Introducing the Just Nature NYC Partnership!

The NYC Environmental Justice Alliance and the Cities team at The Nature Conservancy in New York team are collaborating to advance a bold vision for a healthy and equitable urban forest through the new Just Nature NYC partnership.

Our Vision

Our Just Nature NYC Partnership advocates for more nature-based solutions, especially trees, across New York City to support climate justice and equity. We believe that these investments must be targeted strategically in frontline neighborhoods to help improve wellbeing and resilience, especially in the most heat-vulnerable communities of our city. We aim to provide analysis and resources to community-based organizers and propose remedies that are rooted in and elevate community leadership.

The Climate Crisis & the Need for Just Nature

The climate crisis is worsening, both globally and here in New York City. As global temperatures rise, climate risks including extreme heat, sea-level rise and stronger, more frequent coastal storms become an increasingly urgent threat. Historically marginalized environmental justice communities, with high densities of low-income residents and people color, face the greatest risks, due to the legacy of housing discrimination and environmental racism, and persistent economic inequality.

While these challenges are significant, nature-based solutions, including trees, green roofs, rain gardens, and coastal wetlands, can help mitigate climate change impacts while supporting local livelihoods and thriving, active communities. Yet, like many of the vulnerabilities, nature is not equitably distributed in New York City. To better understand this dynamic, and to ultimately help improve equitable access to nature, the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance and The Nature Conservancy have formed a partnership called Just Nature NYC, centered on the principle that all communities, and particularly those on the frontlines of the climate crisis, deserve access to high-quality nature.

The Just Nature NYC Partners

The NYC Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA) is a citywide membership network linking grassroots organizations from low-income neighborhoods and communities of color in their struggle for environmental justice. NYC-EJA empowers its member organizations to advocate for improved environmental conditions and against inequitable environmental burdens by the coordination of campaigns designed to inform City and State policies. Together, NYC-EJA member organizations advocate for equitable climate and environmental policies and programs that can support community resiliency and move us toward a Just Transition.

The Nature Conservancy is a long-standing global conservation organization, which historically focused on conserving biodiversity by way of protecting large tracts of land from development. Now, The Nature Conservancy’s mission is to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends, including people, as well as other species and broader ecosystems. In 2013, the organization launched its first city-dedicated program in New York City, and has since initiated programmatic work in over 25 cities across the US and 7 globally. In cities, The Nature Conservancy works across sectors, with governmental and non-governmental actors in leveraging nature-based solutions to ameliorate impacts of the urban heat island effect, to reduce air pollution, to absorb stormwater, and to advance more equitable urban greening, while elevating local leadership.

The Just Nature NYC Partnership is made possible by the generous support of The Nature Conservancy’s North American Cities Partnership Fund made possible with support from The JPB foundation.

Our Goals

The Just Nature NYC Partnership creates a space for our organizations to collaborate, share knowledge and skills, and broaden the networks of people, organizations, and institutions across which we work. We analyze data related to open space and green space in NYC, alongside data on social and demographic factors and environmental hazards to better understand citywide inequities in access to nature and its benefits. We hope our research can be leveraged by local environmental justice communities to advocate for their needs, while highlighting trends throughout NYC and informing the broader policy landscape to help realize a city where nature and people can both thrive.

As this partnership progresses, we’ll be sharing our research through a series of posts — we hope you will follow us!