If you are registering, please note:
- Thank you for indicating which sessions you are interestd in attending. On the day of the Summit, you will be free to switch to a different session if your interests change.
Summit Breakout Sessions
A Climate Justice Framework: Designing a Social Justice and Health Equity Lens for Local Climate Policy, Multnomah County Health Department
What is a framework climate scientists use for developing strategies to reduce our carbon footprint or “adapt” to changes as they arise? What is the framework social and environmental justice advocates or public health workers use in addressing climate impacts? Is there a way to merge these two frameworks into a climate justice framework and use it to shape local climate action plans and policies?
Come hear about the draft recommendations being developed to help inform local policy discussions and advance efforts to address climate justice as part of a local climate change framework. These draft recommendations build off of national efforts to highlight the need to better address social and environmental justice within the context of climate change. This session is intended to not only present these recommendations, but also to provide community members the opportunity to give feedback on how these recommendations can shape local efforts to address climate change while also meeting the needs of all communities throughout our region.
Then participate in a 45 interactive session to kick start the conversation about creating a climate justice framework. We will start the conversation by looking at Angela Park’s environmental justice strategies to address climate change locally and branch out from there. We will also decide how to move the development of this framework forward after the Summit.
Adding Equity to Public Education about Sustainability, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
Come to this session to learn more about OMSI’s Sustainability project, how you can participate, and share your input on incorporating regional equity issues into OMSI programs.
OMSI is creating a bilingual (Spanish & English) exhibit, event series, interactive website, and series of cell phone-based stories about sustainable decision making in the Portland metro area, and we need your input. The Sustainability Project focuses on weighing the environmental, economic, and social impacts of one’s choices to support a more sustainable region. As a science center, we have a lot of experience communicating complicated topics, but these topics rarely include issues of equity and quality of life. During this session, we will share front-end research and visitor testing we have conducted with our target audience (Spanish and English speaking families in the region) about sustainable decision making and play with some of the prototype exhibits and stories. Then we will discuss how issues of equity and society play into these educational program within the context of a science museum and educational resources for families.
Affordable Housing Resources: The Next Campaigns, NW Housing Alternatives
A description of this session will be available soon.
Bus Riders Unite: Transit, Health and Climate Justice, OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon
Transportation is central to everyone’s life, but the benefits and burdens of this massive public investment are not being shared equally across all communities. Oregon’s transportation sector is the leading contributor to statewide greenhouse gas emissions. On-road mobile emissions are a leading cause of air toxics well in excess of health-based benchmarks across the metro region. Closer analysis reveals an ugly truth: our low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by these emissions, resulting in increased asthma triggers, bronchial diseases, cancer rates and mortality. These disparities stem from federal and state transportation policies, but are exacerbated by regional transit decisions. TriMet cut 200,000 hours of transit service the past two years, while fares have increased over 70% the past ten years. The result is that transit-dependent communities, who contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, bear the greatest burdens of our collective policies and choices, even as continued disinvestment in public transit moves opportunities for positive health outcomes farther out of reach. OPAL organizes and mobilizes bus riders to play a meaningful role in transportation decision-making, demanding transparency, accountability and justice for transit-dependent communities. Our Bus Riders Unite membership has prioritized several campaign issues seeking to increase access to transit, restore and increase frequency of transit service, and ensure meaningful participation in transit decision-making, to achieve greater transit and climate justice and health equity.
Climate Action Plan and Equity, City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability
Learn about the Climate Action Plan and the objectives and actions proposed in order to meet the City and County’s goal to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. Then, join us in an interactive session where we apply an equity lens to the Climate Action Plan objectives to be completed by 2012. The workshop will give participants an opportunity to discuss and problem-solve real policy and programmatic issues that seek to reduce carbon emissions while maximizing quality of life for all.
Climate, Transportation, and Equity, 1000 Friends of Oregon & Oregon Environmental Council
Metro is charged with planning how to accommodate the region’s growing population while reducing our greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector – essentially, by reducing how much we all drive. This provides the region a strong and creative tool to integrate climate, transportation, land use, and equity: because the way to reduce how much we all drive is to provide choice in how we get around. Choice means walkable neighborhoods and communities, with transportation and housing options and a mix of uses, so folks can walk, bike, or take a bus to meet many of their daily needs. These “climate-friendly” neighborhoods support better bus service; save households money on transportation costs; provide options for how to get to work, shopping and school; and grow healthier children by providing cleaner air and active living.
At the same time, Metro is also making decisions on whether and where to expand the urban growth boundary. Metro’s UGB decisions – whether to add new, raw land at the urban edge – will have a direct impact on how and where the region’s limited infrastructure dollars are spent on things like roads, sidewalks, bus and other transit service, bicycle routes, and more. It will impact whether investment is focused on job growth in these new areas, or in existing areas and on existing businesses. And it will have an impact on whether the region meets its climate protection goals.
It is not clear how well Metro is integrating these decisions: whether it is harmonizing decisions about UGB expansions with greenhouse gas reduction strategies. It is also not clear how strongly Metro is integrating equity into these decision-making processes and outcomes.
Columbia River Crossing Highway Mega-Project: Climate for a New Direction, Association of Oregon Rail and Transit Advocates
This is a panel discussion on the Columbia River Crossing project. Recent forecasts predict stormy weather for the proposed CRC. What is pushing us towards this disastrous option that threatens more congestion and pollution? How did we get here? Are the winds of change bringing favorable weather that will bring meaningful and affordable improvements?
“The zone near I-5 in North and Northeast Portland is the hottest of the hot spots for environmental health problems. The adjacent neighborhoods are among Portland’s most highly polluted as well as its most ethnically and economically diverse.
Now we’re proposing to make the situation even worse with massive ne highway interchanges and a bridge that will funnel cars and trucks—and their pollution – into a traffic jam in North Portland. It is no wonder that a recent study characterized the proposed Columbia River Crossing project as “An Environmental Injustice.” OregonLive.com column by Rep Ben Cannon and Rep Lew Frederick
(A discussion about the health and environmental aspects of the CRC. Includes time for Q&A.)
engAGING Communities: Turning Gray to Silver, AARP
Call it the graying of America or the silver tsunami, our communities are experiencing a major demographic shift as the first wave of 79 million baby boomers, about 26 percent of this country’s population, turn 65 this year. What does this mean in terms of community livability? Is our region ready for this historical shift in population? How will we respond and what can be done to prepare communities?
Join AARP Oregon, Clackamas County Social Services and OSU Extension for this interactive session and learn about engAGE in Community, an innovative community-based initiative that is working to make Clackamas County an age -friendly place that supports people's ability to age actively and successfully in their community of choice.
Environmental Justice and Equity in Social Work, National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Oregon Chapter - Sustainability Network
What is the role of the social work profession in the fight for environmental justice? We are living an era defined by crises and dangers, such as the looming global threat of catastrophic climate change, that throw the connections between basic human need and our relationship to the broader natural world into sharp relief. Social workers at all levels of practice cannot afford to ignore this relationship, but discourse about sustainability has barely begun within the literature of social work, and the intimate connections between the populations served by social workers and the demands of environmental justice are routinely ignored by social work practitioners.
How can social work reframe itself to incorporate the theme of sustainability? The proposed session will open up a dialog around this question as well as suggest some practical strategies for bringing discourse around themes of sustainability into mainstream social work practice. The presenters propose that such changes will require structural change to incorporate considerations of sustainability into the ways in which our institutions operate and evaluate themselves. To accomplish this, political and policy work is necessary, but even that work will accomplish little if it is not accompanied by an effort to reshape institutions from the bottom up.
As an example of such structural work, the proposed session will examine the prospects for reshaping social work professionalism to include structures of accountability that incorporate broader environmental concerns, and discuss the work of the nascent NASW Oregon Sustainability Network.
Equity Policy Tools, Urban League of Portland & Multnomah County Health Equity Initiative
A description of this session will be available soon.
From Cochabamba to Portland: Climate Justice Perspectives from Latin America, Portland Central America Solidarity Committee
While US leaders fight against mitigating climate change and adopting emissions controls in international negotiations, many developing countries have taken the lead on crafting solutions that address the root causes of the climate crisis. In 2010, in the wake of the crash of UN talks in Copenhagen, indigenous, peasant, working-class leaders from across the Global South gathered to address the failing international process and create a new framework for mitigating climate change. The document from this gathering has become a touchstone for those that demand true solutions and continue to hold ground for principled solutions on the climate crisis.
In this workshop we will discuss the Cochabamba Peoples Agreement on Climate Change, why developing nations felt the need to operate outside of the UN system, what it means to take leadership from the popular movements of Latin America, and how we can apply these ideas to our local communities. This will be an interactive workshop with activities, movement and multi-media components.
Healthy Active Living in Portland’s Affordable Multi-Family Housing Settings, Oregon Public Health Institute
In 2010, Oregon Public Health Institute received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson foundation’s Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities program to partner with community development corporations, city planners, community based organizations, and other affordable housing providers on a four year effort to identify and pursue policy and environmental changes that would increase supports for healthy eating and active living in and around Portland’s affordable multi-family housing developments. A primary component of the work thus far has focused on working with affordable housing residents and property managers to assess existing conditions at multiple multi-family housing developments, and on reviewing Portland’s development codes to identify opportunities and barriers for improving on-site supports such as bike storage and gardening space for healthy eating and active living. This session will focus on three major components of the work so far: an overview of City of Portland development codes and recommendations for changes in the Comprehensive Plan that will support health and multi-family sites, findings from site audits conducted by residents and property managers and three Portland affordable housing sites that look at presence and absence of features to support healthy living, and presentations of two PhotoVoice projects that residents conducted at Leander Court in SE and Hacienda in NE. In addition, presenters will discuss next steps for the project and engage attendees in a discussion about how to build on this work in the upcoming year.
Connection to climate equity: The development of compact, mixed-use communities is a key component of our region’s plan for reducing transportation-related GHG emissions. Such communities will necessarily include significant amounts of multi-family housing. As this housing is developed, it needs to be done so in a way that supports the health of its residents, particularly low-income, immigrant, and minority households who are at greater risk for multiple adverse health outcomes related to poor nutrition and physical inactivity.
June Key Delta Community Center Case Study: How an African American Sorority Turned an Abandoned Gas Station into Oregon’s First Grassroots Living Building Project – Portland Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. & Piedmont Rose Connection, Inc.
The June Key Delta Community Center (JKDCC) is on its way to becoming the first commercial “Living Building” building in Oregon. This project will also be the first grassroots and African American owned Living Building in the world. The property, once a 1500 sq. ft. abandoned gas station, has been transformed into a 2700 sq. ft. community center that will house Portland Alumnae Chapter programming and be available for community use.
Highlights of JKDCC construction include the use of nontraditional building materials such as two steel cargo containers; recycled glass and tire flooring; non-toxic materials; the utilization of minority and women-owned business and apprenticeship programs; and the development of a community garden. Learn more about the history of this project and why projects of this nature and scale are important to livability in the Portland region.
Regional Equity Atlas 2.0: Metropolitan Portland’s Geography of Opportunity, CLF Regional Equity Action Project
CLF’s Regional Equity Atlas, published in 2007, helped to bring the concept of regional equity to the forefront of local policy and planning work. Now CLF, Metro, and PSU are partnering to develop the next edition of the Atlas. Atlas 2.0 will be a user-friendly, web-based, interactive mapping tool based on Metro’s innovative Context Tool application. The Atlas will enable users to analyze the distribution of resources and opportunities across the region and the extent to which the benefits and burdens of growth are shared equally by different demographic groups and neighborhoods.
In this breakout session, members of the Atlas 2.0 project team will provide an overview of the plans for the project and will demonstrate the Atlas 2.0 mapping tool.
Water Saving Solutions From Around the World: Utilizing the Collective Knowledge, THA Architecture
By researching and applying these water solutions utilized from Africa to India to Germany to the Australia, we can devise methods that help the water user adapt to their specific climate challenges and water issues.
Placed in the middle of the break out tables (4) the groups will find basic climate data that will set climate parameters for their group. The groups are challenged to develop creative approaches, geared towards their specific target climates, on how to secure water for a typical small community (500 people). The groups will then present solutions describing how to creatively capture, store, disinfect, distribute, and use this limited resource for irrigation (eat), sanitation (clean), and consumption (drink). Only locally available materials can be utilized.