A collaborative project by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Local Initiatives Support Corporation, and Enterprise Community Partners. Also downloadable as PDF.
The climate crisis runs straight through low-wealth neighborhoods. After years of increasingly threatening weather—heat, fire, wind, floods—there is a growing recognition that underserved and rural communities are hit hardest when natural disasters strike.1 Far less understood, however, is how critical these communities are to solving the crisis.
What’s Possible is an essential playbook for building a stronger, more inclusive future. Putting low-wealth communities at the center, the book begins with the insight that solutions to deeply rooted problems lie in communities themselves. These places, home to so many Americans, have considerable assets, including human capital and dense social networks. Elevating workable solutions from a cross-disciplinary set of practitioners, community leaders, and investors, this compilation of essays presents ideas for harnessing historic public and private climate investments to foster shared economic opportunity. For too long, we have been working in silos—climate, finance, health, nonprofit, community development—all toiling on specific issues in specific regions. Through practical cases, these chapters illustrate what I’ve practiced on the ground: Lessons learned in one context are often transportable and cross-sector collaborations are not only possible but essential. Our collective future depends on it.