The bipartisan think tank Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) says the architects of post-pandemic stimulus plans should consider funding “conservation corps” -- service groups focused on restoring or protecting natural areas -- as a way to address both unemployment and ecosystem declines across the country.
During a Sept. 9 EESI briefing titled “A New Spin on Conservation Corps,” speakers touted the model, which is based on a Depression-era jobs program that focused on protecting or restoring natural areas, as a way to simultaneously find work for people who lost their jobs to the COVID-19 pandemic and bolster the country’s response to environmental damage and ecosystem loss.
For instance, Michael French, director of operations at the Appalachian nonprofit Green Forests Work that restores forests at former mine sites, said that model can easily “scale up” to conduct broader remediation -- a goal that would fit with Republicans’ recent push to plant “a trillion trees” to help mitigate carbon emissions.
“To scale it up, it’s just a matter of funding, whether it comes through private capital or federal investment . . . we’ve got proof of concept,” French said. “It already exists, and why should they reinvent the wheel, when it’s just a matter of scaling up what already exists on the ground?”
In particular, he said, such programs could provide work to former coal miners hit by the decline of the coal industry overall -- in line with calls from groups like the non-partisan World Resources Institute think tank to target relief to the employees of fossil fuel companies rather than the firms themselves.
“As the decline in Appalachian coal continues . . . we’re trying to create opportunities for people who want to stay on the land they live in,” French said.
Similarly, Tonya Gayle, chief development office of the New York City-based Green City Force, called her group’s model “scaleable and replicable across other communities and other cities,” with enough funding from state or local governments.
Green City is an AmeriCorps affiliate that trains young people, mainly residents of public housing and low-income areas, in a host of areas related to sustainable living and work, including agriculture, recycling, nutrition and more traditional job skills like interviewing and resume-writing.
Gayle said her group is just one of a number of urban corps funded through AmeriCorps, and represents “a proven model” that lawmakers could build on.
“This is an example that can be replicated in terms of policy input and commitment in other parts of the country,” she said.
Conservation corps funding could fit with congressional Democrats’ newly unveiled platform for a COVID-19 response that seeks to address the pandemic and recession along with what they say are linked challenges of climate change and racial inequality.
That resolution, termed the THRIVE Agenda, calls on Congress to make new investments in renewable energy and building efficiency, ease the ability of workers to organize, protect minority communities harmed by air and water pollution and defend tribal sovereignty. It has 83 co-sponsors in the House and Senate, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and the two lead authors of the Green New Deal -- Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). -- David LaRoss (dlaross@iwpnews.com)
