Let’s raise the profile of regional food in climate change work

Having been in Northeast Ohio and Western PA over the last few months (and the rest of my time in my home of SE Louisiana), I have spent a lot of time recently pondering the role of community food work in the larger work of addressing the effects of climate change. Many governments have committed to mitigating the effects of our unstable climate with a reduction in the burning of fossil fuels, putting their public works on a “road diet,” investing in energy efficient methods and resources and in other smart technologies and collaborations.

For example, the cities of Cleveland and Pittsburgh- two once smelly, burny cities- are at the forefront of those efforts in the Midwest. Cleveland has the added responsibility of overseeing their portion of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie. The Great Lakes are key because they hold 20% of the world’s freshwater. Yes that’s right. 20%.

Cleveland’s Sustainability 2019 project has been impressive in its scope and in its collaborative efforts to link nine areas of work:

Energy Efficiency
Local Foods
Renewable Energy
Zero Waste
Clean Water
Sustainable Transportation
Vibrant Green Space
Vital Neighborhood
Engaged People

For its part, the City of Pittsburgh was an early signatory on the Milan Food Pact and a strong city leader in the Paris Agreement with private corporations also exploring their part in sustainability.

And back home in New Orleans, Mayor Cantrell and the City Council have indicated their support for sustainable infrastructure, including the over 100 new miles of bicycle lanes and LEED-certified schools and libraries, all built in the aftermath of the 2005 levee breaks.

One such area that seems wobbly in many of those efforts is the connection to the small-scaled food production arena, which remains largely outside of the resources and support in the climate change efforts in the US. Not only in including these food system leaders in that planning, ensuring that good stewards of land and water are part of new policies for the use of that land and water, but also in including them in the decisions in disaster recovery efforts and rebuilding.
Its time for us to demand that local farmers and regional food system be a large part of the solution. To do that, let’s find ways to share information like this more often:

See an American town that’s about to be completely lost to climate change.

The Jean Charles band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw lived in the same place for more than 200 years. But now it’s almost entirely washed away.

By the middle of the 20th century, there were nearly 400 people living on the island. At that point, the land was 11 miles long and five miles wide — providing this Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe with 55 square miles of lush, open land on which to hunt, farm, and thrive.

But all that’s left today is a half square mile of marshland — two miles long and a quarter-mile wide — with two dozen families struggling to survive. The island’s remaining residents still speak their own colloquial French-Cajun dialect and work as fishermen, oystermen, and fur trappers to survive. But ecological damage has made that work hard to come by too.

Tyler Ortego’s Big Idea is fighting coastal erosion with oysters

1) Food and environment should be linked more often.
2) I think my region will become ground central for innovation on coastal reclamation.
The work along the Gulf Coast to deal with the loss of habitat because of climate change and natural resource depletion could very well become a beacon for other coastal communities. I can tell you that we are here (at the intersection of the busiest set of ports in the Western Hemisphere by the way) and we will remain here as long as we can to find ways to mitigate the loss of land and food.

Some time take a look at the wetlands map of the coast of North America and estimate how much undeveloped land remains in the South that can be the start of reclaiming food and place.
Tyler Ortego's Big Idea is fighting coastal erosion with oysters | NOLA.com.

Growing populations and development along the coasts increase the vulnerability of coastal ecosystems to sea level rise. Development can change the amount of sediment delivered to coastal areas, worsen erosion, and remove or damage wetlands. For example, coastal Louisiana lost 1,900 square miles of wetlands in recent decades due to human alterations of the Mississippi River’s sediment system and oil and water extraction that has caused land to sink. As a result of these changes, wetlands do not receive enough sediment to keep up with the rising seas and no longer function as natural buffers to flooding. Rising sea levels could also increase the salinity of ground water and push salt water further upstream. This salinity may make water undrinkable without desalination, and harms aquatic plants and animals that cannot tolerate increased salinity. In the mid-Atlantic region, sea level rise is making estuaries more salty, threatening aquatic plants and animals that are sensitive to salinity.

Swamp Savior: Can a 72-Year-Old Inventor Rescue The Sinking Bayou?

Louisianians like this are my heroes:

“Pierce, however, would argue that swamp ingenuity is nothing new…
‘It’s in my nature to invent things,” say Pierce, a white eyebrow raised playfully as he explains that he’s never had any formal training as an engineer. “It runs through my blood.”

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