The Climate Leadership Academy
The Climate Leadership Academy offers state-of-the-art training, technical assistance and mentoring programs to help cities ramp up energy efficiency, create green jobs, and tackle climate disruption.
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United States
Since 1999, ISC has worked with communities in the United States to help them envision and plan for sustainable futures. Today, ISC's main work in the United States includes our Climate Leadership Academy, which works with city leaders to translate their commitment to reducing climate pollution into effective action, and the Gulf Coast Sustainable Communities Network, which is facilitating stronger connections among communities recovering from natural and man-made disasters.
Tangible Results
- ISC has hosted three Climate Leadership Academies for teams of local climate and energy practitioners and senior municipal officials from 35 U.S. cities and metropolitan areas.
- The Green Boot Camp at Harvard’s Kennedy School focused on improving, accelerating and scaling up integrated building energy retrofitting initiatives.
- The second Climate Leadership Academy, held in Chicago, focused on reducing carbon emissions through climate-friendly and efficient transportation, smart growth and urban development.
- ISC hosted its third Academy in Washington, DC, focusing on green job creation and developing local green economies. A fourth Academy on climate change adaptation and resilience will launch in Spetember 2010.
- Through the Gulf Coast Sustainable Communities Network, ISC is helping coastal communities gain the tools, skills and confdence to create more socially, economically, and environmentally healthy and resilient communities in the wake of disasters, with a special focus on connecting smaller towns and rural areas. Through an integrated program of community exchanges, training workshops, technical assistance, and support for emerging leaders, the network provides an avenue for civic leaders from across the Gulf Coast to share information and ideas, learn from and support each other’s activities, and take small programs and local innovations to scale.
- As Moss Point, Mississippi city leaders created a new post-Katrina vision of sustainability for their city, they also reached out to residents, who are now actively participating in day-to-day decision-making. Two new community advisory task forces help guide major development decisions and serve as an important new model for the city to engage residents and community in the rebuilding effort and beyond.
- After interviewing over 500 people for the New England Futures Project, ISC and its partners published a series of six articles in 2006 examining critical issues facing the region that were published in 27 news outlets in all six states.
- From 2001 to 2007, the Leadership for a Changing World program recognized 163 innovative leaders across the United States for their community-based approaches to social change.
- Launched with our help in 1999, the Burlington Legacy Project in Burlington, Vermont continues to change the face of the city through such initiatives as bringing youth onto boards of directors, the adoption of an open space protection plan, a rewrite of zoning laws, a no-idling campaign and ordinance change; bringing healthier and local food into schools and an anti-racism action plan.
Gulf Coast Sustainable Communities Network
Building on our work in Moss Point, Mississippi, we launched the Gulf Coast Sustainable Communities Network, which is helping communities make informed choices about their future.
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Turning Crisis Into Opportunity on the Gulf Coast
Like its neighbors along the Gulf Coast, the city of Moss Point, Mississippi suffered tremendous devastation during Hurricane Katrina. Today, ISC is helping city officials become stronger leaders, a fledgling nonprofit grow to better serve its community, and the city's poorest neighborhoods—severely flooded by Katrina—engage in the rebuilding process.
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