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Elizabeth Yeampierre helped to block a real estate investment company from the rezoning of his neighborhood.
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When the developer saw profits, Yeampierre saw how he could push out the local workforce.
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Yeampierre is leading a vision to decarbonize and revitalize Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
For many urban developers, progress looks like sleek and shiny mixed-use developments, with apartments, office space and restaurants all within walking distance.
But when Elizabeth Yeampierre thinks about these neighborhoods, she sees who they often push out: low-income people, the working class, and people of color.
“Many of the current green solutions result in the displacement of people who have been breathing toxic air for generations,” said Yeampierre, who intends to throw away the status quo.
Bringing up the status quo
Born and raised in New York, Yeampierre trained as a civil rights lawyer before working on climate change and environmental justice in the Big Apple.
She was the first Latina chair of the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, serves on numerous advisory boards nationally and in New York City, and founded the NYC Youth Summit for Climate Justice to help for young people to understand the color of the overlap between racism. justice and climate change.
She has a long-standing interest in how efforts to combat climate change can displace the communities most traditionally affected by the climate crisis — particularly people of color, who higher risk on climate-related health issues than whites, according to research.
To that end, Yeampierre helped prevent developer Jamestown Properties, which manages billions of dollars worth of real estate around the world, from rezoning her Brooklyn neighborhood, Sunset Park.
When Jamestown Properties saw a bright future in the 6 million square foot redevelopment of the Sunset Park waterfront, Yeampierre saw the ways her community could be left behind.
Business Insider reached out to Jamestown Properties for comment, but the company did not respond.
In 2020, UPROSE — a Sunset Park community organization focused on sustainability and resilience of which Yeampierre is executive director — joined a local coalition and pressured the city not to rezone.
They won.
Then, Yeampierre worked with her community to go one step further.
A new vision for Sunset Park
Located along scenic New York Bay in southwest Brooklyn, Sunset Park is a diverse neighborhood that many working-class people call home.
Nearly half of residents are immigrants, three-quarters of families speak languages other than English, and in 2021, 42% of families made less than $50,000.
After getting the best of Jamestown Properties, Yeampierre, along with UPROSE, proposed an alternative future for Sunset Park: one that is decarbonized and revitalized, full of great working jobs, renewable energy, locally grown food, and a growing green economy.
This future and how to achieve it by 2035 is set out in a development report called the Green Resilient Industrial Area Plan 2.0. And even Yeampierre’s critics are getting on board, Yeampierre told Business Insider.
Jobs for the workforce and clean energy
The GRID 2.0 Plan will “stimulate the local economy while putting us on the path to resilience” by providing jobs for working-class residents, Yeampierre said.
Chief among the changes is the shift of jobs from carbon-based industries to green energy.
“The idea is that if you’re bringing these working-class jobs into this sector, people will be able to live here and work here,” she said.
GRID 2.0 also has a strong focus on renewable energy, with shared rooftop solar and offshore wind replacing the neighborhood’s two fossil fuel-burning power plants.
Rooftop solar is an important part of any plan to decarbonize New York’s buildings, said Chris Halfnight, senior director of research and policy at the Urban Green Council, a nonprofit focused on decarbonizing the Big Apple.
“Rooftop solar helps ensure that buildings are using clean electricity, and it also makes them more resilient with an on-site power source,” he told BI via email.
But rooftop solar won’t be able to fully meet the city’s electricity demands, he said, which is why large-scale efforts to decarbonize electricity production — like offshore wind — are important.
“We need to decarbonize electricity by delivering utility with renewable energy from outside the five boroughs,” said Halfnight.
GRID 2.0 also includes a plan to help protect Sunset Park from food and supply shortages that are growing concerns in light of the global climate crisis.
Climate change is leading to consequences such as more droughts, severe storms, and devastating floods that can disrupt supply chains for local communities. To help protect Sunset Park from total chaos in the face of an extreme weather event, UPROSE is focused on growing more food locally.
UPROSE already grows hydroponic gardens at its headquarters and hopes to add more open spaces for urban agriculture with GRID 2.0.
Leadership by example
As communities across the US grapple with climate change and social justice, Yeampierre wants her work in Sunset Park to be an example of environmental progress that also supports people of color and other communities that they are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis.
While there are no cookie-cutter solutions to addressing the climate crisis in a socially just way, the Grid Plan 2.0 can serve as inspiration for other maritime neighborhoods from Boston to Houston, Yeampierre said.
“We have to share what is working, what is not working, the mistakes we have made,” she said. Because when it comes to finding solutions to climate change, “We don’t have any time anymore.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
