Success Stories

LEADING THE WAY

NY RENEWS

Climate justice organizers in New York State are creating a model for the US and the world. In 2019, the most sweeping climate justice legislation in the country was passed through the efforts of NY Renews, a coalition of 360 environmental, justice, faith, labor, and community groups across New York State. The law mandates the elimination of fossil fuel use by 2050 and allocates 40% of climate and energy investments to environmental justice communities.

Decades of community organizing in NYC built the foundation for this extraordinary success. The NYC Environmental Justice Alliance helped launch NY Renews and has elevated the advocacy of grassroots organizations in NYC’s low-income communities of color for over 30 years. Similarly, coalition member WE ACT for Environmental Justice was formed in 1988 in West Harlem. These organizations have dramatically increased the visibility and participation of the most impacted communities at the local, state, and national levels.

LANDBACK

LANDBACK is an Indigenous-led movement led across North America, also known as Turtle Island, to restore Indigenous sovereignty over and stewardship of ancestral lands. LANDBACK seeks a measure of social and cultural restoration in response to Native American genocide and displacement, as well as ecological restoration that can mend and protect against climate impacts through techniques that are part of what professional ecologists call “traditional ecological knowledge.” These techniques include planned burning that can help prevent extreme fire events.

NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led activist organization founded in 2018, is working on LANDBACK with 200+ Indigenous groups in the US. In North America and around the world, millions of acres of land have been transferred to Indigenous tribes.

“REAL PEOPLE EXERCISING REAL POWER PROVED THAT THE ARC OF THE POLITICAL UNIVERSE IN NEW YORK STATE COULD BE BENT TOWARD CLIMATE JUSTICE. THIS OUTCOME WAS NEITHER PREORDAINED NOR POLITICALLY POSSIBLE BACK IN 2015 WHEN GRASSROOTS ADVOCATES UNITED TO FORM NY RENEWS.”
–PUSH BUFFALO

• Sources

  2019 CLCPA passage and NY Renews
  The Nation: New York Is About to Pass One of the Most Ambitious Climate Bills in the Land
  The New York Times: New York to Approve One of the World’s Most Ambitious Climate Plans
  Vox: New York just passed the most ambitious climate target in the country

  What is NY Renews and who is part of it
  NY Renews

  40% EJ/CJ investments and no fossil fuels by 2050 in CLCPA
  NY Renews: Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (2019)

  NYC-EJA is a co-founder of NY Renews
  NYC-EJA: Just Transitions & Energy

  WE-ACT for Environmental Justice
  weact.org

  LANDBACK
  landback.org
  National Parks Service: Indigenous Knowledge and Traditional Ecological Knowledge

  Planned burning
  Yale School of the Environment: Native Knowledge: What Ecologists Are Learning from Indigenous People

  Millions of acres have been transferred to Indigenous tribes
  Stanford University: Native American land return movement makes gains, faces obstacles

• Further Reading

  Political Geography: Transformation is not a metaphor

  Sierra Club: How the Land Back Movement Is Unraveling Manifest Destiny