We’re more powerful through partnership, and we need you to help build our shared future. As climate change creates complex challenges, we are responding to communities worldwide by finding innovative solutions for today and engineering community resilience for tomorrow.
Marginalized and underserved communities, both around the world and in the United States, often feel the harshest effects of industrialization and climate change. The most effective and urgent way to help is by building climate-resilient infrastructure in the communities where we work, which are often the areas most heavily impacted.
We’re more powerful when we work in partnership, and as we answer the call from communities to address these challenges, we need your support.
CHALLENGES IN CLIMATE EQUITY
The negative environmental impacts of industrialization and climate change are most acutely felt in marginalized and underserved communities globally and in the United States. The best and most immediate way to address these disparities is to create climate-resilient infrastructure in the communities that are most impacted by climate change.
We’re more powerful when we work in partnership, and as we answer the call from communities to address these challenges, we need your support.
GLOBAL CLIMATE
Despite having some of the lowest carbon emissions and contributing the least to climate change, many of the world’s least wealthy countries are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. We’ve interviewed members of our partner communities around the world to learn what they’re experiencing and what these changes mean for them:
UNPREDICTABILITY
Weather patterns are becoming increasingly erratic, creating unpredictability in the communities we work with. For those dependent on agriculture, this means constant uncertainty and struggling to plan and harvest crops, resulting in hunger and economic hardship.
HOTTER AND DRIER
As temperatures soar and climates become more arid, our partner communities face rapidly depleting water sources for drinking and farming. This dire situation jeopardizes health, sanitation, and food security.
VULNERABLE TO DISASTER
Extreme weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and wildfires are becoming more frequent, more powerful, and more devastating, causing vulnerability to disaster to soar. From contaminated water to shattered infrastructure, the consequences threaten lives and livelihoods.
APPROACH AND SOLUTIONS
Our projects have the ability to radically change lives for the better. Because of that, we are strongly committed to ensuring that each and every EWB-USA project lasts and serves its purpose for generations to come. We build projects today that will be resilient to the climate of tomorrow. As we continue to develop and refine our approach, we rely on the following four guiding pillars:
RESEARCH
We use robust data to model the changing climate patterns in communities we work with including changes to rainfall patterns, desertification, and sea level rise.
COMMUNITY
We work with community members to co-design projects and solutions to meet the community’s needs. We take the time to listen to the community to understand how their climate is changing and ensure our projects will have their intended impact.
ADAPTIVE SOLUTIONS
Utilizing climate modeling and input from the communities, we create adaptive solutions that are designed not just for today, but for resilience to their future climate.
TRAINING AND EDUCATION
We develop community-centered training to ensure communities are well-positioned to understand their climate-related risks and maintain the project after completion.
CLIMATE INITIATIVE SUMMARY REPORT
During 2021 and early 2022 as COVID travel restrictions lessened and travel to our project locations became possibe once again, staff recognized the need for an update to our climate change
evaluation and methodology. While looking at the various climate data portals and researching quantitative data, we also knew that to truly improve our evaluation of climate change, we needed
to hear from our partners about what climate change looks like in their communities.
This need to listen and understand climate impact was the inception of the EWB-USA 2022 Climate Initiative.