Marcelo Bonta, a Philanthropy Northwest Momentum Fellow who works in Meyer's Healthy Environment portfolio, will speak at the opening plenary in October at the GoGreen Conference in Portland, sharing his perspective of the community’s victories and challenges in sustainability over the last 10 years
Marcelo sat down with conference organizers to answer questions about the field:
GoGreen: When you think back on the last 10 years, what do you think of as the biggest win for our community in terms of sustainability?
Marcelo: The biggest win is that equity is becoming a core component of sustainability. Sustainability would not have survived for the long term without equity.
Here are some reasons why equity is so important:
- Demographics have shifted and will continue to shift as we are becoming a more racially diverse society. Our nation will be over 50% people of color within the next 25 years.
- Communities of color and low-income communities contribute least to climate change and environmental degradation but are most impacted.
- Polls and surveys demonstrate that communities of color support sustainability, climate change solutions, and environmental protection at higher rates than whites.
Check out more of Marcelo's answers in the full interview here.