World Wildlife Fund Sustainability Works

Andrea Durbin, former Director of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

In this blog series, I’m speaking with sustainability officials in local governments around the country to learn about how they’re tackling socio-environmental issues within the public sector. This week, I interview Andrea Durbin, former Director of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS).

For more than a decade, Durbin led the Oregon Environmental Council, a statewide nonprofit working on sustainability issues and engaging a range of stakeholders from businesses to community leaders and elected officials. She focused on strategic development, program management, government relationships, and policy development. “I take a collaborative approach to leadership,” Durbin says, “which has proved helpful for leading and convening work with other bureaus and other external stakeholders.”

Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, Chief of Environment, Energy, and Open Space for the City of Boston. 

In this blog series, I’m speaking with sustainability officials in local governments around the country to learn about how they’re tackling socio-environmental issues within the public sector. This week, I interview Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, Chief of Environment, Energy, and Open Space for the City of Boston. Rev. Mariama is the founding pastor of New Roots AME Church, a multi-racial congregation that strives to address climate change, immigration issues, and economic injustice through community-building and shared faith.

Reflecting on her transition into the public sector, Rev. White-Hammond says, “I believe in government as an opportunity for us to pool our resources together and think collaboratively and comprehensively about what we need as a whole.” She initially questioned whether she would be a good fit for government work, with the political hurdles and restriction of speech that it often entails. However, she realized that Boston was at a pivotal moment in its response to the dual crises of climate change and inequity. “People say I’m involved in a lot of different things, but I see them as connected,” Rev. White-Hammond explains. “I frame my work as ecological justice. Ecology looks at the relationship between things in nature, and we need to consider relationships when we make decisions.”

Alex Yee, the Coastal and Water Program Manager for Honolulu’s Office of Climate Change, Sustainability, and Resiliency.

In this blog series, I’m speaking with sustainability officials in local governments around the country to learn about how they’re tackling socio-environmental issues within the public sector. This week, I interview Alex Yee, the Coastal and Water Program Manager for Honolulu’s Office of Climate Change, Sustainability, and Resiliency. Yee grew up in Hawai’i and received his Master of Planning from the University of Southern California before returning to his home state. He aims to use his background in urban planning to ensure that future generations have the same opportunity to enjoy Hawai’i’s beautiful beaches as he has.

Honolulu’s climate adaptation strategy, called Climate Ready O’ahu, focuses on five main impacts of climate change: sea level rise and coastal erosion, increasing temperatures, decreasing precipitation, extreme precipitation events (also known as “rain bombs”), and hurricanes. The adaptation plan identifies actions that can be taken at different scales, from the city-wide level to specific neighborhoods, and down to the individual level.

Peaches when she's not saving the world from invasive species.

Three species of carp were inadvertently introduced to the Mississippi River in the 1970s. With no natural predator, they have proliferated, eating plankton and mussels as well as fish eggs while outcompeting other species for food and space. They even lower the water quality, further damaging the ecosystem.

Carp are also expensive: North America has spent more than $26B annually fighting a number of invasive species since 2010 with little success to show for it. The carp not only cost money, but they also reduce income in the region’s economy. Sport fishing generates billions in annual revenue along the Mississippi River and Great Lakes – an economic generator now threatened by carp, especially since Silver Carp leap out of the river and endanger boaters.

But this is where Peaches gets excited. WWF’s Markets Institute aims to identify innovative, market-based solutions to address major environmental issues across food and agriculture. While people in the US have little interest in eating Carp, a bony fish, there could be a robust pet food market for this invasive species. Demand from pet food companies would incentivize harvesting, reducing the population to manageable levels and avoiding the worst environmental damage while generating employment and reducing pressure on wild caught fish.