Business View Civil & Municipal | Volume 2, Issue 11

117 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 2, ISSUE 11 “We’ve done one-on-one conversations with BIPOC frontline leaders all around Asheville,” Jiménez reports. “Through those, we’ve come to a deeper understanding of how critical it is to consider structural racism and the climate crisis as intertwined realities. People were clear that in order for us to be resilient and prepared in a climate crisis, there had to be a few things. One was land sovereignty. It’s BIPOC people having meaningful access to land ownership and land trust, for everything from shelter to water to food. Another was the resources, spaces, and support to create resiliency hubs – mutual aid systems that our communities have created as ways of making sure we’re taken care of. A third one was BIPOC green economy. Who’s retrofitting the buildings? Who’s creating and installing solar panels? Because that’s an entire economy.” In subsequent phases of the project, Asheville’s Climate Justice Initiative hopes to get city government and frontline communities on parallel tracks to tackle the climate emergency. ASHEV I LLE , NORTH CAROL INA “Part of our attempt is to try to figure out ways where we, from a city government perspective, can learn from and lift up the work that’s already going on in our community,” offers Sustainability Coordinator, Kiera Bulan. “We’d like to continue to build these bridges so that our community members who are doing this good work are informing government processes.” One thing that will shape policies and projects going forward is a screening tool informed by the Climate Justice Data Map, listening sessions and story circles with elders from Asheville’s historic communities of color. “It’ll be a tool that we can employ within our departments, to be able to really evaluate city plans and projects through the lens of the lived climate emergency,” Bulan explains. The Office of Sustainability’s next steps in this climate justice work will be to turn its attention to grassroots actors as critical agents in the transition toward sustainability, mitigation, and