A community-led team project is tackling climate through English Avenue’s struggling tree cover, kicking off a research and planting project thanks to an influx of funding from Drawdown Georgia.
The Atlanta-based community effort called the Green Team of English Avenue will receive $200,000 across two years starting in 2025. Drawdown Georgia, a decentralized “leaderful” climate solutions framework, awarded five climate justice initiatives across the state a total of $1 million.
Each group receives the same amount of funds to be distributed across the next two years. For the Green Team of English Avenue, the dollars will create a two-phase plan for the neighborhood called the The Westside Passive Cooling Tree Equity Partnership and Project.
The Westside neighborhood has long been one of the city’s underserved neighborhoods. Once a hub for the city’s Black residents, it has since devolved into blight — and major environmental issues. In 2022, it was named a federal toxic Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency due to high levels of lead in the soil.
Since 2018, the area has undergone lead testing caused by industrial smelting waste. Green Team of English Ave Director of Operations Annie Moore said back then, the tree cover was at about 23 percent – and it should be 50 percent.
Without trees, Moore cites a host of issues: heating and cooling, flooding and wildlife. With the project, Moore said the team aims to bring down the “energy burden” for residents paying to cool and heat their homes by planting trees to do it passively.
The neighborhood has seen “remediation” efforts from the Environmental Protection Agency to help with the toxicity, along with a boost in the development and remodeling of blighted homes from groups like the Westside Future Fund.
But Moore said the tree cover issues aren’t just coming from toxic soil.
“I think between the remediation and the development, we are drastically losing our tree canopy,” Moore said.
As a resident, Moore said she’s seen clear-cutting to remediate properties or redevelop plots of land, but new trees aren’t planted to replace the old — but Moore wants equity all around.
“It’s not intentional, but you’re not looking at our health and wellbeing,” Moore said.
At the Green Team, everything is done through a three-pronged approach: social, economic and environmental equity. The Drawdown Georgia funds will make that possible.
With the $200,000 grant, the Green Team will spend the first year seeing what energy burden the tree removal caused, partnering with the Climate Consortium of the Commons and Carinalis Consulting to do the research. The next year, they will “strategically replant trees” back in the yard.
The project will be led by the neighborhood since the team is made up of residents. Moore said they will also create a community advisory group. While Moore is particularly interested in helping older homes, she wants to see impacts on new builds and long-standing structures.
It’s a hyper-local approach to climate. But Moore sees it as starting at home and potentially building out further. Eventually, she wants to create a “playbook” for the EPA on how to better approach remediation in different neighborhoods.
“Maybe we have the model here, but this could be nationwide, this could be global,” Moore said.
It fits into Drawdown Georgia’s local approach to global climate issues. The initiative was born in 2020 from a multi-university collaboration and funded by the Ray C. Anderson Foundation. Today, six family foundations are funding the climate grants.
John Lanier, executive director of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation, said the work was born out of a question: What climate solutions work best for Georgia?
“We’re not going to be international funders; we’re not even going to be national funders,” Lanier said. “We’re not big enough to make a difference in those spaces, but we are in Georgia, and perhaps we’re big enough to make a difference here.”
Drawdown Georgia followed in the tradition of Project Drawdown, a global resource of over 90 actionable climate solutions. The statewide group of universities put together a list of 20 climate solutions with a focus on equity.
“Once we had that research, though, we needed to make it actionable,” Lanier said.
A group of foundations decided to actually fund those climate solutions. The foundations brought non-funders to help choose the recipient while keeping racial equity in mind. This year’s group is the third cohort, and Drawdown Georgia has distributed $3.2 million in funds to date.
“We had the right funders and the right experts in place to have a thoughtful process to make sure our dollars are going to be doing the most good,” Lanier said. “Not just for the climate, but for the people of Georgia who need help the most.”
The other projects are the Georgia Organics and McIntosh S.E.E.D. Growing Climate-Smart Agriculture aimed at building resilience for coastal Black farmers, the Georgia WAND Education Fund Scaling Energy Efficiency for Seniors aimed at energy assistance for Burke County residents, Harambee House Building Food Sovereignty with Climate-Smart Agriculture in West Savannah and Thomasville Community Development Corporation Improving Health for Seniors.
“When you look at the diversity of recipients in this cohort, it very much undercuts the narrative that climate solutions and equity is some niche overlap point,” Lanier said. “It’s way broader than people think, and it means there’s space for people to lean into this work when maybe they would have thought, “climate’s not for me.””
