“The CORE Hub formed as an answer to regional requests to achieve decarbonized resilience, by supporting initiatives, evidence-based information and analysis, technical assistance, equitable community participation and benefits, and planning and policy guidance.”

Redwood Region Climate & Community Resilience Hub

(or CORE Hub for short)

The CORE Hub is a community organization headquartered at the Humboldt Area Foundation in Bayside, CA, with a mission to help solve the climate emergency, and act with urgency to transition our built and natural systems to become both decarbonized and resilient at the same time. To do this important work, CORE supports deep community engagement, expert technical assistance, and centers equity by ensuring benefits accrue to underrepresented and marginalized communities first and to the greatest extent.

CORE Mission

To solve the climate emergency, we act with urgency to help transition our built and natural systems to become both decarbonized and resilient at the same time. We do this by:

• COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Funding and resourcing community convenings and dialogue for education, decision-making, and implementation with a strong, trusted, and replicable engagement
  process focused on tangible and beneficial outcomes
• PRIORITIZING EQUITY Centering equity and justice; ensuring benefits accrue to underrepresented, historically and currently marginalized communities first and to the greatest extent
• TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE Facilitating broad access to trusted experts, data, and research to build capacity, answer questions, address concerns, and increase knowledge sharing

CORE Opportunity

By transitioning our built systems to lowest-emission operations and optimizing natural systems’ regenerative and carbon ‘sink’ (sequestration) potentials, rural areas can adapt and manage against impacts, improve local economies and quality of life, zero out their own carbon footprint, and help the planet cool. Tribal and rural regions contain leadership, knowledge and innovative solutions that are crucial to reducing emergencies and achieving local, state, national, and global climate and resilience goals.

At the same time, rural and Tribal areas are stretched for capacity. Tribal and other local governments have major gaps in data, technical analysis, skills, policy assistance, and staff time to learn and engage. This lack of capacity limits regional teamwork and contributions to solutions. Fast capacity-building is needed to meet the extent and impacts of the climate crisis, now and over time.

Regional, de-siloed capacity is needed to achieve decarbonized resilience across the systems that matter most—air, water, food, energy, land use, transportation, and communication, among others. Supports for meaningful participation, leadership, and authentic engagement—particularly for the most vulnerable—are critical for the next decade.

Decarbonized resilience measures must be understandable, transparent, and beneficial to local communities. Rural and Tribal communities have experienced exploitation with large-scale infrastructure and/or irresponsible extractive industries. Added dynamics include the politicization of climate change, land use friction, inaccessible information, and financial pressures—these dynamics and others can erode confidence and progress. We must change these dynamics. Facilitating knowledge exchange in rural jurisdictions and sovereign Native American Tribal Nations to enable informed decisions, particularly to benefit those most in need, is crucial work at a crucial moment in time.

Community engagement, public information strategies, and comprehensive and enforceable community benefits, coordinated by trusted facilitators—creating tangible benefits as we decarbonize—is the work of today, and indeed may be the ultimate test of human cooperation. To achieve robust capacity to manage the enormous climate emergency, we have to design, fund, and maintain community leadership, engagement, and education, particularly for the next decade.

CORE Actions

In far northwest California, the CORE Hub formed as an answer to regional requests to achieve decarbonized resilience, by supporting initiatives, evidence-based information and analysis, technical assistance, equitable community participation and benefits, and planning and policy guidance. Our actions broadly include but are not limited to the following:

• Convene and facilitate healthy civic dialogues, with financial and technical supports for underrepresented communities to participate and achieve demonstrable, beneficial outcomes.
• Take action for equity, elevate the interests of the historically and currently marginalized, and promote a climate-smart future that also leads to a just economy.
• Promote accurate, accessible public information to help our local communities make informed decisions.
• Provide research, analysis, and technical assistance that enables smart public-policy and supports public officials; support the development of local/regional expertise, leadership, and knowledge.
• Promote the traditional knowledge and multi-generational values of the region’s Native American cultures and sovereign Tribal Nations in dialogues and solutions.
• Conduct rigorous tracking to document progress and ensure accountability (e.g., carbon accounting and carbon lifecycle analysis; relevant metrics to assess progress toward improved resilience and equity), evaluate the work of the CORE Hub itself, and provide transparency and evidence about initiatives and outcomes related to the goal, mission, and projects.

The Redwood Region Context

One of the world’s most significant ecosystems, the Redwood Coast of Northwestern California, is truly exceptional. Ancient old growth and second growth redwood forests—including a UNESCO heritage site and Indigenous Tribal lands—are estimated to absorb more than 600 million metric tons of carbon, or the capacity to sequester almost 10% of the United States’ carbon emissions. Now in jeopardy due to heat gain, fires, and other climate amplified threats, this forest embodies our global challenge: the need to mitigate, adapt, and absorb in recognition that climate change is upon us, and that our natural and human-made systems require fast action. Our shared global climate change battle relies on local teamwork and timely implementation, and this region has demonstrated success doing just that: combining built and natural systems with human capacity to achieve accelerated climate-smart resilience.

CORE Supporters

The work of the CORE Hub is supported by anonymous grants, and a grant from the James Irvine Foundation. 

Our Projects:

Community Benefits and Protections Alongside Offshore Wind Development

The Pacific Coast of the U.S. is the latest international location for the development of offshore wind energy.

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Tribal Climate Resilience Network

Coming soon!

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