This year’s Earth Day theme, “Our Power, Our Planet”, promotes environmental progress built from everyday action and collaboration This year’s Earth Day theme, “Our Power, Our Planet”, promotes environmental progress built from everyday action and collaboration that creates change.
Greenleaf is committed to supporting solutions that promote a healthy planet while empowering change at all levels.
- Climate mitigation, adaptation, and forecasting
- Renewable energy for a clean economy
- Climate-smart agriculture providing resilience and enhanced productivity
- Innovation with sustainably-produced bio-based products
- Green infrastructure and nature-based solutions for healthy communities
- Financial markets incorporating climate and nature risks
Below, we highlight a selection of Greenleaf Communities’ and Greenleaf Advisors’ initiatives that align with this year’s Earth Day theme. As we spoke to our network, a common theme that drives them is protecting our Earth and resources for future generations as well as empowering them with knowledge and guidance. Greenleaf Advisors and Communities work with passionate leaders in clean energy, land use, climate monitoring, and resource use, and we highlight a few comments below. This community is what sets Greenleaf apart in our comprehensive integrated approach to support sustainability.
From the Ground Up: Healthy Soils
Our soils support life at a fundamental level. Healthy soils facilitate nutrient cycling, store carbon, and reduce runoff and erosion. Our Healthy Soils for Healthy Crops, Communities, and Planet initiative has brought many groups together over the years to make meaningful change on agricultural lands to protect our soil and water resources.
Led by Greenleaf Communities board member Warren Dick, Greenleaf works with Bethel Agricultural Association, which is striving to reduce environmental degradation and increase Ethiopia’s capacity to produce better food through regenerative agriculture education. Soil testing at the analytical laboratory, shown.
Randall Reeder, who recently retired from leading the Ohio Conservation Tillage and Technology Conference, reminded us of the lessons of the Dust Bowl and the programs it inspired.
The multi-year Dust Bowl of the 1930s, especially one horrendous day (Apr. 14, 1935) caused Congress and President Roosevelt to establish the Soil Conservation Service (now Natural Resources Conservation Service) to battle erosion. Later, leaders in USDA emphasized no-till farming so that crop residue remained on the surface to protect the soil over the winter. Acres farmed without tillage has increased dramatically, but still a small percent of total crop land. Now years after the Dust Bowl, the lessons are being forgotten, and severe wind and rain erosion that only lasts a few hours is creating life ending consequences through flash flooding and mud slides. Continuous no-till with cover crops is the solution for both wind and water erosion. – Randall Reeder
Empowering a Resilient Future: Clean Energy
The rapid growth of data centers and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events are straining our energy infrastructure. The clean energy transition offers solutions to build a more resilient and sustainable future. At the forefront of this transition are distributed energy resources (DERs) including optimized battery storage and solar PV.
Greenleaf advances economic clean energy solutions that promote decarbonization. We work with clients and partners like Intelligent Generation which empowers businesses and institutions to optimize solar and storage performance, promoting energy resilience, reducing energy demand, establishing reliable backup power, and generating revenue through frequency regulation.
We prioritize solutions that support healthy environments and healthy communities. Solarge, a Netherlands-based solar module manufacturer, is introducing fully-recyclable, lightweight solar panels to the U.S. market, which are free of toxic materials. John Andersen, Derek van der Vorst (Solarge), and Katie DeMuro at the launch of the Comprehensive Climate Action Plan for the Chicago region.
Power in Collaborative Knowledge
Greenleaf Fellow Francine van den Brandeler shared how her students at the Earth Commons at Georgetown University interacted with NGOs, advocacy groups, and policymakers. The experience opened their eyes to the power that they have to make a difference, especially when working together.
Climate change is driving interconnected and increasingly urgent threats, including extreme weather events, water and food insecurity, wildfire risk, and financial instability. Earth Knowledge‘s global intelligence platform delivers insights into dynamic earth systems including climate; providing short- and long-term forecasting at various spatial scales to benefit governments, businesses and investors in making decisions that mitigate risks to assets, operations and the infrastructure that communities depend upon. Their intelligence platform also supports advancements in the sustainable use of land, water, and other natural resources.
Greenleaf Communities continues to support Nature Outcome Agreement Areas, a Canadian initiative focused on collaborative land use with Indigenous Peoples, through its recent workshop that refined core principles and the implementation framework, with a particular emphasis on establishing a pilot program and exploring sustainable financing mechanisms to accelerate conservation.
Conservation is shifting from a zero-sum game of winners and losers to a more collaborative approach. Support for biodiversity conservation takes many forms, and as practitioners, we need to recognize and incorporate diverse perspectives and ways of knowing. In developing Nature Outcome Agreement Areas (NOAAs), we’re seeing this take shape by bringing Indigenous leaders, governments, industry, and communities together around shared, measurable outcomes. – Dan Kraus, NOAA Initiative, Professor University of Waterloo, Member, Nature Advisory Committee, Environment Climate Change Canada
