AZ(LAND) on environmental justice, climate education for Arizona communities

With climate change and more intense heat forecasted for Arizona in the coming decades, an Arizona grassroots organization is working to protect Arizona communities from the impact of climate and inequity through environmental justice initiatives.

AZ(LAND) founder and CEO Reggie Carrillo joined “Horizonte” to discuss the environmental justice and climate education non-profit’s mission and what makes their work so critical for Arizona’s Future.

Part of that mission is fighting environmental racism and, according to Carrillo, “Environmental racism is referring to a past history of traumatizing a community of bad decision making. It’s the ways that institutional decision making has impacted and harmed our communities presently and going into the future.”

Carrillo’s father sparked his love for the outdoors, and he “took us hiking, fishing, camping. He’s the one who built me up with the knowledge to be familiar with our desert terrain, our Arizona terrain as I know it. I credit my mom with being civically and politically active, and those coupled together made me the person I am today.”

Unfortunately, Carrillo lost his mother to lung cancer shortly after he started high school, partially due to the polluted air in Phoenix. “And that’s why her health was impacted that way. And so, when I stepped into becoming a public school educator, I saw my students dealing with this same level-climbing anxiety, fear about their communities.”

AZ(LAND) also has an Office of Resiliency with the Governor’s office and at the City of Phoenix level, where they do the bulk of their work.

“When I look at us for 10 to 15 years from now, I like to see that governments, everyone’s working together again. It’s going to take collective action for us to to address these, what seem insurmountable, issues. But again, all the solutions are there, the resources that exist at the top need to flow to the bottom,” Carrillo said.