From conservation grants to adopting a climate change strategy focused on mitigation, adaptation and equity

The Kresge Foundation’s Environment Program has supported efforts to address climate change for more than 15 years. However, recognizing the relationship between the environment and community well-being dates back to much earlier in the foundation’s history.

In 1969, Kresge’s Board of Trustees identified “conservation” as a field of interest. Most grants in the next several decades were awarded as capital challenge grants to projects that focused on land conservation or education about the natural environment. Beginning in 2003, the foundation launched its innovative Green Building Initiative, which helped nonprofits assess the viability of constructing new facilities to the US Green Building Council’s sustainability standards.

In 2007, shortly after Rip Rapson became president and CEO, Kresge identified climate change as a funding priority. In 2008, its new Environment Program team developed a grantmaking strategy that included both reducing the pollution that causes climate change (mitigation), and preparing for the impacts of climate change that could no longer be avoided (adaptation). In 2014, Kresge began to focus its climate mitigation and adaptation work on cities, consistent with Kresge’s commitment to expand opportunity in America’s cities.

“The foundation began to explicitly address the inequitable impacts of climate change on low-wealth communities and communities of color,” said Lois DeBacker, managing director of Kresge’s Environment Program. “We began to prioritize ensuring organizations that authentically represented the needs, interests and knowledge of such communities had access to and influence in decision-making venues related to climate change.”

As one example, in 2014 Kresge launched the Climate Resilience and Urban Opportunity (CRUO) initiative, a five-year, $29 million effort that supported the capacity of advocates and organizers in urban communities to advance the climate-resilience work of importance to them.

“The CRUO evaluation affirms the significant value that community-based organizations grounded in equity bring to climate change work,” said Senior Program Officer Shamar Bibbins, who launched the CRUO initiative. “The organizations achieved meaningful policy wins in their local communities and regions and at the state level. Collectively, they contributed to a shift in how climate-resilience work is framed – they expanded the range of issues recognized as relevant to climate resilience and elevated the profile of equity within the climate resilience field.”

The vision: A future where people are protected from climate change

In 2022, Kresge established an organizational priority to integrate consideration of climate change into all program and operations strategies through an “all-of-Kresge” approach to combating and adapting to climate change. That process is currently underway.

“We imagine a future where everyone is protected from the short- and long-term effects of climate change because their communities have proactively transitioned to renewable energy, prepared for climate change impacts, and done so by elevating equity as a critical priority,” DeBacker said. “We view climate change as a threat to opportunity, particularly for people of low wealth and people of color. Each of our Kresge teams – place-based and discipline-focused – has begun to factor climate change, including climate resilience, into its work.”

The Environment Program’s current strategy focuses on helping cities combat and adapt to climate change while advancing racial and economic justice. As a national foundation working at the intersection of cities, climate change and racial and economic justice, the program’s work includes several initiatives under two focus areas: Transforming Urban Systems and Field Building.

Through the Transforming Urban Systems focus area, Kresge works to accelerate equitable climate action in cities by transforming urban energy, health and water systems through three initiatives:

Equitable and Just Energy Transition (EJET)

The EJET initiative focuses on building decarbonization and resilient power. Led by Senior Program Officer Jessica Boehland, EJET works to facilitate an urban energy transition that eliminates carbon emissions while building power for low-wealth communities and communities of color and propelling racial and economic equity.

Although the initiative was launched in 2023, Kresge has a longstanding history of funding decarbonization efforts.

“Bringing energy efficiency and clean energy to communities across the country that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, especially low-wealth communities and communities of color, is our focus,” said Boehland. “To reduce the threat of climate change and the inequities it carries, we must rapidly transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy. Advancing climate justice also requires acknowledging and redressing the policies and social structures responsible for disproportionate harm.”

Looking back: A timeline of Kresge’s environmental work

 Climate Change, Health, and Equity (CCHE)

Launched in 2019, the CCHE initiative focuses on mobilizing equitable climate mitigation and adaptation action by healthcare institutions, health practitioners and community advocates. This initiative is managed jointly by Kresge’s Environment and Health teams. It is one example of efforts Kresge has historically supported that thread together climate action and public health.

“Climate change is affecting our physical and mental health in real ways right now. Air pollution, high heat and more extreme weather events are making people sick, causing significant trauma and shortening lives,” said Bibbins, who launched the CCHE initiative with Environment and Health team peers. “Our opportunity and ability to thrive – as individuals, families, communities and a country – are in danger because of the increasing instability of our climate.”

Examples Bibbins listed include deadly heat waves, which are hotter and last longer due to climate change; poor air quality caused by burning fossil fuels and car emissions; wildfires that have negative health impacts linked to conditions like asthma and heart disease; and severe weather emergencies, which can cause individual and community trauma and exacerbates existing social, economic and health inequities that communities may already be experiencing.

“The effects of climate change impact all of us, but not in the same ways,” said Alejandra Hernandez, associate program officer for the Environment Program. “Risks are compounded for people and communities of color who have experienced generations of policies and practices that unfairly expose them to air and water pollution, compromising their health and well-being. Working together, we can and must protect every community’s safety and ensure that all of us – no matter who we are or where we live – have the opportunity to be healthy and to thrive.”

Climate Resilient and Equitable Water Systems (CREWS)

In March 2016, Kresge launched the CREWS initiative to support organizations working at the intersection of water, climate change and equity. Through the CREWS cohort, Kresge works to transform urban stormwater and wastewater systems to provide reliable, equitable, and innovative services to all community residents.

“Our goal is to help cities implement climate-resilient approaches to urban stormwater and wastewater management grounded in the needs, priorities and knowledge of low-wealth communities and communities of color,” said Yeou-Rong Jih, program officer. “We know all too well that these very communities are the most at risk because they are disproportionately vulnerable to urban flooding and extreme rainfall. This inequity is due to a complex combination of institutions, policies and investments that have historically marginalized these communities, both socially and economically, and now put them at higher risk of bearing the adverse impacts of climate change.”

Through the Field Building focus area, Kresge works to support and strengthen leaders and organizations whose work is critical to addressing climate change while advancing racial and economic justice. Three strategies are aligned with this focus area:

• Climate Justice Movement Support focuses on leaders, organizations and network infrastructure that are critical to the movement.
• Public Sector Leader Support focuses on accelerating the efforts of leaders committed to equity in climate mitigation and adaptation.
• Community Development Climate Finance Ecosystem focuses on strengthening the climate-related lending capacity of community development financial institutions and building the pipeline of projects serving low-wealth communities, with particular emphasis on building decarbonization, resilient power and green stormwater infrastructure.

Looking ahead: Our hopes for the next century of climate change funding

With 2024 being a historic year for Kresge, DeBacker said she and her team are proud to celebrate the remarkable and enduring legacy of the work the foundation has supported over the past 100 years.

“This milestone also invites us to imagine what the next 100 years might hold and how our legacy might look from that future vantage point,” DeBacker said. “We find ourselves in a pivotal moment in history. How can Kresge support a more aggressive timetable for transitioning off fossil fuels? How can we help communities be more proactive in their preparations for the impacts of climate change so that all of their residents will be protected as well as possible? The balance of this decade is when we must step up our efforts even more.”

“We recognize that the severity of climate change, and communities’ efforts to prepare for its effects, will shape the success and durability of the work we support across each of Kresge’s programs,” said President & CEO Rip Rapson. “As we recommit to expanding equity and opportunity in cities across America, we also commit to elevating and integrating more deeply issues of climate change into all aspects of the foundation’s work for decades to come.”