Project Spotlight: Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute Awarded $5 Million to Expand Tree Canopy in Disadvantaged Communities
Ava Thompson, Program Associate, Sustainable States Network
Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute (ERI), a Sustainable States Network member, received a $5 Million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture last September to help expand urban tree canopies and enhance climate change resilience in underserved communities across Indiana.
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is among the most important ways that communities can slow the impacts of climate change. When forests and trees are cleared or degraded, they become an additional source of carbon to the atmosphere. Globally, about 10 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions result from land use changes and deforestation.
Impact of the Environmental Resilience Institute’s grant award
The ERI’s grant award, part of the Inflation Reduction Act’s historic $1.5 billion investment in the US Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forestry program, hopes to plant and maintain roughly 2,500 trees to mitigate public health risks posed by extreme heat.
Resilience programs coordinator, Anagha Gore, says that tree canopy coverage is crucial for climate mitigation or the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
“It’s not just carbon sequestration,” says Gore. “[Tree canopies] are air purifiers, water filtration systems, hosts for much needed urban biodiversity, and they prevent flooding and mitigate the impacts of extreme heat as well.”
The ERI works with governments, businesses, nonprofits, and community leaders to help address climate change through integrating research, education, and community. Through their Resilience Cohort, communities receive one-on-one technical assistance, webinar trainings, and a student from the McKinney Climate Fellows program. McKinney Climate Fellows is a workforce development program for graduates and undergraduates to gain experience in climate careers and provide climate and sustainability planning to local governments, businesses, and nonprofits.
Once-in-a-generation opportunity for communities
As part of the grant, ERI will be recruiting around 25 communities over the next four years through the Urban Green Infrastructure track of the Resilience Cohort program, pairing them with a McKinney Fellow and providing expertise and resources related to green infrastructure and community engagement.
“We plan to gather the opinions of community and city staff members on which native tree species will be suitable for selected sites in their cities,” said Gore. “It’s going to involve speaking to a lot of people, figuring out what they want, making sure we’re not imposing trees on them, and that the greenery is welcome in their neighborhood. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for communities to really think about how trees can improve the quality of residents’ lives and offset some of the most damaging impacts of climate change. We are so excited to be working with these cities and towns to help them come up with a plan that their children and grandchildren will be proud of.”
The program will conclude this fall with the planting of up to a hundred trees within the underserved regions of the communities of Elkhart, Evansville, Richmond, and Warsa. Recruitment for the summer of 2025 is in progress.