Monday, July 19, 2021, 11 AM – 12:30 PM EDT
Ciannat Howett, Associate Vice President for Sustainability, Resilience, and Economic Inclusion
“Emory’s Engagement at the Intersection of Climate Change, Health, and Equity”
The time is now to address the conjoined issues of climate change, health disparities, and racial equity, issues playing out right here in Atlanta. To deal with the challenges these issues pose, Emory is building on 15 years of leadership in sustainability to launch the Resilience and Sustainability Collaboratory (RSC), a “think and do tank” composed of faculty, community leaders, and corporate partners working together on actionable projects that can be developed and tested here and then scaled up for application regionally, nationally, and internationally. These projects include an RSC Clinic for children suffering mental, physical, and behavioral effects of climate change and Soil-Testing and Community-Engaged Remediation in West Atlanta, a program that environmental scientist Eri Saikawa described to us in a Colloquium earlier this summer. Today, Ciannat will also describe the RSC initiative called The Working Farms Fund, recent recipient of a big USDA grant to support small to mid-sized farms in the Atlanta area. As we’ll hear, it’s through projects such as these that the RSC is helping Emory demonstrate its commitment to social good and positive transformation of the world while living out its commitment to deeper engagement with Atlanta at the same time.