Tom Mulholland: Reviving the Land Through Community Power

One of the most important things you can do when it comes to climate change is talk about it.

• For more than a decade, Grounded Strategies has been working with communities to create livable, vibrant spaces across Pittsburgh, transforming hundreds of vacant lots and reducing emissions to help reach drawdown. What do you love most about the land in your community? Do you have ideas for how it could be improved? Would you like to see a garden, play space, wildflower meadow, or food forest?

• What is hyper-vacancy, and how can vacant lots and abandoned land create or exacerbate issues in our communities? How can addressing underutilized land in the community through greening efforts help to provide multiple solutions to climate change? 

• Tom works with mostly underserved communities and communities of color, which are already experiencing multiple societal stressors, including increased vulnerability to climate impacts like flooding, compromised building infrastructure susceptible to intense storms, and increased air pollution due to siting of heavy industries in and around these areas. Often these communities do not have access to resources, political power, or decision-making power, contributing to environmental injustices. Tom says, “I want to see more community ownership of land. As a reconciliation, we must facilitate giving land back to communities. I love seeing a space be transformed into the vision that the community has. Especially flipping the power dynamics of who makes decisions and who holds power.” What do you think of this idea? What would be the benefits to create land ownership for the communities that live there?

• Grounded Strategies’ approach is to listen first to community members and learn about the vision that is already in mind, and then to co-design solutions. When it comes to equitable solutions, what can we learn from listening first to the people who are most affected and prioritizing ideas from residents, rather than starting with problem-solving ideas that come from outside of the community?

• Drawdown Ecochallenge is a fun and social way to take measurable action on the top solutions to global warming. Take the challenge, and see how a few weeks of action add up to a lifetime of change for you and the planet. If you want to take action on Land Sinks like Tom is, visit drawdown.ecochallenge.org/challenges/land-sinks.

• ChangeX connects people with proven ideas for strengthening communities with the resources needed to start them. Explore countless ways to improve your community and help the world reach drawdown.

• Climate Generation's Green Careers for a Changing Climate Instructional Supplement (for Grades 6-8) contains resources to help young people learn about Green STEM Careers — careers that can help solve the impacts of climate change using STEM skills. Throughout this instructional supplement, students will be using the resource Drawdown to make important connections to solutions that these careers will implement.