro tip: No time to collect this diverse list of materials? Use the late summer and fall to build a circular 16-gauge wire fence enclosure and alternate 6-10 inches of shredded leaves with a thin layer of soil or spent coffee grounds to promote decomposition. Water each layer and repeat until full. This makes for a great source of material for future plantings.

Both using a broadfork and sheet-mulching techniques helps soil retain carbon by adding organic material, making these methods powerful tools in the climate solution. If you’re using the Climate Victory Gardening practices that support soil health, you shouldn’t have to disturb your garden soil or repeat this process again. At the end of future growing seasons, remove dead or dying garden plants, spread compost or wood chips, and consider adding cover crops to increase fertility.

Written by Tom Van Dyke, a Master Gardener in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, whose mission is to grow food sustainably. He has advanced degrees in food systems management and taught about food issues at the university level before retiring in 2013. (Top Photo Credit: mwms1916)

The climate crisis is not an immovable object. It is a battle with many fronts and people around the globe looking for solutions for the problems that they see, working within their own expertise and communities. These four climate warriors who come from different walks of life but share the same goals of mobilizing citizen and government action to stop the planet from warming even more and to protect the people on it. Their stories give insight to their hard work and give needed inspiration as we forge ahead, together.

Dr. Sacoby Wilson, Scholar

What do you struggle with the most as a scholar?
I think the struggle is with academia as a whole. There’s a lot of scientific research that’s just done to discover or produce knowledge, but not enough work that focuses on actually problem-solving. So why aren’t we doing more science to actually solve problems? Why aren’t we doing more science that focuses on environmental benefits? Why aren’t we doing science focused on building healthier communities? I think that’s the bigger issue.

How can others help you in your work?
I think one of the things that I’m really excited about is community science, or another term is citizen science. You do not have to have a PhD to be a scientist. That’s the beauty of science. I think the more we train regular everyday folks to be scientists, the more folks will be in a social movement, the more participants that we can have to affect change, to improve environmental health, to improve public health. So, I think educational organizations, youth organizations, STEM organizations, they have an important role to play.

What is the most rewarding part of your work?
I think the most rewarding part of my work is really community engagement, being able to actually work with communities. Because I work best when I have good relationships with folks, and I see a lot of people that I work with as part of my extended family.

One of the most rewarding experiences more recently has been working with folks in the Gulf Coast Equity Consortium. They have historically Black colleges working with community organizations in five communities across the Gulf Coast working in Houston; in Lower Ninth in New Orleans; in Biloxi, Mississippi; Africatown in Mobile, Alabama; and also in Florida.

So, I get a chance to work with my mentors, some environmental justice icons, and we bring our different skills to translating science to action for those community based organizations.

Interviewed by Mary Meade

Raina Ivanova, Youth Activist

As the group Children vs Climate Crisis what have you been able to accomplish so far?
I think we’ve helped people realize that it’s not just us because there are many people in this fight. We’ve done complaints and strikes and organized people, and by doing something so new with this complaint, we could get more attention leading to that topic. There’s also a realization I think people can have about how the way [they] live is causing those things—the way most people from Germany or from Europe live is causing those problems. When you start thinking about that, you cannot really stop thinking about it and then you, of course, take action.

For people who feel like they’re not as involved as they could be, how can they help you in your mission?
When we talk about the climate movement, I feel like we separate the activists from everyone else, but I think that’s a mistake because we’re all in this together. We’re all just one, we’re all affected by this. For me, there’s no question on why we should act because we all have to.

If you’re a person who’s not involved yet in the movement, you shouldn’t separate yourself from the people who already are because we’re all just people out there trying to do something better. And if you’re trying to help, you can start at your own home. It doesn’t have to be something huge, just see how you can reduce your own carbon emissions. I feel like what most people don’t see is that it’s not only the big picture, it’s every single person individually that needs to make a change.

How do you how do you keep yourself motivated in your work?
I think when I started in this movement, I kept myself motivated because I knew that the things we did were good, and that it would help others even if they just were small things. And then also, as I kept on doing those things, I got to know a lot of other amazing activists out there. I try to not see the crisis as completely negative because you can become close with the community of people around you.

Interviewed by Asher Weinstein

Kristina Dahl, Climate Scientist

What are the most challenging and rewarding parts of your work?
One of the more rewarding parts of the work that we do is when we hear that communities are using the information that we’ve developed. We really aim to produce analyses that can be picked up by policymakers and decision-makers at the local level. When we get news that they’ve incorporated our data and analyses into their climate action plans or into future development plans, that’s extremely rewarding because it tells us that communities really do need this information in order to make sound decisions about their future.

One of the more challenging aspects of the work is that sometimes it feels like no matter how much data or how much science we produce, it’s hard to move the needle on public opinion on the need for climate action. And we know from communication studies that it’s not data, necessarily, that changes people’s minds. But as a scientist, it’s hard not to look at this data and wonder how people could maintain the position that we should not take action on climate change.

Are there any misconceptions about what you do?
I think there are still a lot of misconceptions about the science of climate change. Overall, public-opinion polling is showing a trend towards more and more Americans seeing climate change as a real problem and understanding that humans are the cause of that.

There are still surprisingly few people who think that scientists are unanimous in their understanding of climate change and the fact that humans are causing it. So the general public still thinks that there’s an active discussion about that in the scientific community when really there hasn’t been for probably a decade or more.

I also think that you hear a lot of skepticism about the fidelity of climate models. People say, “Oh, it’s just a model and models are always wrong.” No model is ever perfect.

A recent study went back and looked at all our climate models since the 1970s, when they were much more simplistic, and said, “How well did those models predict the temperature change that’s now already seen?” And the answer is that they’ve done very, very well, even our very simple models back in the 70s. So I would say that there’s a misconception about how well our models can simulate reality, and in truth, they do really excellent job of doing so.

How do you keep yourself motivated in your work?
I love the outdoors. I love nature. It’s what attracted me to the earth sciences to begin with. For me, visiting the places that I love like Yosemite National Park,and seeing the destruction that’s been caused to the forest there by recent droughts and an infestation of beetles that are killing the trees there, is both extremely saddening and extremely motivating. I want my children to be able to enjoy the natural world around just as I have been able to. Preserving what we have and making sure that the future is faced and the earth is as wondrous as it has been, for me in my lifetime, is what motivates me.

Interviewed by Eleanor Greene

Haile Thomas, Community Builder

What do you think you’ve been able to accomplish so far?
I’ve spoken to over 80,000 people around the world since 2010 when I started my activism and have taught 40,000 young people through my nonprofit. Those are things that I’m proud of but I tend to focus on the days when I can just show up, share my journey, and be of service to the community.

How can people support this mission?
I think the biggest way people can help is just to be open to learning about these things. I think that the first roadblock to social engagement is just a lack of awareness and willingness to learn and dismantle perceptions that you may have about health and food, a certain group of people, or what’s going on in the world. Just being open to doing that is the first step and I encourage my community of followers to do that and join conversations that may be full of diverse perspectives.

I’m also excited to release my cookbook, Living Lively, in July. It’s full of plant-based recipes and advice from some amazing leaders I’ve met on my wellness journey.

Do you think there are any misconceptions about what you do?
For sure. I get comments that the health space is for those who don’t look like me. Being African American, I feel that we have unintentionally lost touch with parts of our culture that are rooted in holistic health. Most of us have been forced to look at our lives through a survival lens, without realizing that surviving doesn’t necessarily mean that we are being nourished. It may look different person to person, but everyone on this planet should perceive themselves as fit to invest in their personal wellness.

How do you keep yourself motivated?
What’s motivated me has shifted over time and I think that now it’s more grounded that ever. Right now it’s really rooted in helping others realize their power and importance of prioritizing their wellbeing and how those things unleash their potential to be of service to others. It’s special to me because everyday I find moments in my life where there’s an opportunity to help someone feel seen and heard and that validation is something I want everyone to experience for themselves and pass on to others.

Interviewed by Sytonia Reid

Climate change has wide implications for both coastal and landlocked cities across the globe. But building resiliency and adapting to climate change can have disastrous effects for low-income and minority communities in the form of climate gentrification.

What Is Climate Gentrification?

In a classic example of gentrification, developers see an untapped commercial value in a district and build what they think will attract well-paying consumers. This drives up property values and pushes out residents and businesses that cannot afford the higher cost of living—generally, these displaced peoples are communities of color.

Conversely, climate gentrification is caused by displacement or a fear of displacement—whether that be from devastating natural disasters or extreme changes in weather patterns—that result in people moving to different locations.

“It’s about a shift in consumer preferences,” says Jesse Keenan, an Associate Professor at the Tulane University School of Architecture. “In a classic model of gentrification, you’re talking about a very specific neighborhood or district parts of the city, but with climate gentrification, displacement in Louisiana or Florida could lead to climate gentrification in Atlanta.”

Escaping Rising Seas

A low-lying city with considerable beachfront property, Miami’s coastal areas are already threatened by sea-level rise. As wealthy residents begin to flee their expensive homes by the beach, lower-income neighborhoods are faced with the reality of climate gentrification.

The impacts of climate change are no distant danger—the city saw nearly 20 instances of abnormal floods on otherwise pleasant days in 2018 that made entire stretches of the city unusable until the waters receded. As sea levels continue to rise, these “sunny-day floods” will be increasingly common.

Wealthy Miami residents have long preferred beachfront properties, where housing prices are considerably higher than those in inland neighborhoods. But that’s changing quickly.

Harvard researchers, including Keenan while he was on faculty there, examined changes in housing values. They found that Miami neighborhoods with higher elevation have seen dramatic increases in property values from 1971 to 2017 while low-lying areas have seen a decline in value. This holds true across the city, regardless of proximity to the beach, demonstrating the understanding that any low-elevation area will soon be prone to flooding.

For the residents of high-ground inland areas like the historically Black Little Haiti and Liberty City neighborhoods, these changes represent a sudden and unwanted jump in living expenses, as rents have already begun to increase and some residents have had to leave their homes.

Building Resilient Housing

Fortunately, local governments in those neighborhoods have developed plans to deal with both aspects of the crisis, with the city recently passing a $400 million “Forever Bond” for climate resiliency. Projects funded by the bond will include road reinforcements and the construction of a sea wall, along with $100 million set aside to spend on public and affordable housing.

Meanwhile, Miami-Dade County has launched numerous resiliency projects dedicated to protecting Miami residents, with the recognition that the city has among the starkest income divides in the country. Katherine Hagemann, the Resilience Program Manager for the county, believes that housing needs to be a priority of any climate response plan.

“We know that we have a lot of disparity in terms of wealth and income in our community,” says Hagemann. “So that’s one of our main priorities of autonomy is trying to make sure that we use all of our resources to ensure that new housing units don’t push out residents and to preserve the existing affordable housing.”

The plan and housing grant are useful steps in the fight against climate gentrification, but some residents want to take the preservation of their neighborhood into their own hands. Struggle for Miami’s Affordable and Sustainable Housing (SMASH), an anti-gentrification organization founded to protect the elevated and historically-black Liberty City neighborhood, acts on the belief that a Community Land Trust (CLT) is the most effective way for residents to protect themselves from rising rents.

Trenise Bryant, a long-time resident of Liberty City, has worked with SMASH to create a CLT in her area on which to construct a handful of new, affordable housing units.

“This community land trust is so, so, so important for this community because […] it’s about creating wealth in the community,” said Bryant in an interview with NPR from March 2019. “I wanted to get the voices of the community, making sure their voices are heard ’cause it’s not about me.”

The CLT gives her that ability, as the apartment building constructed on the community land will be run entirely by area residents, giving them leverage over pricing and keeping bigger developers from installing unaffordable units. These projects can be expensive, but in this case, the land was donated.

The people and government of Miami know how little time remains to act on climate, so whether through city-funded or community-led housing, Miami will soon be a model for cities around the country facing similar problems.

Seeking Cooler Climates

On the other side of the country, Flagstaff, Arizona, is dealing with a very different climate problem: heat.

“The 1980s saw a significant shift in our temperatures and so our precipitation is now coming in more rain events than snow events,” says Nicole Antonopoulos, sustainability director for the City of Flagstaff. “A good portion of our economy is made up of tourism, and winter tourism at that.”

Unlike the rest of Arizona, which is known for its desert, Flagstaff sits at 6,909 feet, making it a cool reprieve from the rest of the state. In the past, Flagstaff was most popular during winter for ski season—yet as temperatures reach new records, many of those visitors are returning for summer to escape cities like Phoenix that regularly experience days hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Those are ‘our weekend climate refugees,’ if you will,” says Antonopoulos. “We get, I think, six million tourists a year coming through town and that puts of tremendous impact on our infrastructure. And then when you add in that additional element of climate refugees, even if they’re just escaping the extremes for the weekend, it still has an incredible impact on our natural resources.”

In 2018, the City of Flagstaff published its Climate Action and Adaptation plan to respond to the effects of climate change. It has been well-received by the people of Flagstaff and Antonopoulos attributes this to the thousand-plus community members that were engaged in the drafting process.

“In the last calendar year, we engaged with more than 4,000 members of our community implementing the plan,” says Antonopoulos. “We’ve started our Climate Ambassadors program and our Climate Leaders program, which educate community members about the climate plan and about climate-related issues and to help us communicate our goals, as well as meaningful conversation, and how individuals can take action.”

However, Keenan warns that cities must be wary of deepening inequality when taking climate actions.

Equity as a Foundation

Historically, cities have built energy infrastructure in ways that most benefit wealthier people and neighborhoods, leaving communities of color to deal with issues like lesser access and pollution.

Keenan warns that this pattern could continue in climate plans; what looks like climate resiliency to a wealthy neighborhood may jeopardize a poorer neighborhood, deepening wealth inequality. If cities don’t incorporate equity in their climate plans from the very beginning, vulnerable communities will be left out of important conversations and will be ill-equipped against climate disasters. Therefore, if clean energy infrastructure is to be socially just as well as green, it must be equitably distributed.

Antonopoulos kept this in mind when building the Flagstaff climate action plan. The plan notes that low-income residents, communities of color, and tribal nations disproportionately experience environmental harm and pollution and that these conditions will worsen under climate-related stressors. Like Miami, one such stressor is climate gentrification; however, Flagstaff’s case is unique because much of their population is seasonally transient.

“We have about a 45 percent rental market,” says Antonopoulos, noting that many houses are people’s second or third homes. “So, our demographics are really interesting when we talk about gentrification because houses that are affordable are very hard to come by.”

Flagstaff’s equity strategy includes a checklist that the city government must consider when implementing climate actions, such as sharing benefits, measuring impacts, and building economic opportunity, among others. These considerations were drawn from the City of Portland, Oregon’s climate action plan, which is recognized as a leading document on integrating equity to climate plans.

“[We asked,] how do we incorporate community values and beliefs? And gentrification is a critical part of that conversation as well,” says Antonopoulos.

The city is currently in the process of building a climate and equity working group to build partnerships and engage with its vulnerable communities, as well as identify needs and recommendations for equitable implementation. This includes making sure green infrastructure like renewable energy and resilient housing is available to vulnerable populations.

Resiliency in the Wake of Climate Change

While Miami and Flagstaff are examples of cities taking action, no city is immune to the effects of global climate change and thus, the potential for climate gentrification.

“Climate gentrification has been also caught up with parallel conversations about climate migration and domestic migration, because it becomes a first-order way to think about why people are moving and the implications of where they move to,” says Keenan. “It can operate district-to-district, region-to-region, state-to-state, or even trans-nationally.”

Climate change has the potential to deepen existing inequalities. As cities prepare for climate adaption, engaging vulnerable communities will be the key to enabling social justice and building truly resilient cities.

You may hate weeding, but there are reasons to like weeds—or at least respect them. 

Weeds are good for your soil, and there's a lot we can learn from weeds. They're resilient enough to grow pretty much everywhere, no matter how poor or barren the earth. They cover and give soil life, much like a living mulch, which is a boon for the climate. And seasonal cycles of weeds growing and dying build up nutrients in the soil and make way for larger plants, like shrubs and trees. Without weeds, the natural landscape we love would be very different.

Weeds also tell you a lot about your soil. Before pulling weeds, try reading what they have to say about your planting area. Weeds can signal whether you have soil that’s low in nutrients, high in acid, or even waterlogged. We highly recommend buying a field guide to weeds growing in your region so you can learn from them.

Soggy soil

Weeds that signal soggy soil: dock, horsetails, chickweed, sedge, and willows

What to do about it: Wet and soggy soils are hard to drain and frankly not worth messing with. Besides, given that wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate, it’s probably better for the planet if you just let it be.

Compacted soil

Weeds that signal compacted soil: chicory, knotweed, dandelion, and bindweed

What to do about it: Packed soil limits the ability of plants to extend their roots and absorb vital nutrients for growth. A good way to break up the soil is to plant it with a cover crop like clover or vetch in the fall. The roots can punch through the soil, loosening it in time for the next season’s crop. Another option is to use a broadfork, which is a large heavy four-pronged steel fork that loosens the soil without having to till it.

Acidic soil

Weeds that signal acidic soil: plantain, sorrel, and stinging nettle

What to do about it: Soil that is acidic has a very low pH and, unless you are growing blueberries, your plants will struggle to survive. You can change your soil pH by adding lime, follow instructions from the supplier. The lower your pH, the more lime you will need.

If you don’t want to add lime, you can plant blueberries, rhubarb, endive, shallots, potatoes, or watermelon in that area because they can tolerate soils as low as 5.0 pH.

Basic soil

Weeds that signal basic soil: Queen Anne’s lace, chicory, peppergrass, and chickweed

What to do about it: Basic soil is alkaline, which is another way of saying it has a very high pH. A high pH is usually a result of calcium-rich bedrock. Treating basic soils with elemental sulfur quickly lowers the pH, but we prefer adding lots of compost instead because it yields a bigger return. Compost acts to buffer the soil and prevent sudden changes in pH. The complex molecular structure of compost provides a great deal of hydrogen atoms, lowering pH and enhancing soil’s ability to hold onto nutrients; not to mention the carbon benefits of composting.

Another option is to plant your basic soil with asparagus or members of the cucumber family, which do just fine in a high pH environment.

Fertile soil

Weeds that signal fertile soil: foxtail, chicory, purslane, and lambsquarters

What to do about it: Every gardener dreams about having fertile soil, but the downside is that weeds love it too. This means you have to be highly vigilant about removing weeds as soon they crop up and before they start to seed, or they’ll wreak havoc on the rest of your plants.

Dry and sandy soil

Weeds that signal dry and sandy soil: sorrel, thistle, yarrow, and nettle

What to do about it: Sandy soil is not a terrible thing. In fact, many vegetables love the loose, well-drained stuff. Best way to deal with this is to grow plants that love living in it, which include carrots, beets, onion, and garlic. Toss in some extra compost for a nutrient-boost.

Heavy clay soil

Weeds that signal heavy clay soil: plantain, nettle, and quack grass

What to do about it: Most plants have a difficult time thriving in heavy clay because the dense soil makes it difficult for healthy roots to develop. But some plants do just fine in this dense environment, including shallow-rooted annuals, like lettuce, chard, and beans, which appreciate the moisture. Deep-rooted top-heavy crops, like broccoli and cabbage, also benefit from the stability offered by clay. 

Article originally published on Stone Pier Press, written by Acadia Tucker, a regenerative farmer, climate activist, and author.

In the Los Angeles neighborhood of University Park, west of downtown and east of the University of Southern California campus, people felt ill. Residents and those who spent time at the schools, libraries, and shops in the area were getting nosebleeds, headaches, and feeling shortness of breath.

This neighborhood of South-Central Los Angeles was about to join a familiar fight—one against the fossil fuel industry in their own backyards. These fights are often spearheaded by communities of color, as their historical lack of power means they’re more likely to be stepped on by dirty industries and ignored by government regulators as pollution and other types of foul play seep into their neighborhoods. In this story, we meet environmental justice leaders in two such communities who refuse to be silenced.

Drilling in the City of Angels

You wouldn’t expect to find an active oil well downtown in one of the country’s largest cities, but it’s common. LA has been home to productive oil operations since 1890. The city has thousands of active wells—580,000 Angelenos lives within a quarter mile of an active oil well, according to Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling L.A. (STAND-LA), a coalition of environmental justice groups that seeks to end all drilling in the area.

When people in University Park started feeling sick in 2013, Esperanza Community Housing, a community development nonprofit that owns affordable housing units, organized 350 community members to write official complaints to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Regulators who showed up to investigate found an active oil well with a leak.

“It’s our understanding that 70 percent of the oil drilling sites that are in sensitive land areas are in communities of color—principally Black and Brown communities bear the brunt of this,” says Hugo Garcia, campaign coordinator for People Not Pozos (People Not Oil Wells), a campaign run by Esperanza Community Housing. “It’s an environmental justice issue as well as a public health issue.”

STAND-LA Finds its Footing

University Park’s well is operated by an extraction company called AllenCo Energy, which ramped up production by 400 percent after taking over the site in 2009, according to Garcia. The land the well is on, however, is owned by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which stayed silent, even after community members sent a video to the Pope in which they pleaded to him to shut down the site.

One of those community members was Nalleli Cobo, who started to feel chest pains in third grade while living across the street from the site in an apartment with her sister, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. Cobo’s mother, Monic Uriarte, works for Esperanza Community Housing, so naturally the family joined the People Not Pozos fight.

“Nalleli has been involved in this fight since she was little,” Uriarte said in an interview with Univision in 2016. “She lived the consequences of pollution and she realized that it was unfair. My daughter knows how to speak out and is not afraid to fight for the welfare of our community.”

The community mounted a pressure campaign joined by other groups fighting the oil industry in their own neighborhoods to form the STAND-LA coalition. When the Los Angeles Times investigated the story, it published a picture of a toddler with a bloody nose, causing alarm across the area.

“And then all of a sudden it changed the regulators who had been pretty much asleep at the wheel,” says Garcia.

It took years of pushing the city, including more reports of health problems and air pollution, demonstrations, community meetings, and canvassing. The city finally hired a petroleum administrator, a position that had been unfilled in the government for 40 years. Garcia was hopeful when an inter-agency group convened in 2018 to facilitate information between regulators, key agencies, and the community, but was disheartened when selected regulators and agencies were invited but the community was not. But finally, he was allowed to attend to represent University Park residents.

Victory for Esperanza

On March 5, 2020, regulators ordered AllenCo Energy to plug its wells and decommission its oil drilling site in University Park. This order is pending an appeal filed by the company.

But the fight isn’t over. Garcia says cleanup of the contaminated site is of utmost importance. He hopes the site will be decontaminated and re-purposed into a facility that benefits the community, like affordable housing or recreation space.

People fighting Big Oil in LA are not alone. For Native Americans in rural North Dakota, the enemy is fracking.

Fracking in the Bakken

Underneath the Fort Berthold Reservation and spanning 200,000 square miles from North Dakota to Montana and Canada lies the Bakken shale formation. With its billions of gallons of crude oil, the area became an epicenter for hydraulic fracking and the second largest oil producer in the US in less than a decade. That has repercussions for Native American peoples who must live next to the steady ecological destruction of their land.

Kandi White of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Tribes is a Native organizer and the climate and energy campaign coordinator for the Indigenous Environmental Network. She grew up in a community called New Town on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, about 100 miles down the Missouri River from Williston, the fracking hub of North Dakota.

“When I was 20, I got diagnosed with cancer. It was a stage four sarcoma tumor,” says White. “A lot of people around me had cancer. A lot of people still do have cancer. At the time, I just thought that was normal.”

This is a common experience for Native Americans, who have a disproportionately high disease burden and lower life expectancy than other Americans, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. Their exposure to pollution is much higher than other groups because of the way that First Nations were designated land by the government in the form of reservations; unable to move, industrial development industries set up, putting Native populations at risk.

“There’s no law that is on our side,” says White. “It’s never been more clear than it was at Standing Rock that the laws been twisted to make sense only for those people that it benefits.”

Native Women in Danger

The explosive growth of fracking jobs outside of the reservation has attracted tens of thousands of new residents, most of them men. Workers are housed in mobile home complexes called “mancamps” and conditions are so bad that, according to North Dakota’s Uniform Crime Reports, murder, aggravated assault, rape, and robbery increased by 125 percent between 2005 and 2013.

For Native women, the fracking industry has brought violence. Williston’s rape rate is nearly four times the national average and a Native woman is seven times more likely to be raped than a woman living in New York City according to an article from Portland State University. White expresses that many in her community at the Fort Berthold Reservation feel cornered to the point that activists and tribal leaders are in disagreement.

“We’re fighting against our own tribal councils,” she says. “We’re fighting against our own people that are like, ‘They’re going to take it from us anyways, based on our history: they gave us diseases, they killed off our numbers, they put us on reservations, they built a dam that flooded our lands. We cannot win. We might as well take the money.’”

People’s Rights and Climate Change

Despite these challenges, White continues to promote Indigenous rights and environmental justice.

“We have to keep moving forward and protecting our Native nations and protecting our elders and protecting our identities and our lifeways,” White says. “I want people to not get stuck in apathy. I want them to understand that they can do things to empower themselves.”

Climate science is nearing First Nations’ understanding of ecological balance—Project Drawdown lists Indigenous knowledge as a solution to the climate crisis.

“It’s funny to see scientists catching up now with what we’ve always known just by being land-based people,” says White. “It was always an urgent conversation to say you cannot do this, you cannot practice a capitalistic model because it will come back to harm us as humanity.”

To support Indigenous resistance, demand megabanks end fossil fuel financing. Goldman Sachs may have caved to the Gwich’in nation’s demands to end funding of oil drilling in the arctic refuge, but banks are still financing fossil fuels in the Bakken and elsewhere. Tell JPMorgan Chase to stop funding fossil fuels.

From Los Angeles, Garcia reminds us that organizers’ have one of the biggest jobs in their communities. He urges other community organizers, whether they’re fighting fossil fuel companies or other environmental justice fights, to keep a clear head as they lead their communities, hopefully, to victory.

“It is the organizers task to bring light, to lift up and bring clarity to strategic, tangible issues that provide compelling incentive for the community to organize,” says Garcia. “After all, in any campaign, it’s a grasp of one’s objective living condition, and what it can be, that dictates the impetus for residents to organize. It’s all about: ‘Dare to struggle—dare to win.’”

Most of us don’t know the entire history of our homes and the land they’re built on. And, renters likely know even less. In some cases, your yard may have had uses in the past that make it unfit for growing food altogether. Or, there could have been potentially polluting industry near your home and garden. 

If you have any question, it’s best to test. 

Soil tests can give you information about possible contaminants and toxins. They’re great for learning what nutrients and supplements your soil might need to produce a healthy and successful garden too.

You can often find soil testing kits at local agricultural extension office for your state university, even if that university is hundreds of miles away. You can also contact the university or lab directly to have a kit mailed to you (find the contact info for your nearest office here). While you may be able to find test kits online or at local garden and hardware stores, we suggest going through a local university to ensure the tests are conducted in professional labs. 

The kit consists of a simple plastic tube or Ziplock bag for gathering a small soil sample and instructions.

Early spring is a great time of year to test your soil. It’s best to do it when the ground is thawed and digging up the samples won’t disturb growing plants. But really, you can do this just about any day of the year.

Learn more about the details of what you can expect from testing your soil—including tracking soil carbon for your Climate Victory Garden.

If you can, choose a garden location that's visible from your kitchen window and is close to a water source, so you’re reminded to harvest, water, and care for your garden often. Consider zoning laws, HOA restrictions, and previous (possibly) toxic uses of your property and its soil. Discuss options with your landlord if you’re in a rental.

Observation is an important step before breaking ground and will ensure greater success down the line. Spend some time watching how the sun and shade move across your property during different times of day, keeping in mind that many plants need at least six to eight hours of direct sun each day. Notice areas that are breezy or protected, knowing that most plants don’t enjoy being pushed around by the wind. Go out after a heavy rain to see if the water is diverted from some areas or pooling in others, because many veggies are thirsty but can suffer without good drainage. Observe critters—including those that want to eat your garden, like deer—and garden helpers like bees.

If you don’t have a lot of space, get creative with what you have, and look for places to plant along fence lines, between sidewalks and curbs, and open areas in your neighborhood. You might plant food amongst your existing ornamental landscaping. Want to convert a lawn? Check out this technique.

Dealing with lots of shade? Some plants prefer shade (read your seed packets!), but you’ll likely struggle to grow fruits and vegetables if your yard get less than two hours of sun during the day. Similarly, if you face limitations due to toxic soils, stubborn landlords, or just a lack of open space, consider growing in containers outdoors or even indoors. Community gardens, local farms, and helping friends and neighbors in their gardens are also good options if you don’t have land to grow on.

Read the beginner gardener toolkit for more about choosing a location for your garden.

Socially responsible investing is a way your money can change the world. You can do it by moving your money from Wall Street banks to community development banks, screening the worst companies out of your portfolio, or using shareholder advocacy to push corporate management to change.

Direct investing or impact investing is another socially responsible strategy in which people invest directly in companies and projects making change, like to support sustainable, organic, and regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture is a way of farming that puts the focus on soil health, which has the added benefit of also drawing carbon out of the atmosphere. Regenerative agriculture has the power to reverse climate change.

When Soil Health is Wealth

Joshua Humphreys is an analyst who studies how financial products can solve sustainability and social justice issues, including a strong emphasis on climate. In his role as president and senior fellow at the Croatan Institute, a think tank that specializes in these topics, Humphreys recently worked on a report called “Soil Wealth,” which investigated the demand for products to finance regenerative agriculture across the country and the world.

The report found $321 billion in investment opportunities to support sustainable agriculture and $47.5 billion in investment for regenerative agriculture specifically, suggesting that investors have a growing interest in it. According to Croatan Institute’s modeling based on data from Project Drawdown, those investments could have big returns: a shift to climate-friendly farming could mitigate 170 GtCO2e (i.e. 170 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent), while generating nearly $10 trillion in net financial returns.

Humphreys says growing numbers of institutional investors are seeing what a good investment regenerative agriculture is. It’s more resilient—the report shows that regenerative land recovers two weeks sooner than conventional farms in the same area, as shown by farmland near the Missouri River after flooding last year. Humphreys says that regenerative farms clustered in “organic hotspots” are also seeing socio-economic benefits.

Investing in Land, Building Resilience

One example of a company that gives investors a chance to finance sustainable agriculture is the Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT. Since its inception in 2007, the company has provided secure land access to farmers who were committed to at least USDA Organic practices—though some farmers go further—aiming for Bee Better Certification, Savory Hub distinction, and other up-and-coming sustainable certifications.

“Practices like no-till and permaculture can be used within USDA Organic systems,” Claire Mesesan, communications director of Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT, says. “In fact, we work with many farmers practicing reduced or no till. We have two farms that use permaculture practices and others that draw inspiration from the system.”

Iroquois Valley caters to investors with quite a bit of money to invest—at least $10,000—which means most of its investors are family-run foundations, NGOs, and businesses, though the company says its investor base is about 32 percent individual investors.

Mesesan explains the high cost of entry to Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT investment is because as a small business buying property that costs on average $1 million per plot, it is cost-prohibitive to pursue small investments.

Today, Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT is invested in about 60 farms comprised of more than 12,000 acres, across 14 states.

One of those farms is Main Street Project, a nonprofit in Dakota County, Minnesota, on 100 acres of transitioning farmland. Its transition is to a regenerative system that uses chickens alongside perennial and annual agriculture crops along with trees to create a biodiverse and functional farm.

Main Street Project, a participant in Green America’s Regenerative Supply Network, has an added mission of supporting rural Latinx immigrant communities by providing bilingual jobs and training for people who are often victims of the conventional agriculture system. The nonprofit aims to provide a “path to economic stability, wealth creation, and empowerment for aspiring immigrant farmers.”

“Main Street Project exists to innovate a path toward a more just and resilient food system for all people. Our 100-acre farm serves as a safe space to share land, knowledge, food and stories—a sanctuary for community building,” says Rocky Casillas Aguirre, communications manager at Main Street Project. “Having nonprofit organizations and farms like ours that put people first is absolutely paramount, especially in the times we are facing as a country and global society. Together is the only way forward.”

CDFIs are Making Sustainable Attainable

When it comes to making big impact for small sustainable businesses, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) have outsized impact. CDFI is a federal designation for a variety of financial institutions that serve economically marginalized communities. They have low account minimums so more people can use their services and support their work.

CDFIs can provide products based on their clientele and membership—often at a smaller scale than would be feasible for big banks. CDFIs can also have community priorities, as Self-Help Credit Union sees the importance of sustainable food systems in local communities. For example, Happy Dirt is a farmer- and staff-owned organic wholesale produce distributor based in Durham, North Carolina. Over the years, Self-Help has provided Happy Dirt with loans for a building purchase, renovation, and equipment, so the small business can grow.

Philip Otienoburu is the food system financing sector leader at Self Help. He explains that conventional banks see small businesses as a bigger risk—they may have limited collateral, especially when they are owned by entrepreneurs of color who are historically under-banked and often lack the financial infrastructure to support their businesses.

“We believe that the food that goes to communities needs to be wholesome— healthy for consumers and good for the planet,” says Otienoburu. “We are not just doing it for the sake of feeding people, but also promoting sustainable development in a socially responsible way by building community wealth around these businesses.”

One credit union has introduced a new strategy. Maine Harvest Federal Credit Union is making waves in the financial world just as it does for farmers in Maine. Croatan Institute’s report highlights Maine Harvest’s approach, as it’s the first financial institution in the country completely focused on supporting local food and its producers.

It carries out its mission by providing business loans to farmers and food producers in Maine to foster the local food movement. By making deposits or investing in certificates of deposit at Maine Harvest Federal Credit Union, anyone can support Maine farmers. How You Can Join the Movement In addition to using direct investing or community development options to invest in farmers and regenerative agriculture, there are many ways to you can use your dollars to support sustainable and local farmers.

• Buy from a CSA. Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) is like a farmer’s market, but instead of buying piecemeal every week, you buy shares at the beginning of the season, which gives local farmers much-needed cash and get produce on a schedule. Check localharvest.org for CSA options—you can even see what CSAs use organic or regenerative practices.

• Shop from farmers. If CSAs’ upfront buy-in isn’t affordable, you still have the option of going to a farmer’s market as needed. Ask sellers there what types of sustainable practices they use. Find examples of what to ask here.

• Keep money in a CDFI, which may be making business loans to farmers in your community (you can ask!). Use our Get a Better Bank database to find CDFIs in your area.

• If you have more to invest, speak to your financial advisor about getting involved with these financial products pushing the envelope and making big impacts.

In Durham, North Carolina, a young man rakes a dirt path in between rows of leafy soybeans. In Alabama’s Black Belt, a woman rolls a feathery ball of cotton between in her fingers, inspecting it for pests. In eastern Mississippi, an older woman, scissors in hand, kneels into a nest of leaves and uses a spade to harvest a sweet potato.

The year is 1910 and 14 percent of the nation’s farmers are Black Americans. Living before the times of widespread mechanization, their labor is physically intense and intimate with the earth. Purchased only two generations after emancipation, these plots of land represent the resilience and dignity of the communities they serve.

Since then, America’s agricultural landscape has changed, and not only where big machines have replaced hands and feet. Today, fewer than two percent of the nation’s farmers are African American, according to the 2017 USDA Census of Agriculture. What happened in the past 110 years are vital parts of our nation’s story in which seeds of innovation, regeneration, and communal stewardship are planted throughout.

The African Roots of Regenerative Agriculture

Conventional agriculture accounts for 23 percent of human-created greenhouse gas emissions. “Regenerative agriculture” is a set of practices for restoring soil health and maximizing the soil’s ability to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. Regenerative practices have gained popularity as more farmers recognize that dependence on pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and machinery robs the land of its natural organic matter.

But even members of the regenerative movement may not know that Black agriculturalists have long innovated in soil stewardship. In the 1890s, Dr. George Washington Carver developed a series of experiments proving that nitrogen-rich legume like peanuts could be used for more than a tasty spread, but also replenish soil when used in crop rotation. Centuries before Carver’s research, agriculturalists on the African continent sustained civilizations with regenerative techniques.

“Right now I’m working in a polyculture where we have blueberries, juneberries, apples, and medicinal herbs. This idea of growing a bunch of perennial crops together comes from different parts of sub-Saharan Africa,” says farmer Leah Penniman.

Penniman and her husband Jonah Vitale-Wolff founded the nonprofit Soul Fire Farm in 2010— an organization based in Grafton, New York, with a mission to end racism and injustice within the US food system.

“I’m also walking through rows of raised beds, which comes from Namibia’s Ovambo people who built mounds in order to control water flow and increase soil fertility,” says Penniman.

Penniman is part of a new generation of Black farmers using regenerative practices to pursue food justice and reverse climate change simultaneously. Soul Fire Farm provides immersive training to Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other farmers of color. It also advocates for policies that expand access to crop and technical insurance, non-GMO seeds, guarantees living wages for farmworkers, and increases markets for farmers of color.

Seldom-Told Stories

Part of the reason why organizations like Soul Fire farm teach new generations of Black farmers about their ancestral roots in agriculture is many people still don’t know about this part of our country’s history.

After emancipation, Jim Crow laws enabled states to lock up Black people for petty crimes and returned previously enslaved people to plantations at correctional facilities. In the share-cropping system, Black farmers rented land and equipment from white owners who received a share of the Black farmer’s harvest with interest. Unaffordable interest rates led to perpetual debt for Black farmers, many of whom tried and failed to pay off their debts with their own free labor.

The experiences of Black farmers received little attention until recently, with investigative pieces like Vann R. Newkirk II’s “The Great Land Robbery” published in The Atlantic in September 2019 and Penniman’s book, Farming While Black. These writings detail the history of discrimination against Black farmers, including by USDA officials who routinely denied loans, technical assistance, and disaster relief funds to Black Farmers, especially to those who were active in the civil rights work.

In 1995, Virginia farmer Dr. John Boyd Jr. founded the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) to help farmers hold on to their lands and increase access to public and private loans. In 1997, Boyd and 400 others successfully sued the USDA in the case Pigford v. Glickman, which confirmed that the USDA had turned a blind eye to hundreds of civil rights complaints filed by Black farmers, including Boyd, who had filed six complaints.

“All these farmers were coming out of the woodwork saying, ‘You think what happened to you is bad? You should hear my story!’” said Boyd in a 2019 interview with The Guardian. “I was just trying to save my farm. But then I saw this was a huge national issue.”

Pigford v. Glickman exposed the USDA but fell short of achieving justice. The government awarded $50,000 each to approximately 16,000 plaintiffs but there were many eligible farmers who didn’t know about the lawsuit’s application deadline. In 2010, the Obama administration re-opened the case and delivered more awards, but systemic racism and its effects still linger.

One of the NBFA’s newest projects is Regenerating Our Farms, which partners with organizations including the USDA, North Carolina State University, and Farmer’s Footprint to provide information and support to Black Farmers across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia for adopting new soil health practices. 

The Fight for Food Justice

The systemic denial of access to farming means that many African Americans and other people of color depend largely on retailers like grocery stores to get fresh foods, but too often retailers fail to show up in lower-income neighborhoods. Lack of access to healthy foods has had profound health effects, with 21.2 percent of Black households and 16.2 percent of Hispanic households experiencing food insecurity—the USDA’s measure for decreased access to healthy and varied food. Meanwhile, only 8.1 percent of white households are food insecure, according to 2018 USDA data.

Holes in food access go beyond hunger—a lack of fresh food exacerbates other health issues. According to 2019 CDC data, although obesity is a nationwide issue, Hispanic and Black adults are ten percent more likely be obese than white adults and experience diabetes at roughly double the rate of white adults.

Community organizer Karen Washington was first driven towards gardening as she sought to fix one of the trash-filled empty lots that had become a blight in her neighborhood.

“It was one of over 1,000 empty lots that were plaguing mostly low-income neighborhoods and neighbors of color in New York City,” Washington says. “And in 1988, with a group of people in the community, we were able to turn that empty lot into a community garden.”

In 2014, she co-founded Rise & Root Farm, an organization dedicated to promoting regenerative practices and increasing access to fresh produce. Washington considers it her responsibility to give Black farmers a space to recognize their role in the food supply. She co-founded Black Urban Growers, a group which brings Black farmers together to meet each other in an overwhelmingly white industry with annual conferences since 2009.

“In doing some research and looking at the census, finding out back in 2008, that of the 57,000 farmers in New York State, only 116 were Black. Fast forward that to now—57,000 farmers in New York State, still only 139 still are Black,” Washington says. “We have this conference every year where we bring people from all over this nation to come in and see a face, where it reflects who they are, and for them to have a buy-in in a system that for so long has negated them.”

The urban gardening and farming movement that has taken off in cities shaped by large Black communities like those in Chicago, Baltimore, and Newark, show that empowering people to grow their own food can be part of the solution.

“I grew up detached from the food movement, because as an African American, my relationship to food was always around the narrative of slavery,” says Washington, who is now one of Penniman’s mentors. “We’re now telling young Black and Brown people in urban and rural areas that their connection to food is powerful and that we do have a place in agriculture.”

How You Can Join The Fight For Food Justice

1. Support non-profit organizations that are investing in Black farmers like Soul Fire Farm, National Black Farmers Association, National Black Food and Justice Alliance, Black Urban Growers, and Rise and Root Farm. You can donate, volunteer time, and/or share their work on social media.

2. Call on your Congresspeople to support progressive legislation like the Justice For Black Farmers Act, Fairness for Farmworkers Act of 2019, Urban Agriculture Act of 2016, and the North American Agricultural Work Visa.

3. Buy from Black farmers at farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs.

4. When possible, buy products that are Food Justice Certified with the Agricultural Justice Project. This certification addresses fair wages for farmworkers, fair pricing for farmers, safe and healthy working conditions, the rights of indigenous people and children on farms.

My entire life I’ve watched as Washington politicians abandoned Appalachia and rural communities, sacrificing their wellbeing for cheap resources. I’ve watched as fossil fuel billionaires and the politicians they’ve bought out, a pack led by Kentucky’s own Senator Mitch McConnell, kept millions of Americans in poverty, enriching themselves at the expense of their constituents.

But I’ve also watched thousands of young people striking, sitting-in, and rallying across the country for a Green New Deal. I’ve watched as they demanded clean air to breathe and water to drink, the right to a living-wage job that doesn’t pollute our home or bodies. As I’ve watched, I’ve become convinced that another world is possible, a world in which we invest in our home and one another, a place where everyone has access to healthcare and a good job no matter the color of their skin or who they love. This is the world of a Green New Deal.

I didn’t learn about this vision at school, where climate change is considered a debatable phenomenon, but in my community. I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, “coal country.” My farmhouse was filled with the smells of coleslaw, soup beans, cornbread, and occasionally the latkes my mom brought down with her from Westchester, a mashup of cultures. We had a yellow kitchen and a barn in the back, a couple of cows for company, and a garden if time allowed. In the back room, my mother played the piano while my dad’s Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie floated from the stereo in the den.

We lived down the hill from my dad’s cattle farm, in the family for generations. Because of that, he never had to work in the mines. They were lucky: few families were left untouched, ravaged by black lung, contaminated water, or decimated land, swept up in the tidal wave of salvation by coal. Then, the coal industry packed up and fled, and I watched it, standing in the storm of inequality in its wake.

In September, I led hundreds of other young people to strike for climate justice and a Just Transition in front of the Louisville’s Metro Hall. All around the refrain of “Which Side Are You On?” sounded, a reminder of the United Mine Workers of the 1930s and their fight for a livable wage. In that moment, I knew Kentucky was ready for a Green New Deal, we just needed to remember a different part of our history to create it, the part before Mitch McConnell. I thought of my own parents, the future they had envisioned when I was born, and I started to think about the next ten years, the time we have left to radically shift our society to stay under two degrees Celsius of warming.

The Kentucky I’m fighting for under a Green New Deal is one that is returned to the people, free of the grasp held by exploitative industries. In my hometown, I see doctors administering free healthcare and educators providing job training for former miners. I see Lexington with a vast system of sustainable public transportation and affordable housing. In Western Kentucky, earning a living wage will no longer be a question for farmers using sustainable, regenerative ways of caring for the land. In Louisville, I can see the engineers maintaining locally powered energy grids that run not on coal but on solar and wind, I can see reparations in Black and Brown communities that have been dumping sites of pollution for far too long.

Above all, I see a Kentucky that works for everyone, and a future that I can believe in.

Lily Gardner is a 16-year-old leader in Sunrise Movement, a national movement of young people fighting to create good jobs and a livable future.

Fifty years after the moon landing, it’s easy to look back with awe on those days of great national will and collective use of our brightest minds. Some modern technologists think with similar combined brainpower and funding, we could use unprecedented “shoot-the-moon” technologies to solve climate change.

But others are looking to established solutions. Conservationists across the globe are striving to restore nature to combat climate change and its effects. Scientists and organizers are leading communities to understand the importance of overlooked ecosystems as they take on climate change in their own backyards.

Saving a State with Shellfish

Louisiana is disappearing. Historically, Louisiana had built levees to protect against the flooding Mississippi River. But more recently, modern development, including oil drilling, and hurricanes have torn apart this land and increased erosion. Louisiana has lost one million acres of wetlands and 2,000 square miles of coastal land in the last century, according to the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL).

CRCL, a New Orleans-based nonprofit, has been working to conserve and reform the state’s coastlines since 1988, before the state’s land-loss problem was even well-recognized.

One solution may lie on our dinner plates with oysters. That’s right—the high-priced seafood are housed in hard shells that naturally form walls under the water, which can help break strong waves during big storms. Over the years, overharvesting oysters has weakened these habitats’ ability to filter water and protect coastlines from storms. Oyster depletion has affected bodies of water from New York to Maryland to Louisiana.

In 2014, CRCL launched its oyster shell recycling program after finding that Louisiana, which produces one third of the nation’s oysters, does not get many of those shells back. Worse, most end up in landfills.

The innovative recycling program collects shells from 18 local restaurants, then volunteers bag up the shells and drop them back into the water to create habitats that young oysters can settle in. CRCL constructed its first half-mile reef in 2016.

Kat Loomis, habitat restoration coordinator at CRCL, is from Lafayette, Louisiana, a small city close to the Gulf Coast. She grew up with wetlands being a natural and beautiful part of her surroundings that she loved.

“When I started learning about land loss and what the state is dealing with it really gave me that push of, ‘Wow, this is my home.’ I really value the culture that surrounds our wetlands,” says Loomis. “It made me want to help and do my part to restore and sustain Louisiana for as long as we can.”

Researchers at Tulane University estimate the Louisiana coast is sinking over a third of an inch per year. Residents of Isle de Jean Charles, one of the state’s barrier islands, have already become the country’s first officially recognized climate refugees, receiving federal funding to relocate from their homes in 2016. Most of those residents belong to the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe, which had been relocated there as part of the Indian Removal Act of the 1830s.

Loomis works closely with other community members to rebuild areas that rising seas and sinking land is quickly eliminating. Besides oyster restoration, she and the group conduct dune restoration, marsh grass plantings, and coastal forest tree planting.

Trees to Weather the Storm

Florida is often the punching bag for big storms because of its location in the path of hurricanes and its low-lying landscape—Florida has the second-lowest average elevation of all the states. Those two issues paired together can be a nasty combination.

When big storms cause high tides and flooding, salt water intrusion can harm freshwater wetlands and marshes. Enter mangrove trees, which have an odd name and even stranger look. Native on saltwater coasts around the world, these trees have visible root systems which often extend several feet above the
normal water level to the tree trunk.

These trees are multi-talented when it comes to our changing climate. Not only do they handle big storms—their roots literally hold the earth in place—but they also have an outsized impact in drawing down carbon and reversing climate change. According to Project Drawdown, the soil of mangrove forests in coastal wetlands can store five times as much carbon as tropical forests, and may hold 22 billion tons of carbon, making their protection crucial in the fight on climate change. And compared to the cost of implementing new solutions to the climate crisis, not polluting or destroying coastal wetlands is very inexpensive.

Kathy Worley is a biologist and the director of environmental science at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, an organization that works to protect that region’s environment, including through mangrove restoration. After 25 years in this role, Worley is heartened to see the changing political and community perspective on the preservation of the trees. When she began, people saw them as ugly parts of dirty swamps and a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

“People are realizing how much the environment really does for us. And that is the key because if it matters to the individuals and to the crowds, then it’s going to matter to the politicians who make the laws,” says Worley. “Now that we realize the value of mangroves, it’s time to invest in their future.”

Protect the Water, Protect Ourselves

In Palm Bay, Florida, the Marine Resources Council (MRC) aims to protect and restore the Indian River Lagoon, partly by using mangroves.

The MRC’s Mangrove Program collects mangrove propagules (like seeds) and grows 6,000 plants in its two greenhouses. Kate Zehnder, the MRC’s director of development, says community members love gathering propagules on the beach to be planted.

The MRC and volunteers plant the mangroves along the shores of the lagoon in an effort to establish native and resilient shorelines. Native shorelines have been found to be far more resilient during hurricanes, while also providing critical habitat to fish and bird species, and removing potentially harmful nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous from the water.

The lagoon faces similar problems to waterways across the country—its habitats for animal populations and plant species have been degraded due to pollution and development. While point-source contamination is often a contributor to water pollution, Zehnder says the landscaped areas around the lagoon and fertilizer-laden stormwater runoff from streets are among the biggest culprits.

“I grew up here, seeing the river which used to be a really big fishing area and you could get a lot of oysters and clams. Now you’re lucky if you can catch a fish,” says Cassidy Myers, a community member who also works on lagoon restoration. “That really struck a chord with me.”

Thanks to years of outreach and education, Zehnder and Myers say local communities are getting onboard with the steps it takes to fight erosion and pollution affecting local bodies of water.

“One thing that unites our community is the fight to protect the lagoon,” says Zehnder.

Resilience for the Future

From Louisiana to Florida and across the country, environmental conservationists look to what works in nature to see what people can adapt and use. In the face of climate change and for the health of our world, we cannot rely only on faraway “shoot-the-moon” technologies— in the natural world we can find tested models for climate resilience and carbon drawdown.

What You Can Do to Help

In hearing from these experts from areas hit hard by big storms, flooding, and rising seas, it’s easy to be inspired. Luckily there’s a lot you can do to protect waterways and coastal habitats no matter where you live.

• Avoid chemical fertilizers. If you must use them, avoid applying them in summer months when it’s rainier in most parts of the country. Nitrogen in fertilizer can contribute to algae blooms and kill plants and animals that keep water healthy.
• Look after your car and pets. Leaking chemicals and fecal matter get washed into storm drains and end up polluting coastal waters. Make sure your car is in good condition and that pet waste makes it to the trash can.
• Use a rain barrel. Besides collecting water for your garden, a rain barrel can mitigate stormwater runoff and then release the water into your yard to be absorbed when it’s not so saturated.
• Protect the trees. Kathy Worley says in the US, construction of roads and other features that re-route water is the biggest threat to mangrove habitats. Ask developers or local officials what they’re doing to conserve and protect habitats during construction.
• Ask your elected officials to pass climate legislation. Warming temperatures result in more frequent and intense storms that cause flooding and high winds, which are as bad for underwater habitats as they are for human ones on land.

By the time you read this, Americans will be only a few months away from electing their next president and the global community will have witnessed an unprecedented year. From a volatile and narrowly diffused nuclear conflict with Iran, to rampant fires in Australia, 2020 has delivered headline after headline that would be considered sensational if they weren’t true.

But the most globally important story to date is the novel coronavirus, which escalated into a historic global pandemic. Like the 2020 presidential election, the coronavirus pandemic is an unfolding story destined to shape our immediate future and for us at Green America, it’s safe to say that it has only heightened our sense of urgency.

While Green America focuses primarily on voting with our dollars, we know we need all Americans to vote in the electoral process too, and at every opportunity so that we can elect the courageous leadership we need in our national and local government. That’s why we talked to organizations involved in voter advocacy to find out how they’re getting people pumped for November third.

A YES Vote for the Climate

Since announcing his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement as one of his first acts in office, President
Trump has rolled back over 100 environmental laws including the landmark 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which reviews corporations’ environmental impacts, including projected greenhouse gas emissions. On March 26, amid the pandemic, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also suspended penalties against pollution violators, effectively giving companies the green light to pollute as much as they want.

These decisions spell disaster not only for the planet’s lands, seas, and atmosphere, but for humanity itself. Although 97 percent of climate scientists agree that human activities are fueling the climate crisis, the US still lacks aggressive, emission-reducing policies that would force corporations to stop doing business as usual.

Deregulations are likely to increase the disproportionate exposure of lower-income communities and people of color to air pollution as they are twice as likely as white Americans to live near an industrial facility, according to a 2015 report by
the Center for Effective Government.

“Doing something about climate change and environmental injustice really depends on following the science and listening to experts in the field and the administration’s engagement with the public about the impact of rollbacks like NEPA is almost nonexistent,” says Mark Antoniewicz, director of communication at Hip Hop Caucus.

Studies from the Pew Research Center show that in 2016, broad dislike for both candidates was a major contributing factor to low voter turn-out among registered voters. At the same time, Pew’s data shows that as of July 2019, millennials became the most populous generation group, meaning people ages 23-38 could flex significant political power in 2020.

But how do we engage groups with historically significant voting power but aren’t always prioritized during critical times of campaign outreach?

Powered by Music: Hip Hop Caucus’s Voting Movement

Hip Hop Caucus has a history of organizing and empowering people to vote. In 2004, the organization’s co-founder Rev. Lennox Yearwood partnered with music industry magnate Sean Combs’s “Vote or Die” campaign and in 2008, Hip Hop Caucus’s own “Respect My Vote” campaign broke a world record by registering 30,000 voters in a single day. In another crucial election year, Hip Hop Caucus has revived this campaign and it’s replete with luminaries in hip hop music.

“There was a time when hip hop music was perceived by some as being too ‘out there’ and not serious enough but now those tables have turned,” says Antoniewicz. “Now hip hop is everywhere and people are eager to utilize it, from congressional members to different presidents.”

Entertainers like radio personality Charlamagne tha God [sic], actress Keke Palmer, and rapper Vic Mensa have signed on to be 2020 “Respect My Vote” spokespeople.

Visitors to RespectMyVote.org can register to vote and find voting information for their state including what types of identification voters will need at the booth and guidelines for previously incarcerated people.

These efforts targeted to Black and Brown communities are essential to getting Washington to meaningfully address the issues that disproportionately affect these groups, such as environmental injustice and unfair labor. In many ways, COVID-19, like climate change, has exposed the ways a global, existential threat intensifies disparities that already exist. In April 2020, alarming reports emerged about the rates of COVID-19 deaths in Black communities. For instance, in Chicago, African Americans make up 30 percent of the population, but 70 percent of all COVID-19 deaths; in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a notoriously segregated city, African Americans account for 27 percent of the population, but approximately 50 percent of COVID-19 deaths, according to data from Milwaukee county.

In April, Wisconsin’s primary election proved the availability of mail-in ballots as a voter suppression issue. In spite of Milwaukee being Wisconsin’s largest city and having over 1,500 reported coronavirus cases, according to The Guardian, it closed most of its polling places due to a lack of available workers, which left only five precincts open. Voting day resulted in masses of people turning out to vote in cramped conditions that may have further spread the virus.

Fair Fight, led by Georgia politician Stacey Abrams, is one of the organizations calling out these covert forms of voter suppression. Fair Fight, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Brennan Center for Justice are leading campaigns to reform practices that disproportionately disenfranchise people of color from the process like discriminatory identification standards to early and absentee voting.

Kids Step Up

Today, some of the most influential activists are still in school and some aren’t even to voting age yet. Jamie Margolin is the 18-year-old co-founder of Zero Hour, a nonprofit with a mission to center diverse voices of youth in the climate change and justice conversations. Jonah Gottlieb is the 17-year-old co-founder of the National Children’s campaign, a non-partisan organization focused on making children a priority in political agendas and engaging youth in the civic process. Together, they’re leading “#Vote4OurFuture,” a campaign focused on increasing voter turn-out among first-time voters and empowering climate- and environmental justice-oriented voters.

Zero Hour will kick off the campaign by asking followers to share videos about why they’re excited to vote in 2020 using #Vote4OurFuture. It intended to go on a bus tour to cities experiencing widespread environmental injustices like Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Flint to help local organizers register people to vote.

“These cities were chosen because we want to reach communities that national organizations often don’t go to but also because these are communities are already doing great work,” says Margolin. “We’re there to help bring national attention, not to be saviors.”

The tour was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the National Children’s campaign, Jonah Gottlieb says he’s looking forward to helping people realize their political power.

“One of the things that I think sets our organization apart is that we give trainings on how to write legislation, work with members of Congress to edit it, and bring it to the floors of the House and the Senate,” says Gottlieb. “We want to show people that you don’t need a lobbyist to impact your government.” Antoniewicz, Margolin, and Gottlieb say their organizations are working to communicate the power of the whole civic process, not just the presidential election.

“It’s exciting to be coming of age politically and when we’ve seen such a resurgence in youth activism. I don’t really know any other ‘political normal’ because I was in eighth grade when Donald Trump started running for president,” says Gottlieb. “For me and many others in this movement, we understand that we need massive mobilization at every level against these forces that are fighting against our right to have a livable future and planet.”

When we started working on this issue, it was with the November election in mind. In February, no one knew the Green American team would spend most of our spring days separated and working from home. The intent of developing this feature for our summer issue was to make sure that environmental justice issues was top-of-mind as people headed to legislators’ town halls and to the polls in the summer and fall.

Then came COVID-19. The pandemic quickly revealed itself as an environmental justice issue. Then on March 26, the stories we planned became more relevant than ever when the Environmental Protection Agency issued a pass to polluters. The EPA stated it would not penalize companies that break environmental laws—as long as the companies claim the pandemic as the reason. This will affect not just businesses, but people. Communities like those in University Park, Los Angeles, and Native people in North Dakota are pushing back against dirty energy in their backyards. They will only face a tougher fight without any support from EPA regulation.

Meanwhile, other groups, like Soul Fire Farm and Rise and Root Farm, have already been fighting some of the injustices that create deadly health outcomes for the people in their communities. And now these same injustices mean a higher infection and death rate for people of color with COVID-19.

These stories, though about people in precarious circumstances, give me great hope. These warriors press forward no matter what—they won’t give up the fight for their communities as they take on the climate crisis.

As we publish this issue, we are all still in work-from-home mode with the editorial team spread across five states. Come November, we will have an election, and it’s clearer than ever that we must fight for and beside those who stand for environmental justice. And we must vote for those who cannot. Like Lily Gardner, the 16-year old climate activist, who in her essay “What a Green New Deal Would Mean for Kentucky,” says:

“I’ve become convinced that another world is possible, a world in which we invest in our home and one another, a place where everyone has access to healthcare and a good job no matter the color of their skin or who they love.”

The warming climate is already affecting families from the oil fields of North Dakota to the rising waters of the Gulf Coast. But climate warriors are reclaiming spaces and fighting for our future.

The popular wartime solution for supplementing food rations was embraced by Eleanor Roosevelt, and now environmental experts say it's time to bring victory gardens back.

By Dan Nosowitz, May 20, 2020

There's no roadmap for fighting climate change, but bringing back a few old traditions might be a way for all of us to do our part. Green America, a nonprofit focused on ethical consumerism, honed in on the victory garden when looking for ways to help more people get actively involved in a solution to global warming. Victory gardens were especially popular during World War I and World War II when people needed to supplement rations by growing their own food. And we need this concept again, says Green America, because now what we need to ration most is our contributions to climate change.

“When we were at war, we wanted people to grow fruits and vegetables at home so there would be more available for the troops overseas,” says Todd Larsen of Green America. He says that today, victory gardens offer us a way to “grow food for ourselves and our families, and also be part of the climate solution.”

HELEN NORMAN

The Victory Garden Impact

Tens of millions of people planted victory gardens during both World Wars, including Eleanor Roosevelt, who planted one on the lawn of the White House. During World War II, these gardens provided about 40 percent of the country’s fruits and vegetables. According to Green America, if we could produce that much again in our home gardens, we could collectively make a positive impact on the environment.

That’s because growing your own food means less needs to be produced on big farms (which usually isn't as sustainable as home gardening can be) and then transported to you. And when you plant and care for your garden sustainably, it can also help to protect soil, support pollinators, and reduce your carbon footprint. It might not seem like you would make much difference in the world by planting your own tomatoes and beans, but multiply it by millions of similar gardens across the country and the world, and it can all add up to a significant change, like victory gardens before.

Keeping Carbon in the Soil

Carbon dioxide is one of the major contributors to the greenhouse effect, and it's released into the air when we burn fossil fuels in  cars, planes, and power plants. The more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the more it traps heat from the sun and helps raise the Earth’s temperature. But there are natural methods here on the ground to remove that carbon dioxide from the air. It's called carbon sequestration, which basically means taking that carbon dioxide from the air and storing it where it can’t contribute to the greenhouse effect.

In what scientists call the carbon cycle, plants are like carbon dioxide vacuum cleaners, sucking it out of the air and storing it in their tissues. When plants die, they turn into organic matter in the soil, which holds onto that stored carbon dioxide with the help of billions of fungi, bacteria, and other tiny creatures that live there. Green America believes that climate victory gardens can be a major contributor to this natural carbon capturing process.

“If you do no-till gardening in your yard, so you're not digging up the soil year after year, it actually does have a big impact in terms of sequestering carbon in the soil,” says Larsen. That’s because when you disturb soil, it causes organic matter to break down faster and release more carbon dioxide back into the air. Mulching and composting also boost your soil’s ability to store carbon; plus, you won't need to water as much or use chemicals for fertilizer or weed killer.

ANDREAS TRAUTTMANSDORFF 

It Gives Wildlife a Home

With millions of climate victory gardens across the country, beneficial wildlife like pollinators would have more of the food and habitat they need to survive. “We have been taught all these years that we don't want wildlife in the garden, that bugs are bad. But plants are the foundation of any wildlife habitat,” says David Mizejewski, a naturalist at the National Wildlife Federation and author of Attracting Birds, Bees, and Other Backyard Wildlife. He points out that roughly nine out of ten insects in your garden aren’t pests at all. Instead, they might be butterflies, whose caterpillars provide essential food for birds, or ladybugs, which eat the pests that do show up.

Plus, many fruits and veggies you’d grow in your garden, including zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant, actually produce more for you when bees and other bugs pollinate their flowers. These insects then help feed birds and many other creatures. Climate victory gardens can play an essential part in supporting this entire ecosystem. And when you have a healthy ecosystem, you can rely on fewer pesticides, fertilizers, and other outside inputs that all create carbon emissions when produced.

Harvesting tomatoes and other produce from your own backyard helps lower your carbon footprint.

MARTY BALDWIN

A Source of Healthy, Hyper-Local Food 

Environmental benefits aside, it's also nice to sample the fruits of your labors! If you grow a tomato plant, you can walk into your backyard and pick one to eat instead of driving to the grocery store (which releases carbon dioxide and other harmful greenhouse gases). Tomatoes at the supermarket might've come from a farm far away (which requires fuel to get to you). Transportation accounts for about 11 percent of food’s total emissions, so you can cut that to zero by growing it yourself, as well as cutting other carbon creators that large farms use, such as synthetic fertilizers and big tractors to plant and harvest.

Larson points out that there are psychological benefits as well. “We find that people who are really involved in gardening, especially the kind where you're really taking care of the earth, makes folks pretty attentive when they go to the supermarket,” he says. If you know exactly what it takes to grow a radish, you might begin to value radishes at the store differently. You might decide to use parts of that radish that many would throw away (the greens make a great pesto). And if you can’t grow it yourself, you might choose to buy organic or local if you have the choice. All these decisions help to reduce your carbon footprint, which is the name of the game.

The victory garden concept started with World War I food rationing, progressed to producing mass amounts of food during World War II, and now can help us all fight against climate change. And like we saw during those wars, growing even just a small part of what you eat can make a difference when we’re all in this together. Time to get planting!

Because you understand the fundamentals of growing food, pollinator habitats, and healthy soils, you can take it to the next level to ensure your garden is part of the climate solution.  

It's easy. If you have a garden, you're likely already using some of the Climate Victory Garden practices.

Our #1 tip for more seasoned gardeners is to think critically about the ways you can protect your soil and make decisions that reduce emissions beyond the boundary of your garden. These two approaches to Climate Victory Gardening help your garden soil store carbon and encourage best practices for the climate. These resources will help you do both. 

Green America has partnered with the Environmental Investigation Agency to bring you a new way to take action for people and the planet: support the growing movement to eliminate harmful super pollutants called HFCs from our supermarkets.

The food in our supermarkets is kept cool with substances called refrigerants. The most common refrigerants are hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), super pollutants that leak out and devastate our climate.

HFCs have thousands of times the warming capacity of CO2, and they are the fastest growing greenhouse gas.

The U.S. supermarket sector has lagged behind other developed countries in cooling without super pollutant HFCs, but a few supermarkets are using sustainable HFC-free alternatives.

In the map below, you can find stores that are climate-friendly and see which stores are still using climate-damaging gases. Don’t see a climate-friendly store near you? Urge for more HFC-free supermarkets!

This map is undergoing continuous updates based on publicly available information or data shared specifically with EIA.

Each of us has our own garden vision, and this is the perfect place to start your garden journey.

Take time to think about your dream garden. What do you see? Consider drawing or writing about it (this will help you later on!).

Set garden goals and keep these in mind throughout the rest of your gardening process—maybe your top priority is growing great tomatoes to save money on groceries, getting your kids outside to grow food, or creating a habitat for pollinators.

Garden planning is essential for success and ensures you're making the right decisions for your Climate Victory Garden to have the greatest impact on the climate and your local ecosystems. It’s one of the most important and involved parts of the gardening process, especially when you’re considering carbon capture.

These beginner gardener resources can be viewed as a sort of timeline: choose a location; test and prepare you soil; figure out what, how, and when to grow; and maintain your garden throughout the year.

Read the beginner gardener toolkit for more about the 5 steps to start a garden.

The month of May opened with a great headline in Reuters and similar ones in other media outlets: “Climate Activists Claim Win as JPMorgan Sets Timetable for New Lead Director” – just weeks before the JPMorgan Chase big shareholder meeting on May 19, 2020.

Pressure is building from shareholders and climate activists and it’s getting results –starting this summer, Raymond will no longer serve as the lead independent director on the bank’s board. The question now is whether he will serve at all on the board. Shareholder and public pressure is increasing to vote Raymond off the board entirely.

Raymond, former CEO of ExxonMobil and former board member of the American Petroleum Institute, is a long-standing climate change denier. He has led massive disinformation campaigns for decades to refute the science on climate change, even when it came from ExxonMobil scientists.

In response to criticism of the bank’s massive financing of fossil fuels, and a vocal campaign to oust Raymond, the bank’s demotion of Raymond’s role is both significant and long overdue. Given Raymond’s influence and unconscionable record, his removal from the board is essential if the bank is to successfully reverse course on its fossil fuel financing. A January 2020 report leaked from the bank even affirmed that “We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened”.

For decades, Raymond has used his power to oppose science-backed evidence of climate change. It’s no wonder that his 30-plus years on the JPMorgan board has resulted in the bank being the largest funder of fossil fuels in the world by a huge 36% lead. In the last three years, JPMorgan Chase has plowed $268 billion into intensifying the climate emergency.

JPMorgan Chase is the worst bank on earth for the climate; it can only change course by removing its leading climate denier from the board.

Fortunately, three New York City pension funds, the New York State Common Retirement Fund, and the Pennsylvania State Treasurer -- all major institutional investors -- have stated they will vote against Raymond’s continuation on the JPMorgan Chase board.

If you own JPMorgan stock, this month you too can cast your votes to reflect your values for people and the planet. Shareholders have a crucial opportunity to vote whether or not Lee Raymond continues on the board.

The shareholder meeting will be held virtually on May 19th at 10:00am EST.

You can vote your proxy ballot in advance (check the deadlines in your proxy materials) or during the virtual meeting through the meeting website. As a shareholder, if you have questions about accessing the virtual meeting, email corporate.secretary@jpmchase.com or call (212) 270-6000 by May 15, 2020.

Not sure how to read your proxy statement? Use this graphic to help you vote your shares.

Make your vote count!

Everyone, including beginner gardeners, can grow food, pollinator habitats, and healthy soils, whether you have a huge plot of land or live in a tiny urban high rise. Together, it's the collective action of Climate Victory Gardeners across the country (and world!) that has the potential to move the dial and be part of the climate solution.

It's easy. If you have a garden, you're likely already using some of the Climate Victory Garden practices. (If you're brand new to gardening, check out these five steps to starting a garden.)

Our #1 tip for beginner gardeners is to have fun and not take the process too seriously. Gardening is like a big experiment, and even the most seasoned gardeners have lots of opportunities to learn from their mistakes. These resources will get you started and set up for success.

Is your business starting to consider sustainability in your practices? Do you want to appeal to the ever-growing mass of conscious consumers? With over 30 years of experience, the Green Business Network knows what it takes to be a truly green business and a sustainability audit is a good place to start.

Getting Started

Green businesses are driven by a mission to make the world a better place. They tie together profitability, social responsibility, and environmental sustainability in their business practices. This includes everything from worker safety, clean ingredients, to their water and carbon footprints. Green businesses challenge the status quo by modeling new practices in supply chain management, community development, and even customer service. 

The first thing you need to do to begin the process of becoming a green business is to analyze your current practices.

Running a Sustainability Audit

Every industry has different metrics for social and environmental responsibility. A paint company will need to consider the health risk of minerals in their formula, while a honey company will need to focus on the welfare of their bees. Your business will have tailored needs, as well.

Regardless of your industry, you can start your green business journey by answering these basic questions. It’s okay if you don’t have answers for every single one just yet. As your sustainability practices develop, you can answer these again and see how much you’ve grown. These questions are general to help you get started.

Social Justice

• What is your social mission or purpose? What impact do you want your business to create for your community?
• How does your business meet the needs of its workers and ensure they are treated well?
• If you employ workers overseas, how are you ensuring livable wages, safety, and health in the workplace?
• How does your workplace promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace and throughout the supply chain?
• How does your company positively impact the community?
• In what ways can you improve transparency in your supply chain?

Sustainability

• Does your business have the infrastructure, capacity, and governance to maintain a comprehensive sustainability program? If not, how can you build one?
• Consider your supply chain. What is your business doing to minimize waste during the production of your product(s)?
• Consider the life cycle of your products. How are you minimizing the footprint of your product—do you have a take-back program, a recycling partner, or something else?
• How are you minimizing the impact of your office, production, and/or service facility?

Keep in mind, these questions do not replace comprehensive standards. As your business improves on its social and environmental commitments, you can dive into even greener standards specific to your industry. The Green Business Network’s How to Be a Sustainable Business series is a good place to start—no matter what your industry, there is a place for your business with us.

Growing Your Green Business

Becoming a socially and environmentally responsible business is an ongoing process. As your business evolves and grows, you will adopt new practices. Creating an internal sustainability committee to maintain your efforts can help ensure your company does not get off track during growth.

You can seek external verification for your efforts, too. An example of this is a certification from a trusted, independent third party. Certifications also have the bonus of being recognizable to consumers, helping you reach new markets. Conscious consumers are more likely to be loyal to your brand when your business aligns with their values, too.

Mission-driven businesses are leaders in the ever-growing green economy. Your business can tap into this market by starting your green business journey. Demonstrating a strong and sincere commitment to social and environmental responsibility is good for both people, the planet, and the legacy of your business.

Explore more rigorous social and environmental standards for business in the How to Be a Sustainable Business series here and learn about becoming a certified Green Business Network member here.

You might have heard that your garden can be a part of the climate solution, but how does it really work? Climate Victory Gardens are all about making decisions in your garden that help it sequester carbon—that is, pull carbon out of the air and store it underground—and helps you offset emissions from other parts of the food system.

Why focus on climate, isn't this just a garden? 

The research is out there and it’s clear that we need to act aggressively on the climate crisis. Some reports say that we only have 12 years to meaningfully address the climate crisis. It’s also said that we have less than 60 years of agricultural topsoil left to grow food. At the same time, our food system is a big part of the problem, emitting between one quarter and one third of the world’s greenhouse gases. 

We know that we need to slow the pollution we’re emitting, but there’s already too much carbon dioxide in the air, so we also need a way to drawdown carbon if we’re going to slow the warming of our atmosphere. 

The good news: research shows that agriculture and gardening are a great way to do both—pull carbon out of the air and slow emissions. This intersection of food and climate is a place where we can exercise our decision-making power and engage in meaningful action, every time we eat or work in the garden.

Green America is working with large farms and companies to do this as well, but change at the large scale takes time, which is why we’re asking gardeners to be trail blazers in their own backyards to get this idea out into the world ahead of the curve, before climate-positive food is something that’s widely available at the grocery store.

There’s two ways to think about climate solutions in our Climate Victory Gardens. 

The first is maximizing soil protection within our gardens, because this is where we can capture carbon by pulling it out of the air and storing it in plants and underground. 

The second way is all about minimizing climate impacts beyond the boundaries of our gardens and making decisions that help reduce emissions. For example, if you don’t buy chemical fertilizers, you’re reducing pollution and emissions that would have come from producing and transporting that fertilizer from the factory to the store. 

Climate Victory Gardening practices help gardeners make decisions that work towards these two goals. 

How do plants and soils capture carbon? 

This is something they do naturally, and it’s up to gardeners to create the right conditions. 

Plant grow using photosynthesis, a process in which they harness the sun’s energy, water, and carbon dioxide to create food in the form of sugars or carbohydrates (base word: carbon). This food helps plants grow and build cells, as well as feed life in the soil that provides them with nutrients (through a symbiotic relationship, meaning they help each other out). The plants grow to produce healthy food and release oxygen as a byproduct, which is what makes our plant habitable for life.

A single teaspoon of healthy soil has billions of microorganisms. This soil life includes everything from earthworms to beneficial bacteria and fungi; these are the workhorses we’re harnessing to pull carbon out of the air. 

Today, industrial agriculture and conventional gardening methods treat soil badly, often with synthetic chemicals that harm life in the soil, which then releases carbon into the air—turning farms and gardens into a source of carbon emissions. But, under good management, soil and these microorganisms can hold huge amounts of carbon. We just have to grow food the right way. 

Rethinking carbon  

Carbon is something we often think of as bad, because we associate it with our changing climate. But, it’s the basic building block for all life. In the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, carbon creates a greenhouse effect that heats our planet, but plants use carbon to create cells to grow and feed microorganisms in the soil that support them.  

It’s the carbon that goes into the soil through plants that has the biggest potential for change. Those billions of microorganisms? They represent a quarter of Earth’s biodiversity, and this is where we want to get the carbon, because it’s more likely to stay underground and it helps our gardens grow. 

You don’t have to be a scientist to know this; many gardeners are well acquainted with carbon in healthy soils, but might recognize it as organic matter, the crumbly texture, or its rich, earthy smell. Soil health is integral both as a climate solution and a successful garden.  

When we grow food at home in a regenerative manner; we purchase less food that has traveled across the country, we keep methane-producing organic materials out of landfills with composting, we increase the water holding capacity of our soil to decrease flooding and runoff, and most importantly we rebuild our soil health bringing back its carbon sequestering potential. 

Since the US has become the latest epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, business-as-usual has had no choice but to come to a quieting halt. Between March and April, a staggering 30.3 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits and retail sales in March fell by almost 9 percent. Meanwhile, many Americans are adapting to a new reality of staying at home  for the foreseeable future, while others continue to work on the frontlines of the response.

In the midst of an uncertain economy, we’re spotlighting some of the businesses in our Green Business Network whose creativity and resilience are giving us hope. 

Dhana Inc.

The circular-minded fashion brand Dhana Inc.[m] has been a Green Business Network member for nine years and provides both youth and adult apparel. Dhana has also been recognized as a Best for the World Honoree every year since 2016 and is a complete brand that now includes circular clothing. 

 In April, the company began selling face masks designed with zero waste and circularity in mind.

Research has shown that while masks may not prevent wearers from getting infected, they are useful in stopping the spread of germs to others. Dhana is meeting the rising demand with Batik masks--Batik being a dyeing technique that is traditional in Indonesia and India. Dhana is producing the masks in Indonesia and Columbus, Ohio.

AZ Eco Designs

AZ Eco Designs [m] is a sustainable product design studio in San Francisco, California. The company sells clothing, furniture, and artworks all made from all sorts of scrappy materials like cooking oil cans, denim, tires, computer parts and water pipes. The company’s founder, Aguida Zanol has a long career in making new creations out of recycled materials and held leadership positions at some of the first sustainable design organizations in Brazil.

“With all that’s going on, I’m designing more sustainable products from excess materials we collected before  quarantine like cardboard boxes” says Zanol. “I’m transforming the boxes with the goal of getting them to zero waste. So, one box can be the start of a shoe rack and the left-overs of it, a necklace or lamp.” Zanol is also planning to host virtual workshops in the near future.

Dunitz & Co

Dunitz & Company [m], based in Hollywood, CA, specializes in fair-trade jewelry. Dunitz elevates the work of artisans and supports organizations that serve Guatemalan communities where the company’s beadwork is crafted, like the Hospitalito Atitlan which is currently screening patients and distributing coronavirus information in the city of Santiago Atitlán.

Dunitz & Company is also a member of the Museum Store Association, which selects unique nonprofit business products to be sold in museum gift shops. Founder Nancy Dunitz compiled a list of over 50 museums that are offering virtual tours for those staying at home.

“I figure everyone needs more things to occupy their time at home, and I thought this would be a way to link and support many institutions that support me during better times,” said Dunitz. “'I’ve been able to compile this list by researching online, inquiring from my customers and watching my Facebook feed.”

Takoma Park Silver Spring Co-op

In a Washington, DC, suburb, TPSS [m] is a neighborhood co-op offering locally sourced produce and other groceries. For one lifetime payment of $100, shoppers can become part owners of the store and enjoy benefits like discounts, have a voice in co-op governance, and become eligible to join the Interior Federal Credit Union.

In March, the store reduced its hours and asked customers to only come in once a week, then moved to an online shopping system with curbside pickup. General manager Mike Houston says the store will continue operating this way indefinitely.

“We had no online order platform before March 23, so we had a lot of work to do make sure things function properly,” says Houston. “We’ve gotten a lot of support from the community and people have gotten used to ordering online.”

Green America is continuing to publicize the creative and crucial changes that green businesses are making, including advocacy for small green businesses. If you are a business owner, please sign the American Sustainable Business Council petition to Congress to provide meaningful support to small businesses in respect to healthcare, disaster relief, and expanded unemployment benefits at greenamerica.org/savesmallbusiness.

Up next: 3 Green Businesses Getting Creative During COVID-19

Shareholders Should be Heard, Not Muzzled

The full article from ThinkAdvisor, April 13, 2020, is available at here.

Introduction:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is attempting to bar many investors from pushing corporations to address major issues, including climate change, lobbying and election spending transparency, human rights abuses and discrimination. This would be a huge setback not just for those shareholders, but all of us who benefit from the progress they help to bring about.

For resources on shareholder action visit:

Basics of Shareholder Action

How to Read a Proxy Ballot

Sample Shareholder Resolutions in 2020

Empty shelves at the grocery store have inspired many shoppers to turn to gardening. But, some garden companies were caught off-guard by the surprise spike in interest for garden supplies and may be experiencing shortages as well. Whether you’re looking for materials for your first-ever pandemic garden or a seasoned gardener looking for your usual spring garden supplies, you can still find what you need to grow good food.

Seeds

First, we suggest calling or emailing your local garden store—be patient, they likely have reduced hours and staffing and are dealing with many challenges. Even if their doors are closed right now, if they have seeds on the shelves, they’ll probably figure out a way to sell them to you and offer curbside pick-up, delivery, or shipping. This goes for all the gardening supplies listed below—although shipping heavier items might not be the best idea.

You can also look to small businesses that grow and sell seeds. The great thing about local seeds is that they’re likely more adapted to the weather, soils, and precipitation in your region. Buying local garden supplies helps small businesses in need during economically hard times, and these seeds will help your garden be more resistant to a changing climate and growing seasons.

You may also find seeds at a local seed library. Or consider asking neighbors and garden groups on social media. Remember to follow all CDC guidelines when sharing resources.

Soils

You may not need to buy soil if you’re lucky enough to have a yard. If you’re unsure of the quality of your soil, you may want to amend with a rich compost. If you don’t already compost at home, get started now so you have soil later this season and for next year. If possible, find a local source of compost or soil; farms and garden centers may have these key garden supplies or know where you can find them locally. 

In many states, hardware stores are still open, and these are a treasure trove of garden supplies. If you’re concerned about entering the store, consider calling ahead to see if they’ll offer curbside pickup for soil or any of the garden supplies mentioned here. 

Soils can also be found at some larger supermarkets that have outdoor and gardening sections. Next time you’re grocery shopping, explore these aisles to see what they have. 

Or support green businesses like Devine Gardens for rich vermicompost, delivered to your door.

Containers and Building Materials 

If you’re growing indoors or starting seeds indoors to transplant outside when it’s warmer, look no farther than your recycling bin for gardening supplies. Old plastic yogurt containers and milk cartons make great planters. 

Larger containers for porches and balconies can be repurposed from old buckets, mixing bowls, coolers, or anything that can withstand the weight of soil can be used. (We suggest doing a deep Pinterest DIY on repurposed garden containers). Anytime you’re repurposing something, don’t forget to poke holes in the bottom for drainage.

If you’re interested in building garden beds and find that the building kits are sold out, remember that you can garden in the ground without building up physical beds. But, if you feel that a built bed is the best option for your space, look for nontoxic lumber or repurposed wood that’s lived another life (as a fence, for example).

Some online sources like the Gardener’s Supply Company have all the container options you might need no matter where you’re planting.

Tools

First, we suggest looking through what you have. Many of us have old forgotten tools or items that can be repurposed for the garden. For small-scale gardening, you can even use large spoons from the kitchen. 

If you need something more heavy duty, consider your local garden company, hardware store, ask local gardeners on social media, or consider tool share programs. Some small businesses like Green Heron Tools are still shipping garden supplies. 

Looking for more gardening tips during the time of COVID-19? Check out our Climate Victory Gardening facebook group, where gardeners from all walks of life ask questions, share advice, and celebrate the successes of their fellow gardeners. 

ThinkAdvisor features all the investment news, in-depth analysis, market data and tools financial advisors need to grow their businesses and their bottom line.

T-Mobile continues to lead the telecom industry in adopting clean energy. The company announced that its recent partnership with Otter Creek Wind Farm has achieved commercial operation and is expected to generate more than 504,100 MWh of clean energy every year. This placed T-Mobile at 95 percent clean energy.

At the same time, the company has recently finalized its merger with Sprint. T-Mobile has committed to update its target date for 100 percent clean energy to account for its newly expanded footprint. Previously, Sprint lagged on renewables before late 2019, when it announced a new clean energy project which would reportedly supply 30 percent of its energy use. 

The victory gardening movement of the 1940s was a time for grassroots collective action—when households across the country grew incredible amounts of food. It was also a time when war was used to justify extreme xenophobia and oppression of non-white Americans.

Green America’s Climate Victory Gardening campaign strives to reclaim the good from this movement, but we can’t do that without addressing the hurt and racism that Japanese Americans experienced directly related to the WWII victory gardens during this terrible time in our country’s history. 

Racism Leads to the Incarceration of Japanese Americans 

While many point to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor as the start of xenophobia towards Japanese Americans, racism and injustice existed long before WWII. 

First-generation Japanese immigrants were barred from becoming citizens and faced discrimination in labor markets and land ownership from the moment they arrived in the United States. Many settled in the states along the West Coast and farming was the only occupation available to them. In 1934, one third of Los Angeles’s Japanese American workforce farmed and gardened. 

Thanks to generations of farming knowledge from Japan, these workers were wildly successful at growing food in the American west. Second-generation Japanese Americans were able to become citizens and began owning small farms and they quickly became an important part of US agriculture. Data from the period show that Japanese American farms were more productive and profitable than other farms. In 1940, they produced more than 10 percent of California’s food by value even though they held less than four percent of farmlands.

In 1941, the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor, leading to the United States’ formal entry into WWII. The existing racism towards Japanese Americans was intensified by fear and war propaganda. The next year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which called for the forceful removal of over 120,000 Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese descent from the west coast to concentration camps farther inland. 

Two thirds of those in camps were American citizens. There were no formal charges against these prisoners and no significant convictions of any Japanese Americans for espionage during the entire war. This was incarceration due to ethnicity alone. 

Injustice towards Japanese Americans was compounded by the action of white-owned corporate agribusinesses, which saw the opportunity to take over these family farms. Lobbying from industrial agriculture with “competing economic interests” targeted and forcibly removed successful Japanese American growers from their farmlands. 

We understand that terms like “concentration camp” and “incarceration” might not match words you’ve heard used in the past, like “internment” and “relocation.” If you’re wondering about our word choice this article is for you.

Japanese Gardens in Incarceration Camps

Japanese Americans lost their homes, their businesses, their rights, and in some cases their lives. They were moved to incarceration camps that were little more than barren lands with barracks surrounded by guard towers and barbed wire. In fact, the land chosen for the camps was intentionally poor, because the government hoped that their new inmates would use their farming expertise to improve the land with enormous agricultural projects. The camps were isolated; sickness, beatings, and death were everyday experiences. 

This is not the scene that comes to mind when most Americans think of victory gardens, but these camps were home to thousands of individual gardens that played an important role somewhere between horticultural therapy and survival. Gardens in the camps served cultural and health purposes, acted as a buffer against psychological trauma, and represented an attempt to re-create community in these harsh new environments. There were beautiful ornamental gardens and gardens that grew traditional Japanese vegetables to supplement terrible meals in the camps. 

Camp gardens were also a form of resistance. Many of the inmates faced complex feelings around American patriotism, the injustices of Executive Order 9066, and betrayal by their white neighbors. Gardens were an opportunity to physically rebuild their community but, for some, they were also considered subversive symbols of non-compliance, resistance against confinement, and even appropriation of the War Relocation Authority’s land. Gardening often required illegal acts to acquire materials and became highly politicized in some of the camps.

Government Promotes Household Victory Gardens 

Outside the camps, the US government aggressively promoted victory gardening at the household level. Fearing food shortages, the need for such a huge civilian mobilization was often attributed to farmers becoming soldiers, war allies relying on US production, and feeding troops. Gardening was marketed as family fun, healthy recreation, and patriotic.

What few knew then and even fewer know now, is that rationing programs and food shortages were largely due to the incarceration of many of the United States’ most productive farmers. When Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their land, food supplies plummeted and prices skyrocketed. In 1942, Japanese American-owned farms were expected to provide half of the canning tomatoes and 95% of all fresh snap beans for the war effort. They were also the primary growers of strawberries for civilian consumption.

The colorful, upbeat, whitewashed victory gardening posters do nothing to hint at the over 6,100 farms that were taken from Japanese Americans (estimated to be worth over $1.3b today). They do nothing to show the forced labor of German prisoners of war and Japanese internees, and they ignore the fact that the government had to import thousands of Mexican workers to keep the United States food supply stable.

Reclaiming Victory Gardens to Face Today’s Crises

What do we do with this deeply troubling history?

First, we can acknowledge that this history is not behind us. Stigma of the incarceration camps remains, and reparations fall short. The US didn’t apologize or offer restitution to impacted Japanese Americans until 1988—too little too late. In general, the US doesn’t have a great track record for delivering reparations to groups who’ve been forced from their lands and into forced labor, including enslaved Africans and indigenous peoples. Racism persists in the face of climate and global health crises, as marginalized communities are hit hardest and—again—as anti-Asian racism spreads, but this time amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

We can also reclaim what was good about the victory gardening movement of the 1940s, when 20 million people took action to feed their families and communities in uncertain times. We can again tap into therapeutic potential of gardening. And, this time, we can garden in a way that’s good for the planet (unlike the chemical-heavy methods used during the 1940s). 

The victory garden movement was a top-down model, with the government driving action. Today, we’re seeing incredible amounts of grassroots action around growing food that directly opposes the systems that reinforce oppression, the industrialization of our food system, and centralization of power. Across the country, people are building Climate Victory Gardens that bring communities together and provide nourishing food to people who live in food-insecure areas—those experiencing food apartheid and facing racism.

We need everyone to be part of the climate solution and easing the impacts of the pandemic. Gardens have a role in the future we’re striving to create; racism does not.

Here are some great organizations addressing anti-Asian backlash today:

• Asian Americans Advancing Justice
• Asian Pacific Environmental Network
• Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council and Chinese for Affirmative Action have launched an incident report for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders experiencing microaggressions, racial profiling, hate incidents, and hate violence

Here are some organizations working to ensure gardening is available to all: 

• The Ron Finley Project
• Soul Fire Farm

It’s important that Americans work together to make sustainable gardening and agriculture a viable activity for all groups and communities—one that honors the wisdom and connection to the land of diverse peoples. 

As COVID-19 has swept throughout the world, reports of high-profile cases have given rise to the concept that this virus does not discriminate. It can hit any person with force, from our friends and neighbors to politicians and celebrities.  

Considering this crisis as a kind of equalizer may be an acknowledgment of our collective humanity and a call to support each other by physically distancing. However, before this virus, generations of inequity and unjust systems have placed certain communities significantly more at risk than others. The virus may not discriminate, but these systems do.

With recent demographic data on virus infections and fatalities, there is even more evidence that these system failures and inequities have severe consequences. Therefore, we must apply an environmental justice lens when allocating COVID-19 resources and supporting communities.  

Environmental Justice and COVID-19

Ibram X. Kendi, Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, has led the call for states, counties, and labs to report racial demographics of the people being tested for, infected with, hospitalized with, or killed by the virus.  

“Sometimes racial data tells us something we don’t know. Other times we need racial data to confirm something we already seem to know,” says Kendi. 

This emerging data shows that African Americans make up over half of all coronavirus cases in the country, despite making up 13 percent of the US population. In Chicago, Black Americans reportedly account for 72 percent of virus-related fatalities, even though they make up less than a third of the city’s population. Expanding out to Illinois, 43 percent who have died from the virus are Black, while this demographic makes up 15 percent of the state’s population.  

Similar data and patterns are being reported from cities, counties, and states including Michigan, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Connecticut, and parts of Georgia.  

Some members of Congress have already introduced legislation to expand demographic data and create a commission to identify data collection barriers and recommend how to best use the data to promote health equity.  

Systemic Causes of Underlying Conditions 

For decades, researchers, and activists have documented the racial disparities that cause the underlying conditions leaving communities of color vulnerable. These systems show patterns of discriminatory practices that are all too apparent to be coincidental. 

When trying to receive healthcare, communities of color are more likely to experience barriers to effective care. In Native American communities, disproportionately high rates of diabetes, heart disease, and asthma, combined with overcrowded housing, make these communities even more vulnerable.  

Essential workers who do not have the privilege of staying home are largely made up of people from more vulnerable communities, specifically Black and Latinx workers. This includes more than one million farmworkers who are working to maintain food production while facing inadequate safeguards, limited access to medical care, and crowded living conditions. Undocumented immigrants needing to seek treatment for the virus are faced with the threat of deportation or arrest into ICE’s detention centers, where the coronavirus is spreading in horrifying and neglectful conditions. 

Historic redlining and discriminatory housing practices continue to prevent Black and Latinx communities from safe, affordable housing. Communities of color are disproportionately faced with inadequate transportation options, lack of access to fresh and healthy food, and exposure to polluting industries which poison air and water. All these injustices inflict the underlying conditions which make these communities particularly at risk from COVID-19.  

Impacts of Environmental Racism 

A Harvard study analyzing thousands of US counties confirms the link between air pollution and COVID-19 fatalities. This study paired with countless others on pollution in communities of color affirm what the environmental justice movement has called out for decades.  

Lubna Ahmed, director of environmental health at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, stated, “In public health, it’s often said that your ZIP code is more indicative of your health outcomes than your genetic code.” 

The placement of coal plants, waste incinerators, refineries, landfills, bus depots, and other sites in communities of color has long emitted toxic pollutants into the water and particulate matter into the air. Air pollutants enter through the lung and go into the bloodstream and are linked to cardiovascular and pulmonary disease, chronic health issues that increase chances of contracting severe cases of COVID-19. The Harvard study also points out bad indoor air quality and poor ventilation are prevalent in low-income housing.  

As handwashing is critical to preventing the spread and contraction of the coronavirus, reliable access to water is just as critical. Last year, 23,000 homes in Detroit had water shut off and 37 percent hadn’t had renewed service as of January. While some cities have promised to restore water to residents during this crisis, it’s up to residents to know about the program and what steps to take to receive returned service. And thousands of residents have reported being told they don’t qualify for the plan.  

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has continued its multi-year rampage of rolling back environmental and health protections, like the recent repeal of automobile emission regulations, a move that lacked any credible justification. The EPA has “temporarily” suspended monitoring and punitive measures on polluters with no end date in sight. And we need justice and protection from pollution in communities that have been disproportionately burdened by pollutants for generations.  

Supporting the Environmental Justice Movement 

We must apply a historic lens and complete demographic data on virus cases when allocating resources and supporting communities. We need to ensure there are not just emergency supplies provided, but also an inspection of how underlying conditions are created and can be fixed. We need leaders that understand these inequities and fight to change systems. To create justice, marginalized communities must have decision-making roles in regards to their health, homes, and futures. 

Communities have long fought for environmental and social justice to address these inequities. Under-served communities have historically not had the political power to prevent new sources of pollution and eradicate existing ones. But organizing efforts of communities and activists have led to progress and there are many ways to lend support.  
 

• Urge your Congressional representatives to join the call for demographic data and to support the Environmental Justice for All Act, by Congressman Donald McEachin and Chair Raul Grijalva.   

• Small businesses support local economies and Black women alone are starting their own businesses at a faster rate than any other demographic. For business owners struggling under the economic weight of the pandemic – join our Green Business Network’s call to Congress to do more for small businesses! 

• If you are able, donate funds to Mutual Aid Networks to help provide resources – the African American Policy Forum lists networks here. 

• Volunteer or donate to support environmental and social justice groups like We Act for Environmental Justice, Color of Change, Hip Hop Caucus, NAACP, and GAIA. 

• Eating nutritious foods is a powerful defense against disease, and while food-insecurity has always been a reality in Black and Brown communities, this pandemic has made the necessity of access to healthy food all the more clear. Check out the Black Church Food Network and Soul Fire Farm's online web series for gardening info and join our Climate Victory Gardens campaign.  

• Black and Latinx people are historically under-counted in the U.S. Census, which informs funding and representation in Congress. Make sure you’re counted in the 2020 Census and register to vote!  

• Join the Prison Policy Initiative, National Organization for Women, Black Lives Matter, Mijente and other organizations in standing up for the incarcerated population and take action with the Humane Outbreak Response coalition.  

Position Title:              Development Manager

Supervisor:                   Director of Development & Organizational Advancement

Benefits:                        Excellent benefits including health care, dental, cooperative work environment, and flexible 4 day/32-hour work week

Start Date:                    Winter/Spring 2021

Job Location                 Washington, DC

Compensation:             $56,000 - $63,000

Green America, founded in 1982, is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a socially just and environmentally sustainable society by harnessing economic power – the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace. Our key program areas include climate action and clean energy, regenerative agriculture, labor justice, responsible finance, and green living.  We carry out our work in three strategic and interwoven hubs: 1) our Consumer & Corporate Engagement Programs, 2) our Green Business Network, and 3) our Center for Sustainability Solutions.

The Development Team focuses on increasing revenues for Green America’s work from individual major donors ($1,000+), foundations, and green business supporters.  Team members include the Director of Development & Organizational Advancement, Senior Major Gifts Officer, Foundations Manager, and Development Manager.  The Executive Co-Directors and President & CEO are extended team members, as they play key roles in fundraising.

We seek an experienced development professional to manage and grow Green America’s major gifts program, with a focus on renewing and upgrading current mid-level donors, identifying and qualifying new major gifts prospects, and building and maintaining long-term donor relationships.  The Development Manager plays a critical role in growing Green America’s donor base and revenues from individual donors, and helping to increase our mission impact in the world. The position will be based in Washington, DC at the Green America offices (currently staff are working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic).

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILTIES

1.      Manage and Grow Leaders Circle Portfolio ($1,000-9,999 annual donors)

• Manage a portfolio of ~150 Leaders Circle members, as well as additional donors with capacity and inclination to give at the Leader level or higher.
  
• Reach or exceed annual fundraising goals (2021-22 Leaders Circle goal is $300,000 with increases in subsequent years).
• Build strong donor relationships, set personalized stewardship plans (mail, visits, invitations to virtual and in-person events, engagement in our programs, etc.), and solicit for increased/renewed support.
• Coordinate, write, and personalize renewal mailings, reply forms, and proposals.
• Manage logistics of donor mailings (segment lists, print and personalize letters, design personalized reply forms, handwrite notes, etc.).
• Produce meaningful gift acknowledgements as soon as possible after gift arrives (letters, cards, photo books, digital thank yous, videos, etc).
• Work closely with fellow Development and Executive team members to coordinate donor visit and cultivation efforts.
• Utilize Raiser’s Edge as the primary tool to keep record of and plan for donor identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship.

2.      Identifying and Cultivating New Major Donor Prospects

• Work with Director of Development to identify new major gift prospects using Blackbaud research tools and donor giving history, with focus on $250-$999 donors.
  
• Conduct donor research to identify new top prospects and to prepare for meetings with these donors.
  
• Plan and execute new cultivation strategies to recognize prospects and build a compelling case for them to deepen their support.

3.      Assist in Building Green America’s Legacy Circle

o   Understand the basics of planned giving and communicate these giving opportunities to donors.

o   Include planned giving information in mailings and assist Director of Development on planned giving solicitation strategies (email, mail, inquiry follow up).​​​​

4.      Webinar Series & Other Cultivation Activities

• Coordinate Green America’s Webinar Series with various GA teams and maximize it as a donor cultivation tool.
• In coordination with Executive Team, produce quarterly Policy Highlights emails.
• Travel locally and nationally (post-pandemic) to meet with and visit donors.
• Assist in the coordination of at least 3-5 in-person or virtual events per year (“Climate Solutions Tours,” film screenings, happy hours, luncheons, etc.).
• Assist in the production of promotional materials for use by the Development Team.

5.      Other Duties as Assigned

• Work on other Development related duties as they are assigned to you by the Director of Development. (Exs: new virtual events, data mining, donor research, portfolio review, budgeting, campaign planning, etc.)
• Participate in staff meetings and the annual operating plan & budget process.
• Participate in Cross Departmental Teams: The success of our organizational work includes the voluntary participation of staff members from all levels of the organization in cross departmental teams addressing a range of issues to strengthen our impact and planning, as time and other work commitments allow.
   

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelors or advanced degree required.
• 5+ years of experience in major gifts fundraising and demonstrated successful solicitation of $1,000+ gifts.
• Deep understanding of donor-centered major gifts fundraising and how to deepen engagement and support.
• Experience with qualifying and cultivating major donor prospects and increasing their support over time.
• Ability to work very independently/be self-directed AND work closely with a team.
• Strong background in nonprofit fundraising and desire to grow in this field.
• Ability to learn quickly and respond to donor requests and gifts promptly.
• Exemplary relationship-building and written and verbal communication skills.
• Basic understanding of environmental sustainability, social/labor justice, and green economy issues.
• Ability to obtain a deep understanding of Green America’s program areas and communicate this understanding to donors and prospects.
• Strong ability to manage multiple tasks and projects at the same time.
• Proficiency with Raiser’s Edge (or other CRM/donor database that allows for transfer of data skills).
• Valid driver’s license and ability and willingness to travel.
• Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE) certification a plus.

If interested please send a cover letter and resume to Kathy Harget, Director of Development & Organizational Advancement: kharget@greenamerica.org.

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Green America is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without discrimination regarding: actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, related medical conditions, breastfeeding, or reproductive health disorders), age (18 years of age or older), marital status (including domestic partnership and parenthood), personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, family responsibilities, genetic information, disability, matriculation, political affiliation, citizenship status, credit information or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Harassment on the basis of a protected characteristic is included as a form of discrimination and is strictly prohibited.

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Green America is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without discrimination regarding: actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, related medical conditions, breastfeeding, or reproductive health disorders), age (18 years of age or older), marital status (including domestic partnership and parenthood), personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, family responsibilities, genetic information, disability, matriculation, political affiliation, citizenship status, credit information or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Harassment on the basis of a protected characteristic is included as a form of discrimination and is strictly prohibited.

Whether they’re hollow or filled with ganache, every Easter egg contains a complex, globalised trade network within it. The cocoa used to make the chocolate was most likely grown in West Africa – around 70% of the world’s supply is.

Once grown, the beans might be sold to a large processor, to be made into butter, powder or liqueur. Though they’re not household names, 60% of the world’s cocoa products are processed by three companies: Barry Callebaut, Cargill and Olam.

From there, the processed cocoa will be sold again – probably to one of five major conglomerates: Mondelez, Mars, Ferrero, Hershey’s or Nestle, who alongside bean-to-bar manufacturer Lindt, produce 80% of the world’s chocolate.

At the very start of this chain, the potential for damaging practices is huge. Since 2001, the use of harmful child labour – a form of modern slavery – on cocoa farms has been an issue known to manufacturers, politicians and the general public. Since 1960, 90% of Ivory Coast’s rainforests, including National Parks, have been lost to deforestation.

The CSIRO estimate the average Australian consumes 32kg of chocolate a year, and in the absence of tight legislation, it’s up to consumers to make informed choices. But the complex supply chains that hide these dirty secrets make it difficult.

This year, three NGOs – Mighty Earth, Be Slavery Free and Green America – have banded together to produce an Easter chocolate guide that helps consumers sort good and bad eggs. The desk review looks at the policies and promises of major chocolate manufacturers and processors, and assigns them scores based on six factors relating to their environmental and labour practices.

In Australia and New Zealand, iconic New Zealand chocolate brand Whittaker’s came out on top, winning a Good Egg Award for their “leadership in policies and practices to end child labour, moving towards a living income for farmers and caring for the environment”.

“And their chocolate tastes fabulous,” says Carolyn Kitto of Be Slavery Free. “They really have earned this score.”

Swiss brand Lindt – who oversee all parts of the chocolate manufacturing process – also scored very highly. “They have the most thorough on-the-ground farmer relationship of the big chocolate companies,” says Be Slavery Free’s Fuzz Kitto.

Be Slavery Free have been investigating labour practices in the chocolate industry for more than two decades; and they have noticed a significant positive change in the last three years.

When they ran a similar assessment in 2012, Carolyn Kitto says you could fit Australian supermarkets’ ethical chocolate offerings “on an A5 page”. “Now there are so many, we have to put it up online to show them all,” adds Fuzz.

The guide only looks at manufacturers large enough to have their own programs, so major Australian chocolate brands like Haigh’s and Darryl Lee were not included in the guide – though both are good options for Australian chocolate buyers. Fuzz notes that after a significant lobbying efforts, in the past year Darryl Lee “have just done a massive turn around in Australia, it’s been a phenomenal thing to watch”.

If you want to buy chocolate not covered in the guide, Carolyn recommends looking for certification from either the Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade or Barry Callebaut’s Cocoa Horizons for an indication of better labour and environmental policies.

On the other end of the spectrum, luxury American chocolate brand Godiva was slapped with a Rotten Egg Award. Because “they used other people’s programs without being proactively involved in them,” says Fuzz. Carolyn adds: “ They’re basically saying they expect someone else to do the work rather than taking the responsibility themselves.”

Though the recent changes have been promising – particularly major manufacturers’ willingness to show transparency, and engage in a dialogue with consumers – Be Slavery Free says there is still a long way to go in ridding chocolate of its bitter elements. “We are continually saying ‘you’ve got these programs, show us the results’” says Fuzz. “There’s not been an on-the-ground assessment or baseline for us to know what the improvements are. That’s one of the things we’ve been pushing for.”

The organisation is particularly focused on fighting poverty, by ensuring cocoa farmers are paid a living wage. Fuzz explains: “How do we get them a decent price for their cocoa so they don’t have to use their children for labour?

Further regulation, with real consequences for non-compliance, is also a major area for improvement. In Australia, the Modern Slavery Act requires entities with an annual consolidated revenue of more than $100m to “report annually on the risks of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains, and actions to address those risks.” However, Fuzz notes “the difficulty is that ... although it’s mandatory to report, there’s no consequences if you don’t.”

“We wouldn’t regard that we actually have a mandatory regulation scheme, because if there are no consequences, it’s sort of like saying ‘Well you have to pay tax, but if you don’t, we’re not going to worry about it,’ ” Carolyn says.

Contact Contempl8 T-Shirts: Website | Facebook | Email 

For Christopher Loch, making eco-friendly t-shirts began as an art project. He had been involved in activist work for years and wanted to make important messages catchy and easy to share.

“I was politically active in college when I was going to political science school,” says Christopher. “I saw this huge world of activism that needed to be done. I felt like I could be involved directly instead of sitting on the sidelines feeling scared.”

After the events of 9/11, Christopher started making t-shirts to call out problems with the war in Iraq. One read ‘will kill for oil’ that was of President George W. Bush holding a cardboard sign next to a gas station.

“I did stuff like that,” says Christopher. “It was all intended to raise awareness and get people to realize what was happening wasn’t good and then hopefully get involved with activism, progressively. So that’s how I started my company. It was all just an art project.”

At first, Christopher had his shirts made at a printer, but after a few batches, he realized that it would be cheaper for him to make them himself. Along the way, he realized how the printing industry contributes to pollution.

“I had learned from you guys, actually, when you were Co-op America, that there were all types of problems within the printing industry,” he says. He bought screen printers and began printing t-shirts with water-based inks.

Nearly 20 years after the first batch of t-shirts, Christopher is still in business in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has sold t-shirts across the country. The name, Contempl8, came from his desire to make shirts that inspired critical thinking, but with a catchy twist.

Nowadays, Contempl8 T-shirts specializes in eco-friendly, custom order t-shirts. While Christopher no longer prints political t-shirts (unless custom ordered), he is still dedicated to social change and strives to balance the business’s environmental approach with social responsibility.

“As far as sourcing, I try to steer everyone to organic cotton and bamboo and hemp products,” he says, adding that recycled polyester clothing shed microplastics that pollute the ocean. Contempl8 T-shirts also aims to use as many materials that are made in the USA and/or by workers who are treated fairly via Fairtrade certification, are sweatshop-free, or are union made. The business also runs 100 percent on wind power and Christopher keeps the environmentally-conscious mentality in all other aspects of his operations.

“Even on my screens I will save the tape I use and reapply that tape to another screen,” he says. “Some people would say ‘aw, that’s peanuts, it doesn’t amount to anything.’ But it does, over the course of time, and if everybody does stuff like that it can really go a long way.”

Contempl8 T-shirts is a truly small business as Christopher is the only one running the operation. And he believes it is well worth the time, effort, and dedication.

“It’s been a great rewarding journey figuring that stuff out, even if I’ve never gotten close to rich doing it,” he says. “It’s still something I can look back on and feel proud of that I was figuring this stuff out and doing it the right way.”

Contempl8 T-shirts is a Green Business Network at Green America certified business member. Support this small business by ordering your next round of eco-friendly, custom t-shirts from Contempl8 T-shirts.

Green America’s Cool It campaign tackles potent, dangerous greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that are used for refrigerant management and that are exacerbating the climate crisis.

Congress has introduced a new bill with bipartisan support (S. 2754), the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act, to bolster our national economy and phase down the use of HFCs as refrigerants.

This is great news for the climate because HFCs have up to 9,000 times more warming power than carbon dioxide. As the gases leak out of refrigeration systems, there is not only an environmental benefit to phasing down HFCs, but also a significant economic one. There are available alternatives which can help businesses cut costs. Many refrigerants with zero or near-zero impact on the climate are shown to be more energy efficient than HFCs, reducing energy costs.

Improved refrigerant management is a win for businesses and the climate. This legislation is a critical step to achieving the substantial benefits of better refrigerant practices. The AIM Act is projected to create 150,000 U.S. jobs and generate nearly $39 billion in economic benefits annually by 2027. This will keep the United States competitive in the changing, global refrigerants market.

Green America's Refrigerant Management Testimony

On April 7, 2020 the Green Business Network submitted the following testimony in support of The American Innovation and Manufacturing Act. The Act supports both job creation and the reduction of climate-changing emissions (HFCs or hydroflurocarbons). Below is testimony from Green America's Executive Co-Director Fran Teplitz.

Green America greatly appreciates the opportunity to provide this written testimony on S. 2754, the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act.

We are pleased to support this bipartisan legislation, which will create economic growth in the refrigerants sector while phasing down substances that devastate our climate. The measures in this legislation will ensure that the United States is a leader on this issue and that our industry will remain competitive in the rapidly changing landscape of the global refrigerant market.

Green America is a national non-profit organization founded in 1982 to harness economic power – the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace – to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society. We represent over 250,000 individual members and activists and more than 2,000 business members, most of which are smaller businesses and leaders in innovation and sustainable practices. These businesses consistently prove that sustainability can also be good for their business and enhance their bottom line.

The AIM Act is a bipartisan, commonsense measure to bolster American manufacturers and reduce the use of substances that warm our atmosphere at extremely high rates. It is modeled after the Montreal Protocol’s highly successful phasedown of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in order to protect our ozone layer. However, the void left by the phasedown of CFCs was replaced with hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), greenhouse gases that do not impact the ozone layer but are extraordinarily damaging to our climate.

HFCs are manmade greenhouse gases with up to 9,000 times more global warming potential than carbon dioxide. They are the fastest growing greenhouse gas and if left unrestricted, could contribute half a degree Celsius of warming by the end of the century, quickly accelerating us beyond the limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming as set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

These gases leak out through faulty refrigeration systems, meaning there is not only an environmental benefit to phasing down HFCs, but also a significant economic one. There are available alternatives which can help businesses cut costs. Many refrigerants with zero or near-zero Global Warming Potential (GWP) are shown to be more energy efficient than HFCs, reducing energy costs.

Additionally, while this legislation outlines the gradual phase down of the production and use of HFCs, it could also lead to better refrigerant management, such as improvements in leak monitoring and repair. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that supermarket retailers lose one quarter of refrigerant due to leaks. The Environmental Investigation Agency reports that the sector’s refrigerant leaks equate to 45 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent annually. If these leaks were reduced, the industry would save an estimated $108 million every year. Clearly, improved refrigerant management is a win for businesses and the climate.

This legislation is a critical step to achieving the substantial benefits of better refrigerant practices. The AIM Act is projected to create 150,000 U.S. jobs and generate nearly $39 billion in economic benefits annually by 2027. This will keep the United States competitive in the changing global refrigerants market. For all these reasons, this legislation has sweeping industry support.

Reducing HFC refrigerants will work to address their severe impact on the climate, as well as support American suppliers and businesses. Therefore, Green America supports the passage of the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, S. 2754 and its companion bill H.R. 5544, however, our organization strongly opposes any state preemption provisions or amendments. While we support passing and upholding a robust national standard and program, including a provision for preemption is unnecessary and could weaken support of this legislation.

Please contact us for any further information on Green America, our Green Business Network, and our support of this legislation.

WASHINGTON, DC – April 9, 2020 – Carter’s, the largest U.S. retailer of baby clothes, is taking an important first step towards limiting toxic chemicals in its supply chain, and it is doing so as a result of pressure from Green America and its members.

Green America launched a campaign in 2019 and published a report showing Carter’s was among the worst actors in the textile industry on environmental and social practices. Nearly 15,000 consumers have joined Green America in calling on Carter’s to clean up its supply chain and release a Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (MRSL), which would go a step further than an Restricted Substances List (which only protects consumers) by limiting harmful chemicals that workers and their communities are exposed to in the manufacturing process.

Carter’s actions include releasing an RSL, disclosing information about energy usage and waste reduction, and providing greater transparency about efforts to protect human rights within its supply chain.

Green America lauded the move but pointed out that the company should do more.

“A public RSL is a good first step, but without an MRSL, it is a partial solution at best. Carter’s must now also prioritize the health of workers in its supply chain and limit their exposure to harmful chemicals through a MRSL,” said Charlotte Tate, manager of Labor Justice Campaigns at Green America. “We are glad to see Carter’s take steps to protect its customers, but we urge them to take it further and not leave workers out of the solution.”

“Major industry players are often not transparent about what chemicals are used, and we do not have sufficient understanding of the impacts of the thousands of chemicals used on human and environmental health,” stated Todd Larsen, executive co-director of Consumer and Corporate Engagement at Green America. “Though, some states, including Washington, Oregon, and Vermont, have disclosure requirements for children’s products sold within that state. In recent years, Carter’s has disclosed using harmful chemicals like formaldehyde, arsenic and arsenic compounds, and cadmium, and that’s why it is good to see Carter’s taking steps to start protecting the children who wear the company’s clothes.”

Carter’s also committed to supporting suppliers in obtaining Oeko-Tex certification to limit chemical usage in raw materials and has sourced more organic cotton then in previous years. Using organic cotton limits the harmful chemicals that workers are exposed to in growing and manufacturing, and it limits chemical runoff which pollutes waterways and local communities.

Over 8,000 chemicals are used in textile manufacturing. An estimated 20 percent of industrial water pollution is attributed to the textile manufacturing industry. Textile production uses an estimated 43 million tons of chemicals every year, not including the pesticides used to grow natural resources such as cotton.

ABOUT GREEN AMERICA

Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses and individuals to solve today’s social and environmental problems. http://www.GreenAmerica.org

MEDIA CONTACT: Max Karlin for Green America, (703) 276-3255, or mkarlin@hastingsgroup.com.

International Advocacy Groups Publish Joint Consumer Purchasing Guide Just in Time for the Easter Holiday 

Mighty Earth, Green America, and Be Slavery Free published a joint Easter scorecard, analyzing what the world’s biggest chocolate companies are doing to address social and environmental concerns. Godiva receives the “Rotten Egg Award” for its poor performance, and Tony’s Chocolonely receives the “Good Egg Award” for its efforts to reshape the industry. The Easter scorecard has been published annually by Mighty Earth since 2018.

“Equipped with this scorecard, consumers can buy their Easter chocolates knowing whether their treats are likely tainted by deforestation and human rights abuses,” said Mighty Earth Senior Campaign Director, Etelle Higonnet. “Consumers’ purchases highlight that we, at a time of global crisis, are all truly interconnected and that we are in this together.”

The groups surveyed 13 chocolate companies and 8 cocoa suppliers, examining their policies in six of the most pressing sustainability issues facing the chocolate industry: mandatory due diligence; transparency and traceability; deforestation and climate change; agroforestry; living income policies; and child labor, focusing primarily on child labor monitoring and remediation systems. 

“Easter is the peak holiday for chocolate sales around the world, with a greater market share than Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or Halloween. However, poorer countries where cocoa is grown may not have the financial muscle to ride the pandemic out. Communities already suffering from malnutrition and low cash flow will be hard hit,” said Fuzz Kitto, Co-National Director of Be Slavery Free in Australia. “It’s all the more reason for consumers to make a difference and buy chocolates from companies working to end environmental and labor abuses in the cocoa industry.” 

Chocolate maker, Godiva, was given The Rotten Egg Award for failing to take responsibility for the conditions with which its chocolates are made, despite making huge profits off its chocolate. Godiva rated poorly across the board. In comparison to other chocolate brands, Godiva has made very little progress on social and environmental issues in the last few years. 

Tony’s Chocolonely, which sources from the same supplier as Godiva, earned the Golden Egg Award. When comparing the two companies' efforts, the differences are stark. Tony’s is working to demonstrate that an ethical business model is possible in the chocolate industry and works to support its supplier to improve its operations. Tony’s performed well in every category across the scorecard.

“2020 is a big year in the chocolate sector, two decades since the world’s chocolate manufacturers signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol, an agreement to clean up the industry. Sadly, very little has changed,” said Charlotte Tate, Labor Justice Campaigns Manager at Green America. “Nonetheless, the industry is recognizing voluntary initiatives are not working and more companies are calling for government regulation. Businesses are recognizing that they cannot solve these issues alone and need greater government regulation.”

Roughly 2.1 million children work in cocoa, 96 percent of whom are found to be in hazardous labor according to researchers at Tulane University. In recent years, research from the World Resources Institute found that there has been an increase in deforestation in top cocoa producing countries, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. Cocoa farmers often live in extreme poverty, despite chocolate companies raking in billions every year. 

While progress is being made in the direct cocoa supply chains, there are still big concerns about the harmful impacts of companies' indirect supply chains on the environment, particularly deforestation, and people. There is little transparency about what is occurring in the indirect cocoa supply chains. These issues demonstrate an urgent need for increased efforts to transform the cocoa industry into a sustainable industry. 

About Mighty Earth

Mighty Earth is a global environmental campaign organization that works to protect forests, conserve oceans, and address climate change. We work in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and North America to drive large-scale action towards environmentally responsible agriculture that protects native ecosystems, wildlife, and water, and respects local community rights. Mighty Earth’s team has played a decisive role in persuading the world’s largest food and agriculture companies to dramatically improve their environmental and social policies and practices. More information on Mighty Earth can be found at www.mightyearth.org/.

About Green America

Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses and individuals to solve today’s social and environmental problems. http://www.GreenAmerica.org

MEDIA CONTACT:  Max Karlin for Green America, (703) 276-3255, or mkarlin@hastingsgroup.com.

About Be Slavery Free

Be Slavery Free is a coalition of organisations with on the ground experience in preventing, disrupting and remediating modern slavery. Since 2007 they have been working with the chocolate industry, advocating for addressing child labour and slavery. https://beslaveryfree.com  

In Australia contact:  Fuzz Kitto +61 (0) 407 931 115

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mighty Earth, Green America, and Be Slavery Free published a joint Easter scorecard, analyzing what the world’s biggest chocolate companies are doing to address social and environmental concerns. Godiva receives the “Rotten Egg Award” for its poor performance, and Tony’s Chocolonely receives the “Golden Egg Award” for its efforts to reshape the industry. The Easter scorecard has been published annually by Mighty Earth since 2018.

“Equipped with this scorecard, consumers can buy their Easter chocolates knowing whether their treats are likely tainted by deforestation and human rights abuses,” said Mighty Earth Senior Campaign Director, Etelle Higonnet. “Consumers’ purchases highlight that we, at a time of global crisis, are all truly interconnected and that we are in this together.”

The groups surveyed 13 chocolate companies and 8 cocoa suppliers, examining their policies in six of the most pressing sustainability issues facing the chocolate industry: mandatory due diligence; transparency and traceability; deforestation and climate change; agroforestry; living income policies; and child labor, focusing primarily on child labor monitoring and remediation systems.

“Easter is the peak holiday for chocolate sales around the world, with a greater market share than Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or Halloween. However, poorer countries where cocoa is grown may not have the financial muscle to ride the pandemic out. Communities already suffering from malnutrition and low cash flow will be hard hit,” said Fuzz Kitto, Co-National Director of Be Slavery Free in Australia. “It’s all the more reason for consumers to make a difference and buy chocolates from companies working to end environmental and labor abuses in the cocoa industry.”

Chocolate maker, Godiva, was given The Rotten Egg Award for failing to take responsibility for the conditions with which its chocolates are made, despite making huge profits off its chocolate. Godiva rated poorly across the board. In comparison to other chocolate brands, Godiva has made very little progress on social and environmental issues in the last few years.

Tony’s Chocolonely, which sources from the same supplier as Godiva, earned the Golden Egg Award. When comparing the two companies' efforts, the differences are stark. Tony’s is working to demonstrate that an ethical business model is possible in the chocolate industry and works to support its supplier to improve its operations. Tony’s performed well in every category across the scorecard.

“2020 is a big year in the chocolate sector, two decades since the world’s chocolate manufacturers signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol, an agreement to clean up the industry. Sadly, very little has changed,” said Charlotte Tate, Labor Justice Campaigns Manager at Green America. “Nonetheless, the industry is recognizing voluntary initiatives are not working and more companies are calling for government regulation. Businesses are recognizing that they cannot solve these issues alone and need greater government regulation.”

Roughly 2.1 million children work in cocoa, 96 percent of whom are found to be in hazardous labor according to researchers at Tulane University. In recent years, research from the World Resources Institute found that there has been an increase in deforestation in top cocoa producing countries, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. Cocoa farmers often live in extreme poverty, despite chocolate companies raking in billions every year.

While progress is being made in the direct cocoa supply chains, there are still big concerns about the harmful impacts of companies' indirect supply chains on the environment, particularly deforestation, and people. There is little transparency about what is occurring in the indirect cocoa supply chains. These issues demonstrate an urgent need for increased efforts to transform the cocoa industry into a sustainable industry.

About Mighty Earth

Mighty Earth is a global environmental campaign organization that works to protect forests, conserve oceans, and address climate change. We work in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and North America to drive large-scale action towards environmentally responsible agriculture that protects native ecosystems, wildlife, and water, and respects local community rights. Mighty Earth’s team has played a decisive role in persuading the world’s largest food and agriculture companies to dramatically improve their environmental and social policies and practices. www.mightyearth.org/.

About Green America

Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses and individuals to solve today’s social and environmental problems. http://www.GreenAmerica.org

About Be Slavery Free

Be Slavery Free is a coalition of organisations with on the ground experience in preventing, disrupting and remediating modern slavery. Since 2007 they have been working with the chocolate industry, advocating for addressing child labour and slavery. https://beslaveryfree.com

What’s really going into the chocolate we buy? The Chocolate Scorecard surveyed the world’s biggest chocolate companies to find out! 

Some are rising to the challenge of making cocoa sustainable, unfortunately most continue to ignore consumer demand for chocolate that’s free of deforestation, farmer poverty, and child labor. 

This guide informs the choices of consumers like you. Together, we can transform the chocolate industry into one that prioritizes people and the planet. 

Versión en español aquí. 

Sign our petition asking the world's largest chocolate companies to address child labor, farmer poverty, deforestation, and pesticide usage. 

Chocolate Scorecard Methodology  

The Chocolate Scorecard uses the Brundtland Commission's definition of sustainability:  

"meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Additional components of the methodology in 2023 included:  

1. Using subject matter experts to undertake the scoring in each section; 
2. Aligning the survey with the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi),  
3. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and  
4. The Accountability Framework (AFi). 

The survey covered six categories:  

1. Traceability and Transparency 
2. Living Income  
3. Child Labor  
4. Deforestation and Climate 
5. Agroforestry 
6. Agrichemical Management 

An explanation of the categories: 

Traceability and transparency 

According to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a business is responsible for any and all adverse human rights impacts either through their own activities or due to their business relationships with other parties. It is not appropriate to ‘outsource’ this responsibility or to shift the responsibility to the next or another tier in the supply chain.  

A company that lacks knowledge of its cocoa’s origin (an issue of traceability) cannot genuinely ensure it is not tainted by extreme poverty, child labor, deforestation, or other abuses. Without transparency on this traceability, civil society cannot hold companies accountable. Transparent traceability is a crucial bedrock for all other reforms.  

Traceability and transparency constitute 20% of the total overall score. 

Living Income 

A living income is:  

The net annual income required for a household in a particular place to afford a decent standard of living for all members of that household. Elements of a decent standard of living include food, water, housing, education, healthcare, transportation, clothing, and other essential needs including provisions for unexpected events.  

This is not a reality for cocoa farmers and their families in West Africa. Many live in extreme poverty, making them more vulnerable to hunger, malnutrition, health crises, and other social challenges, including exposure to child labor.  

The highest scores were achieved by companies that are:  

1. using an actual living income calculation to benchmark their programs; and/or 
2. making payments to farmers on top of Living Income Differential (LID) set by the Governments of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire and certification premiums; and/or   
3. investing in development projects determined in consultation with the communities they are sourcing from.  

The Living Income category contributed 20% to the total overall score. 

Child Labor 

Despite voluntary corporate efforts promising to eradicate it, the prevalence of child labor has increased by 14% over the past decade.  

1. 1.56 million children exposed to child labor in cocoa production (including approximately 790,000 children in Côte d’Ivoire and 770,000 in Ghana)
2. 1.48 million children were exposed to at least one component of hazardous child labor in cocoa production; and 
3. Between 2008/09 and 2018/19, children exposed to agrichemical products increasing approximately five-fold from 5% to 24% in aggregate

Poverty and extremely low incomes are linked to children's exposure to child labor and hazardous child labor, depriving them of their future and subjecting them to abuse.  

The Chocolate Score analyzed responses in three areas for this category:  

1. Any child labor policy, monitoring and remediation system or equivalent (Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation Systems - CLMRS);  
2. Percentage of farms covered by the scheme; and  
3. Presence of a plan to scale up programs and processes to address child labor.

The Child Labor category contributed to 20% of the total overall score. 

Deforestation and climate 

Cocoa is a major global driver of forest destruction. West Africa produces 75% of the world’s cocoa, with Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana being the largest producers. These two countries have lost most of their forest cover in the past sixty years - around 94% and 80%, respectively, with approximately one-third of forest loss from cocoa growing.  

Almost everywhere cocoa grows worldwide, from Asia to Africa to Latin America, studies show it is tied to deforestation, which negatively impacts climate change. As such, this section also focuses on the industry’s contribution to global annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions leading to severe climate change.  

The chocolate scorecard analyzed the responses in the following areas for this category:  

1. Application of no-deforestation policy to global sourcing and percentage of cocoa purchased through a deforestation-free monitoring system;  
2. Percentage of cocoa sourced from deforested areas since various cut-off dates;  
3. Detailed plans for how to respond to evidence of suppliers sourcing cocoa from recently  deforested land; and
4. Policy to achieve net zero carbon emissions company-wide or using science-based targets. 

Deforestation and climate change actions contributed 20% of the total overall score. 

Agroforestry 

Though cocoa has been a major driver of deforestation worldwide, it can become the reverse - an agent of re-greening around the planet. Agroforestry, as opposed to pesticide-soaked monoculture, is a more ecologically sound way of growing cocoa and restoring farming landscapes.  

Scientific research demonstrates that robust agroforestry cocoa systems are better for the planet, carbon sequestration, soil and air moisture retention, and biodiversity. Studies show it is also better for farmers’ food security and income diversification.  

The Chocolate Scorecard analyzed the responses in four areas for this category:  

1. Any agroforestry policy and its definition;  
2. Application of the agroforestry policy, either globally or to West Africa only;  
3. Assessment and monitoring of the agroforestry policy;  
4. Support and investment in farmers within the supply chain to transition to agroforestry growing methods 

Agroforestry contributed 10% to the total overall score. 

Agrichemical Management 

As we face a mass extinction crisis, much of which is driven by chemicals in agriculture, chocolate companies need to reform their current approaches and adopt practices that do rely on agrichemicals.  

Increased productivity via chemical inputs cannot be the primary means for companies sourcing increasing amounts of cocoa. Instead, the long-term sustainability of the industry, the health of the farming communities (who often rely on neighboring rivers for drinking and bathing), soil health, and the planet's health must become a priority.  

To achieve this, companies must eliminate the most hazardous pesticides entirely and move towards reducing the overall use of agrichemicals. They should support farmers in transitioning to agricultural practices that do not rely on dangerous chemicals while helping them maintain their yield and income.  

Companies should emphasize non-chemical interventions such as grafting, pruning, hand pollination, and education around best agroecological practices and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to increase yields for farmers.  

The Chocolate Scorecard analyzed the responses in three areas for this category:  

1. Any stated targets and policy to reduce pesticides;  
2. Assessment and monitoring of hazardous pesticides in the supply chain and action to phase the use of hazardous pesticides out;  
3. Support for the adoption of non-chemical alternatives. 

Pesticides contributed 10% to the total overall score.