Parks, a senior Agents of Change fellow and assistant professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, recently published a study with colleagues that looked at hurricanes over the last 30 years and found that hurricanes have become deadlier in recent years and are hitting people who are already socially vulnerable hardest. The study comes as communities in Florida are still cleaning up from Hurricane Idalia and other storm systems are brewing in the Atlantic.
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That’s why Catalyst Miami, a community-based nonprofit, made extreme heat a top priority. But when Catalyst organizers took their concerns to the local government, they received a Catch-22-like response: officials didn’t have data on extreme heat, so they couldn’t address the problem.
Catalyst Miami set out to collect the missing data. Partnering with local universities, volunteers placed heat and humidity sensors throughout the community, at bus stops and other places where people were suffering in the heat.
Their findings were stunning: temperatures were often 30 degrees Fahrenheit higher than those announced by the Weather Channel. Official measures of temperature are taken in a breezy spot at the airport —where no one is waiting for a bus.
It’s a problematic approach to climate change and health. Too often, analysis and problem solving takes place removed from real people’s lives, while problems at the ground level are misunderstood or ignored.
Catalyst Miami, and many other community-based nonprofits, are working to change that.
One of Catalyst Miami's Overtown Community Champions working with Urban Health Partnerships on a heat study.
Credit: Catalyst Miami
Across the U.S., community groups are taking on the climate crisis from the ground up. Several are part of the Kresge Foundation’s Climate Change, Health and Equity initiative, a joint effort of Kresge’s health and environment grantmaking teams.
The initiative grew from the mismatch between those experiencing the worst effects of climate change and those devising solutions. “Due to generations of racist policies and practices, low-income communities and communities of color are most at risk from the health impacts of climate change,” Shamar Bibbins, a senior program officer in Kresge’s environment program, said. “But they are often excluded from the policymaking table. That’s a problem because it’s members of the community who are closest to the problem and they have the experience and expertise to co-create effective and equitable solutions.”
The first step is to ask community members what they are experiencing. Catalyst Miami surveyed local residents and medical professionals about their top climate-related concerns. “We already knew it was going to be heat,” said Catalyst Miami CEO Zelalem Adefris, “but the surveys confirmed what we’d been hearing for years.”
In Austin, Texas, a group called Go Austin/Vamos Austin (GAVA) listened to community concerns and changed its mission in response. Originally founded to tackle the upstream causes of childhood obesity, GAVA’s organizers pivoted after two devastating floods inundatedSoutheast Austin neighborhoods, where they’re based. Realizing that climate change guarantees similar floods in the future, “we had no business continuing to work in these neighborhoods if we weren’t going to take on these issues,” said Carmen Llanes, GAVA’s executive director. The group now has support from the Kresge Foundation’s initiative to address health and climate issues defined by the community – including flooding.
Once community priorities are identified, residents can help documenting the problem. Many groups are partnering with universities to conduct citizen science efforts – like Catalyst Miami’s heat sensor project – in which residents collect data to “groundtruth” other information sources. For example, GAVA worked with the University of Texas to compare NOAA’s climate data to residents’ lived experience. In New York City, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, another Kresge Foundation grantee, launched the Harlem Heat Project in 2016, partnering with researchers, media and residents to measure heat inside apartment buildings. More recently, WE ACT members surveyed the city’s cooling centers to understand how well these places are serving residents.
A Catalyst Miami Climate Town Hall event in January.
Credit: Alexander Ruiz
As these citizen science efforts show, the view from the bus stop is different from that of policymakers in air-conditioned offices. It’s not just that environmental conditions are different on the ground; it’s also about the conditions in people’s lives. “The people who are most vulnerable to climate impacts are often coping with chronic illness, housing insecurity, financial insecurity, job insecurity — on top of systemic and institutional and interpersonal racism,” said Sonal Jessel, WE ACT’s director of policy. “People are dealing with bundles of hardships.”
Those hardships intersect and compound sometimes in deadly ways. “On really hot days, people don’t turn on their air conditioners because then their bills get too high and they can’t pay them,” said Jessel. “So, people die in their homes. Or they end up having to be hospitalized for heat stroke.” A recent study confirmed that New Yorkers found dead in their homes from heat either didn’t have air conditioning on or lacked air conditioning altogether.
Moreover, the legacy of redlining and other racist policies has left Black and brown neighborhoods more vulnerable to climate impacts. Crowded with polluting industries and deprived of parks and green spaces, these neighborhoods are hotter and more flood-prone than their wealthier, whiter counterparts.
Those intersecting hardships call for solutions that address the real conditions of residents’ lives. “You can’t assume everyone has air conditioning or can afford to turn it on,” said Adefris of Catalyst Miami. “You can’t assume everyone works in an office.” That’s why grantees involve residents at every stage of problem solving — from identifying priorities to devising solutions.
It’s an approach that differs markedly from typical planning processes, said Ucha Abbah, climate resilience project manager at GAVA. Usually, planners will announce a project and solicit public comments, “but they only want to hear from the community about one specific thing,” Abbah said. “An equitable process involves the community at every step, from inception to implementation.”
This more-equitable approach is getting results. In Miami, data from the heat sensor project helped spur the appointment of the nation’s first chief heat officer, who is charged with developing and deploying a comprehensive action plan for extreme heat. Catalyst Miami successfully advocated for opening the committee’s meetings to the public: “There were around 50 participants in every single meeting,” said Adefris, “and people talked about the issues and the solutions they would recommend. Our community is full of solutions.”
Now being implemented, Miami’s extreme heat plan includes measures to keep people cool in their homes – by retrofitting public housing with efficient air conditioning units, for example – as well as protections for outdoor workers and efforts to expand the tree canopy.
In New York City, WE ACT helped win a program that distributes free air conditioning units to low-income households throughout the city. And WE ACT is fighting for the state’s energy assistance program to subsidize utility costs for air conditioning in the summer, as well as for heating during the winter.
In Austin, GAVA won funding for infrastructure improvements to reduce flooding in long-ignored, flood-prone neighborhoods in South Austin. The group also advocates for equitable investments in the city’s tree canopy and green spaces. And GAVA’s climate navigator program trains residents to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to flooding and other climate shocks and stressors.
Deeply rooted in their communities, these grassroots groups bring important and overlooked perspectives to climate challenges and solutions. And their approach — taking on the climate crisis from the ground up — has multiple, far-reaching benefits.
Consider, for example, those Miami residents exposed to dangerous heat while waiting for the bus. Solutions to their predicament include more-frequent bus service as well as investments in shade trees and structures. The benefits – better transit; a greener, cooler city; lower healthcare costs – accrue to everyone.
While solutions made by and for the most privileged leave too many people at risk, “the solutions that work best for the most vulnerable people in our community are the solutions that are going to work for everyone,” said Adefris.
While this quote from former Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater is dated, one thing holds true: water in the West is still the source of heartaches. One stark example: In 2022, Arizona experienced the worst drought conditions in more than 1,000 years, which dried up reservoirs, exposed regulatory loopholes and further exposed environmental injustice.
As a Diné water quality scientist who grew up on the Navajo Nation, which spans Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, the topic of Arizona drought is often discussed in my professional and private life. The beginning of 2023 was the 20th year of continued litigation in which the Navajo Nation is trying to obtain rights to the Colorado River in Arizona v Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation has never had the infrastructure or support to have reliable access to clean water. In fact, our tribe has as many as 60,000 members who do not have access to running water. In March 2023, the Navajos took their water rights case to the U.S. Supreme Court and argued to have the U.S. determine the Navajos water needs and rights.
However, on June 22, 2023 the Supreme Court voted 5-4 that the U.S. owes no “affirmative duty” to the Navajo Nation to secure water, reversing a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The majority ruled that the 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo established no federal obligation to do so.
Navajo Nation. The federal government has decided that while the Navajo Nation does have water rights, established by Winters Doctrine, it will not help the Nation assert those rights.
Photo Credit: Valerisa Gaddy
The federal government has decided that while the Navajo Nation does have water rights, established by Winters Doctrine, it will not help the Nation assert those rights. While this decision comes as a disappointment to many, the signing of Senate Bill 1432 by Gov. Katie Hobbs, to force the City of Scottsdale to provide water to the Rio Verde Foothills Residents has been the salt in the wound.
The case of Rio Verde Foothills Residents v City of Scottsdale has made international news. Due to a mega drought, in 2021 the city of Scottsdale, Arizona, decided they could no longer provide water for the neighboring community. Beginning January 1, 2023, the residents of Rio Verde Foothills no longer received delivered water from Scottsdale. Over the previous year and a half, Scottsdale had notified Rio Verde Foothills residents that they would need water from another source, but the residents did not heed the warning and now are struggling to find a long-term water solution. The signature of Gov. Hobbs only magnifies the environmental injustices that exist in Arizona.
Inactive well on Navajo Nation.
Credit: Valerisa Gaddy
I cannot help but draw comparisons between my tribe’s situation and that of Rio Verde Foothills. The media quickly amplified the Rio Verde situation, though there are many other communities of color in worse water conditions. Water issues on the Navajo Nation, for example, have been present since colonization.
In the U.S., if you are Black or Latino you are twice as likely to be without clean water compared to white citizens. American Indians and Alaska Natives are 19 times more likely to be without clean water than their white counterparts; but these numbers pale in comparison to the lack of access we endure as Diné peoples. Being Diné increases the likelihood of not having access to clean water by 67 times more than any other American. As the mega-drought worsens, I realize our future in the desert is marred by questions: Will Arizona recover? Will my child’s generation be climate refugees? If Diné people have it this hard now, what will the future be like? The only comfort is that Diné people continue to grow and thrive amid historical trauma, broken treaties and continued health, education and economic disparities, including the lack of safe, clean, reliable water.
Yet, the swift attention the Rio Verde Foothills community are receiving despite putting themselves in this situation by choosing to live in a desert — unlike the forced relocation of the Diné people — demonstrates that water is life, but access will never be equal.
Development of Rio Verde Foothills.
Credit: Valerisa Gaddy
The Rio Verde Foothills is an unincorporated community, meaning it is not within the boundaries of Scottsdale, the city that many residents are suing. Being unincorporated, the residents pay less taxes, since services like sewer, water and trash are not provided by the city. Instead, many of the homes in Rio Verde Foothills, with an average home price between $760,000 to $875,000, are equipped with storage tanks not connected to any water mainlines, sewers or wells; relying on water trucks from Scottsdale to fill them, on average, once a month. Many residents say contractors misinformed them but fail to acknowledge the obvious risks of buying a home in the desert during a drought. The residents also argue that they’re entitled to water service through the city’s municipal water plant under Arizona’s laws. However, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled that the statute did not apply to this community because the Rio Verde Foothills residents have not shown that they are unable to access water at all.
Golf course in Rio Verde adjacent to many of the residents who are without water.
Credit: Valerisa Gaddy
This plight comes in stark contrast to what my tribe has endured for centuries. Diné people have lived in conditions far worse and a lot longer than residents in Rio Verde Foothills. From 1863 to 1868, the U.S. government ordered the U.S. Army to forcibly remove the Diné people from their original homeland called Dinétah, which was within the four sacred mountains of present-day Mount Hesperus and Blanca Peak in Colorado; Mount Taylor in New Mexico and San Francisco Peaks, in Arizona. The Army forced both the Diné people and Mescalero Apaches to walk more than 300 miles to Fort Sumner near Bosque Redondo in New Mexico, which came to be called The Long Walk. It is estimated that one-third of the Diné people captured and imprisoned at Fort Sumner died. Following the unsuccessful attempt of assimilation, the Diné people agreed to return to their original homeland and cease fighting with the U.S. government, now known as the Treaty of 1868. In the treaty, the government promises land including rivers. Following the treaty of 1868, the 1908 Supreme Court ruling of Winters v United States, established that tribes have a reserved right to water sufficient to fulfill the purposes of their reservation, including the residential, economic development and governmental needs of the tribe. In spite of the historical documentation between tribes and the U.S. government, more than 30% of Diné people on the Navajo Nation live without access to clean water.
Joshua Gaddy (Diné) providing water for sheep.
Credit: Valerisa Gaddy
Unlike the Rio Verde Foothills residents, the Navajo Nation seems to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Generations of injustices have oppressed the tribe. Navajos suffer disproportionately high rates of diabetes, obesity, heart disease, mental-illness, suicide, domestic violence and alcohol addiction. The residents of Rio Verde Foothills do not face the day-to-day challenges that the Diné people do, yet it is their story, and others similar to theirs, that become the face of U.S. droughts.
In Arizona, there are 22 federally recognized tribes, with seven of them located on the Colorado River. Not one was brought into the discussion during the 1922 Colorado River Compact Act, which is the foundation of all litigation surrounding the Colorado River, which divides the Colorado River between states. Tribal nations in the West have long been ostracized in water policy discussion. Yet, there are signs of change: the Gila River Indian community litigated and won extensive water rights to the Colorado River, and their insistence on looking at the whole picture instead of narrow view helped Arizona establish its drought contingency plan.
The trauma that the Diné people have faced has been filtered down through many generations. In my own experience, the lack of access to clean water on the Navajo Nation impacted the health of many of my family members and shaped who I have become today, an academic activist. Seeing the disparities that my tribe faces and the slow process of courts — compared to the drumbeat of potential solutions offered to the Rio Verde Foothills — only increases my passion for water research.
Water governance is riddled with injustices and needs to re-prioritize people before greed.
Disclaimer: This essay was written by Dr. Valerisa Gaddy in her own capacity. The opinions expressed are her own and do not reflect the views of the Water Resources Research Center and the University of Arizona.
This essay was produced through the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice fellowship. Agents of Change empowers emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.
