Andrea Savage, a campaign manager for the Clean Transportation Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a Tufts alumna, spoke at the Hoch Cunningham Environmental Lectures series on Thursday. Hosted in collaboration with the political science department, Savage’s talk, titled “The Complexities of Community-Led Climate Solutions From an Outsider,” centered on her experiences directing community-led conservation efforts.
Colin Orians, director of the environmental studies program and a biology professor, said he aims to host speakers who work in a diverse variety of sectors. He invited Savage to speak in the lecture series because of her community-minded approach to finding climate solutions.
“We included her because of where she was situated professionally at UCS, doing really interesting work and thinking about how you actually work with communities,” he said.
Savage has worked on climate-related solutions globally since graduating from Tufts. She led climate initiatives in Papua New Guinea and Mexico that focused on strengthening ecosystems.
During her speech, Savage discussed how, as a Colombian American born and raised in Asia, she always considered herself an outsider. “It was not until my 30s that I began to accept the U.S. part of my identity and realized that the U.S. and I both needed to start reevaluating our priorities,” Savage said.
After spending the first 13 years of her career focused on tackling the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, Savage started focusing on air pollution and the communities — specifically indigenous peoples — that are impacted by it.
“While most of us happily purchase groceries at the store or order fabulous new clothes and shoes online, historically harmed communities living near ports, highways and warehouses are disproportionately breathing in toxic diesel pollution coming from vehicles like large trucks and trains traveling through their communities carrying the stuff we all buy,” she said.
She emphasized how fossil fuels produce criteria pollutants, which include dangerous air particles like carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide. She called criteria pollutants the evil cousin” of greenhouse gasses, as they cause numerous health issues.
Savage noted that in combating issues such as carbon emissions, tensions can arise when people from outside a community try to impose solutions. For example, in one instance Savage focused on, a carbon offset project called REDD+ was proposed as a solution. However the community ultimately rejected the proposal, as land boundary conflicts were too great.
“We live in a world that repeatedly discounts the voices of impacted communities and their ability to shape solutions that actually address the catastrophe facing us,” she said. “We can save ourselves a lot of wheel spinning and harm to others if we start developing new solutions or … make the old solutions fit better with the right communities in the room from the start.”
Savage expressed the importance of trust-based partnerships in initiatives and building them through developing a shared understanding with the key actors, letting communities “speak for themselves and defend their agency to choose.”
This is precisely what she and her team did in one of the Free, Prior and Informed Consent projects she was involved in. These projects allow indigenous peoples to withdraw their consent at any point to projects affecting their land.
“While free, prior [and] informed consent isn't perfect, it is a process I have successfully used to defend the rights of communities to make free and informed decisions about whether or not the solution is right for them,” Savage said.
Ellie Fried, a senior and an environmental engineering major, has attended the Hoch Cunningham Environmental Lectures series throughout her undergraduate education. She said she appreciated Savage's angle on the value of patience in her profession.
“Climate change is such an urgent issue, but you need to put in time and effort to actually solve these problems,” Fried said. “Things happen really slowly, but that's frustrating when it’s an issue that we care about.”
In the campaign Savage manages at UCS, her team made a commitment not to accept meetings from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency without their community partners.
“When we are outsiders with relatively more power, avoid being a gatekeeper and let communities speak for themselves,” she said.
This part of her speech stood out to Dylan Moreno, a first-year planning to major in environmental studies.
“I thought it was interesting how her job connects her with these communities and allows them to have a voice and opinion on environmental matters where otherwise they're not getting enough support and voice in the general public,” he said.
At the end of her speech, Savage urged the audience to “get comfortable being uncomfortable.”
“There are going to be tough conversations, and you’re probably going to be wrong about a lot of things. Get used to it,” she said. “Despite the immensity and complexity of the challenges that we are trying to overcome, there are some special opportunities even for us outsiders.”
