Giving Compass' Take:
- Aimee Barnes shares eight ways to achieve a more effective and equitable approach to climate action and embrace the social change happening around us.
- How can you support climate action with your charitable dollars?
- Read more about how you can make an impact on climate change.
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In this moment — as a global pandemic persists, economies falter, healthcare systems crack and systematic racism and injustice are exposed — we, the climate community, must widen our lens and open our eyes.
To more effectively and equitably stop climate change, we must embrace and learn from the change happening around us — and rapidly change what we do and how we do it.
At the core of this shift is the recognition of the inextricable link between climate change and the issues of poverty, inequality and race. As climate justice advocate Mary Annaïse Heglar recently wrote, ”Climate change is not the Great Equalizer. It is the Great Multiplier.”
What follows is a snapshot of our rapidly shifting landscape, and a roadmap of sorts, to get us on a more inclusive, just and productive path forward. We cannot turn back.
- It is no coincidence that we are experiencing a convergence of multiple crises.
- These crises are converging because they are all related. The crises we now face derive from a set of intersectional¹ preconditions, including racism, structural inequality and an extractive economy, and they require integrated, cross-sectoral solutions. Our approach to achieving a climate-safe future must reflect this reality.
- Despite the integrated nature of these crises, we continue to combat climate change in silos.
- We have no time to waste and the longer we wait, the worse the impacts will be.
- Fortunately, more equitable, integrated and cross-sectoral climate strategies will also be more effective in achieving our climate goals, including around adaptation and resilience.
- Addressing endemic racism and inequity in the climate movement is one part of the solution when it comes to achieving more effective and durable climate action.
- It’s time to put our money where our mouth is and shift from community engagement to community empowerment.
- A more effective, and more equitable approach is possible.
Read the full article about an equitable approach to climate action by Aimee Barnes at Medium.