How can you help struggling communities? Look to the green economy

by Lara Ryan

Majorca Carter is making a difference by helping poor people and the planet. She grew up in and still lives in New York’s South Bronx, an underprivileged community with some of the highest crime and incarceration rates in the U.S. It also has a high number of single-parent families, low education numbers, and a high childhood asthma rate due to pollution.

“I got sick and tired of seeing all the people around me being sick and tired,” says Carter. “Our pollution-based economy has a huge cost to our environment and social infrastructure. It operates at the expense of people’s livelihoods, health, and happiness.”

In 2001 Carter founded Sustainable South Bronx, an organization working to create an environmental and economic rebirth in the community. It is promoting better land-use, energy, transportation, water, and waste policies. The organization spearheaded the creation of parks and green spaces, and pioneered a for-profit green roof business. Green roofs have grown in popularity as people have come to understand their benefits: they reduce heat and carbon, retain storm water runoff, and create local jobs.

Carter’s group also started a successful and original “green collar” job training program. It provides 12 weeks of skill training in ecological restoration, hazardous waste cleanup, green roof installation and maintenance, urban forestry, and landscaping. The program, which gives local residents a personal and financial stake in the management of their environment, after four years of operation has a commendable 90% placement rate.

Sustainable South Bronx and initiatives like it show the positive effects of the creation of a green collar workforce. A green workforce can help any region dealing with harmful social issues to grow and prosper. Just imagine an economy with more jobs in fields such as renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, and green building. Two of our crucial concerns about survival—making a living and protecting the environment—would more often be combined. People’s commitment to their jobs would also be their commitment to the planet.

Some still argue that a business case for social and environmental initiatives needs to be made before we can appeal to business’ responsibility to the environment and the human condition.

OK, here goes: Organizations that address environmental concerns and show leadership on social issues are demonstrating clear savings in employee-retention costs and energy use, among other things. Their investment in workforce development creates worker loyalty and helps employees better respond to emerging opportunities. Plus small businesses are more prosperous in prosperous communities—those with high safety and satisfaction rates. Also people live better in healthier environments, and the costs to society are lower when communities are healthier.  

Majorca Carter and visionary community leaders like her argue it’s time for us to have a serious conversation about social and environmental justice. They are showing that there are solutions for health, underemployment, and hopelessness. There are solutions for social and economic problems caused by high crime. All of these problems can be treated cost effectively, and we can start by employing local residents for construction and stewardship roles. We can encourage people to start new businesses in the new green economy.

In Chicago, an employment network called Sweet Beginnings has created a social-enterprise model structured around beekeeping, and the manufacturing of organic cosmetics from honey, to provide people who have been incarcerated with the opportunity to get valuable work experience. They learn productive work habits and gain marketable skills.

In New Jersey, the Lincoln Park Coast Cultural District is helping create an eco-village and emerging arts district. It has built an award-winning, sustainable, urban-development project in the heart of a low-income neighbourhood. The project includes 300 LEED-certified mixed-income housing units, music festivals, historic restoration projects, and the new Museum of African American Music, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institute.

Our society and businesses often treat the most vulnerable citizens as problems instead of resources. They can be nurtured to develop both a personal and a financial stake in nurturing our environment. Wasting this resource creates more stress, more crime, and more cost to government, to communities, to all of us.

Sustainable South Bronx and other organizations have shown that when underemployed communities undertake ecological restoration, they possess a personal and financial stake in the development of their environment. That’s a good thing. So is understanding that environmental services pay healthy dividends on investment by developing new green industry, and by improving public health and quality of life.

“Care for the environment could equal care for our society,” says Majorca Carter. “We already understand that the collective power of businesses can have ripple effects. Operating with a new understanding of environmental and economic justice can change the world.”

Lara Ryan is a business consultant specializing in CSR. She can be reached at lara@lararyanconsulting.ca.