Beyond Carbon

Using field studies to engage stakeholders, the Equity Opportunities Project extended Drawdown Georgia’s "beyond carbon" work by focusing on the equity opportunities, barriers, and concerns of five solutions:

-- 3 carbon mitigation solutions: retrofitting, rooftop solar, and transit solutions, and

-- 2 carbon sequestration solutions: conservation agriculture and land sinks.​

The project concluded that solution access is limited by affordability and structural financial impediments, infrastructure challenges and legal barriers, policy hurdles, and continuing racial bias.​

In sum, how carbon mitigation and sequestration goals are pursued will have significant impacts on whether​ those solutions also foster equitable transitions, rather than perpetuating historic inequities.

Successful climate solutions lift people up, ensure that all communities are at the table, and deliver benefits to those who are under-resourced. Focusing on equity ensures that community concerns are addressed and advantages widely shared.

Innovation is the engine of economic growth and renewal. Drawdown solutions can drive local economic and employment growth, bring high-skill jobs to our state, and drive infrastructure investments that make Georgia an attractive place to work and live.

Solutions like electric vehicles, mass transportation, alternative mobility, healthy buildings, and renewable energy improve air quality and reduce the chances that our kids will have asthma. Shifting to a plant-forward diet and a kinder, gentler agricultural system nourishes our bodies and our ecosystem.

We all win when we protect the environment and ecosystems. Conservation agriculture practices and temperate forest stewardship extend the benefits of our natural carbon sinks like trees, soil and other vegetation. In turn, a healthier natural world hedges against extreme weather impacts.