Through our Green Cities Initiative, Clearwater continues the legacy of our founder, Pete Seeger, by bringing environmental education and watershed awareness and stewardship training to under-resourced communities, thereby using community power to create green power. One key lesson of Pete’s legacy is protecting and caring for the land and water, and drawing from Native American reverence and respect for the natural environment is a key element for all of our programming.
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Clearwater is forging relationships with partners such as the Hudson River Watershed Alliance, the Hudson Valley Regional Council, the Hudson River Estuary Program, the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission, as well as municipalities, school districts, and community stakeholders, with the goal of facilitating change by promoting community organization at the grassroots. As a result, Clearwater has built a sustainable and replicable model with green infrastructure solutions to drive green economic development.
Clearwater’s Green Cities Initiative assists Hudson River cities to incorporate principles of sustainability into all phases of municipal and community planning. The results create a healthier, greener and more supportable and equitable socio-economic Hudson Valley – one that does not simply consider environmental stewardship, but makes it a priority. This Initiative serves as a unifying theme for Clearwater’s environmental education, and environmental action and justice programs and as a guiding principle for expanding our critical work to help promote a more sustainable future for our communities now, and for our future generations. Clearwater’s focus is on watershed protection and stewardship, promoting environmental justice, and extensive youth empowerment programming.
Click on the links below to read articles about Clearwater’s Green Cities initiatives
“America’s Great Outdoors Initiative”
Clearwater Navigator, Fall 2010/Winter 2011, page 5
“Clearwater’s Green Cities Initiative”
Clearwater Navigator, Spring 2010, page 13
“Promoting Green Infrastructure in the Hudson River Watershed”
Clearwater Navigator, Spring 2009, page 19
“Environmental Justice in the Hudson Valley”
Clearwater Navigator, Winter 2008, page 16, 17
“Annual Gathering Focuses on Green Cities Green Jobs”
Clearwater Navigator, Winter 2008, page 5
Aspects of the Green Cities Initiative:
Watershed Protection, simply put: healthy streams and rivers require a healthy landscape. A watershed is the land area that drains to a common outlet, such as a stream, wetland, lake, or estuary. Clearwater works closely with civic leaders, citizenry, and state and federal regulatory agencies to help protect and manage the Hudson River Watershed by addressing both the point and nonpoint sources of pollution.
The watershed management planning process begins with understanding that every piece of land is part of a watershed. A watershed is defined as an area in which all drainage flows to a common outlet.
Click here to read more about Clearwater’s Watershed Protection programs
Environmental Justice is the concept that every person is entitled to equal environmental protection under the law: ECO-EQUITY—which includes the right to be free from ecological destruction and the assurance that environmental burdens are fairly distributed, as well as providing equal access to environmental goods. Environmental Justice refers to the need to prevent the disproportionate impacts of pollution that are all too often borne by communities of color and residents of economically disadvantaged areas. For example, power plants and industrial facilities are frequently sited in poor communities, or traffic is routed through them. Clearwater partners with grassroots community leaders along the Hudson corridor to identify environmental inequities and empowers underserved communities to take effective action.
Click here to read more about Clearwater’s Environmental Justice program.
Climate Justice: In recent years there has been a shift in the debate about climate change. There is now no question that human induced climate change is happening, and the debate now centers on how much and how fast the world’s climatic patterns will change. Yet, still missing from this debate is the human dimension, particularly the impacts of climate change on the planet’s poorest people. Climate justice addresses global warming by looking at who is hurt, how they will be hurt and who is responsible. It examines the human rights perspective of what has been, until now, a debate focused on science, consumption patterns and emission levels.
Citizens for Equal Environmental Protection of the Hudson Valley (CEEP), a community organization dedicated to securing equal environmental protection for all residents in the Lower Hudson River Valley region, partnered with Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. to assess the various environmental and health impacts in the environmental justice community of Peekskill as part of a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) grant.
Click here to read more about Clearwater’s Climate Justice programs
Sustainable Development
Clearwater calls upon civic and political leaders to consider closely all long-term policy and infrastructure decisions that might impact the health of Hudson River and as a consequence the long-term economic vitality of the region. For development to be truly sustainable, it must allow humans to live in harmony with wildlife, maintain intact ecosystems, and respect the development constraints imposed by existing conditions. Clearwater networks with other organizations to promote green jobs and green cities as a founding member of the Hudson Valley Smart Growth Alliance.
