The Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation identifies and nurtures environmental leaders who have the ability and determination to make a significant impact, and supports initiatives that will have direct and measurable results to improve environmental quality.
Are you a homeowner, interested in finding ways to make your home or investment property more sustainable? Then hear Switzer Fellow Beverly Craig discuss lessons learned from six years working on improving the water and energy performance of multifamily affordable housing with Homeowner's Rehab, a nonprofit that owns over 1,000 units of affordable housing in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They "green" their portfolio by installing energy efficient devices in their properties, which helps them meet ...
Low-income neighborhoods are more often exposed to poor environmental quality when compared to wealthier communities, and scientists are saying this gap will increase as climate change is more widely felt.
Diesel-powered vehicles are a significant source of pollution, impacting health and contributing to climate change. The Ditching Dirty Diesel Collaborative, a coalition of community, environmental advocacy and public health departments, is working together with the Pacific Institute to reduce the impact of this pollution on low-income communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. 2005 Switzer Fellow Catalina Garzon is Program Co-Director with the Pacific Institute's Community Strategies for Susta...
Amy Clipp (2009 Switzer Fellow) gave this webinar for us that offered ideas for bridging the gap between science and policy, with a particular focus on helping scientists apply their work in complex, political environments. As a starting point, the webinar examined the following questions: - What do scientists need to know before they collaborate on high profile policy projects? - How can scientists most productively work with diverse stakeholders? - How and when should scientists share interi...
Leadership grantee Sarah Reed (Associate Conservation Scientist, Wildlife Conservation Society) and her colleague Lindsay Ex (Environmental Planner, City of Fort Collins) discussed their effort to build a collaborative learning network for practitioners engaged in conservation development. Conservation development (CD) is an approach to the design, construction, and stewardship of a development that achieves functional protection for natural resources while also generating social and economic ...
What if you had to decide between feeding your family today and saving the environment for future generations? That's exactly the choice families along the stretch of river between Guatemala and Belize have to make. Switzer Fellow Dave Kramer of EcoLogic Development Fund is helping them find common ground to create a sustainable fishery that will serve everyone.
Producing electricity from the sun with solar panels seems like the perfect solution to our energy needs. But solar panels can also create problems for the environment. Switzer Fellow Dustin Mulvaney believes there are win-win solutions out there.
Los Angeles, California, is one of the biggest transportation in the world, but that has major health implications for residents. Exposure to diesel fumes has an impact on everyone, and Switzer Fellow Scott Fruin documents those effects, especially on children. (Photos provided by Scott Fruin and Andrea Hricko)
Ships travel around the world using shipping lanes. Whales can be in the same areas, raising the potential for collisions between the two, or shipstrikes. Fellow Leslie Abramson works with the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in San Francisco to coordinate a stakeholder process focused on reducing the risk of shipstrike on endangered whales off the coast of California. You can see more video reports on Switzer Fellows' work at http://www.youtube.com/switzernetworknews or on our...
As an associate conservation scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, Sarah Reed studies conservation development as a way to develop property by clustering homes and protecting or restoring ecological resources.
