“For years what agencies have done is manage our expectations,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of the Brooklyn-based nonprofit Uprose. “They have this dog and pony show where they basically cook the solutions, and then bring them to communities to see if we can provide them with input and respond to something that they created without us.”
Yeampierre said this working group is an opportunity to demand a different kind of practice. “We’re saying that climate change really demands co-governance — that communities need to be seen as the experts and as a resource,” she explained.