The third blog in our series highlights how LISC supports UN Sustainable Development Goal 13 – Climate Action. Goal 13 speaks to the need for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. The UN presents climate change as the single biggest threat to equitable development, with the communities most directly affected by climate change being disproportionately lower-wealth and communities of color.

A 2020 article by the New York Times illustrates this impact on Black and Brown communities by examining how historical redlining—the discriminatory practice of withholding financial services from residents of communities due to race or ethnicity—has left these same communities on average five degrees hotter in summer. They have fewer trees and parks and more paved surfaces such as asphalt or highways that trap heat.

As such, by grounding a response to climate change in equity and inclusion, impact investors and community developers can create economic opportunity and revitalize communities, while also helping limit global temperature rise.

LISC believes there is a greater role for community development financial institutions (CDFIs), including ourselves, to play in financing the transition to a green economy, and ensuring that the transition is equitable and just. While global investments in the green economy saw a 17 percent rise from 2013 to 2016, largely due to private investment in renewable energy, investment in the fossil fuel industry continues to exceed capital for climate activities.

Read the full article about investing in climate action by Anna Smukowski at LISC.