Land Matters

The mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, Yvonne Aki-Sawyer, explains her appointment of Africa's first chief heat officer, fighting climate change with land use planning and planting a million trees, and an overhaul of the property tax system to ensure fiscal sustainability.

Zoning may not be something most people think about every day. But behind the scenes, local land use rules have been blocking affordable housing, hindering climate action, and exacerbating racial segregation, according to author M. Nolan Gray and Cornell University professor Sara Bronin.

Berkeley, California, is a classic case of a built-up city facing tensions over future development. In this candid interview, Mayor Jesse Arreguín talks about the need to make the city more affordable by clearing the way for new housing and discouraging speculation among owners sitting on vacant lots and properties.

Climate journalists discuss the impact of global warming on land and the need for new land use policies. They explore issues such as deforestation, carbon sequestration, and the impact of natural disasters. The importance of land in addressing the climate crisis is emphasized, along with challenges in land use management and water resource integration. The value of clean cities, resilience funding, and climate migration are also discussed. Unintended consequences of a flood buyout program and practical tools for journalists to cover the land-climate connection are explored.

Thirty journalists on the climate beat came to the Lincoln Institute recently to consider global warming's impact on land, whether deforestation, inundation, or drought. The conclusion: new policies and practices in land use planning will be required to head off a worsening crisis. A full recap of the 2022 Journalists Forum is available here.

On the South Side of Chicago, Rev. Otis Moss III has led initiatives in green building and community empowerment that are having a ripple effect across the city and beyond. This interview follows his delivery of the keynote address for the Lincoln Institute's 75th anniversary celebration.

Burlington, Vermont – already sourcing 100 percent of its energy from renewables – is pledging to end all use of fossil fuels by 2030. Mayor Miro Weinberger says he has the political support to eliminate planet-warming emissions across all sectors.

Randall Woodfin, Birmingham's "millennial mayor" and rising star in Alabama politics, has launched an urban mechanic's agenda for revitalizing that post-industrial city: restoring basic infrastructure on a block-by-block basis, setting up a command center so federal funds are spent wisely, and providing guaranteed income for single mothers.

The big technology companies could do big things to address climate change, says Silicon Valley chronicler Kara Swisher, host of the "Sway" podcast at The New York Times. New inventions await in manufacturing, materials, batteries, growing food, sequestering carbon – and using artifical intelligence to understand climate data and land use changes.

The cane toad, introduced in Australia in the 1930s to control pests, quickly became a major problem itself – one of many examples of human interventions in natural systems that scientists should keep in mind while trying to tackle the climate crisis, says New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.