Dates/Time
June 1, 2017
10:00 am-12:30 pm
Location
LACI | La Kretz Innovation Campus
Funders are invited to join a conversation with leaders working on a set of strategies to usher in a green infrastructure paradigm for Southern California.
With temperatures rising in Southern California due to climate change, our region is facing severe threats including heat mortality, flooding, and long-term water shortages, particularly in low-income communities of color. Much of the region’s infrastructure developed in the 20th century only compounds these challenges: impermeable asphalt and concrete covering ecosystems, channelized rivers, and a lack of greenspace. Green infrastructure spending represents an enormous opportunity to mitigate these threats with billions of dollars in public funds to ensure new projects provide sustainable and equitable projects, especially as it relates to storm water capture: what we do with the rain that falls in our region, putting it to use or letting it go to waste.
Even with new funds becoming available, the traditional agency response may continue investing in “grey infrastructure”, which results in only minimal benefits such as economic development, sustained long-term jobs for urban youth, and equity outcomes. On the other hand, green infrastructure can be designed specifically and cost-effectively to produce equity outcomes as a priority. Green infrastructure also brings multiple benefits such as saving energy, enhancing our water supply, generating green jobs, and supporting healthier communities, as opposed to single benefits from grey infrastructure.
For the philanthropic sector, an opportunity exists to invest in expanding local capacity of people and organizations to build and maintain green infrastructure, and to help advocate for green infrastructure to be prioritized over grey when the mitigations are being designed. Join this conversation with leaders working on a set of strategies to usher in a green infrastructure paradigm for Southern California, including civic leadership, agency coordination, potential ballot measures to generate funding, and grassroots community engagement. You’ll connect with funders currently funding in the space along with those interested to learn more about how green infrastructure can lead to better public health, climate resiliency, community engagement, and livable communities. After the program, we invite you to connect with other funders over a networking lunch.
This is a joint event of Smart Growth California and the Southern California Grantmakers Environmental Funders Group.
SPEAKERS
- Alexandra Paxton, Program Officer, Water Foundation (Moderator)
- Elva Yañez, Director, Prevention Institute
- Roxanna Tynan, Executive Director, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy
- Cindy Montañez, Chief Executive Officer, TreePeople
- Katy Young, Deputy for the Environment and Arts, Office of Sheila Kuehl, LA County Board of Supervisors
