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Restoration Toolkit

Tools for Moving from Resilience to Restoration

Made possible by the generous support of the Climate Advocacy Lab!

Purpose

As the wise old coach advises, we can’t win if we play a purely defensive game. The purpose of this toolkit is to help frontline communities and partners at the state and regional level develop restoration plans and move from resilience to restoration.

Definitions

  • Resilience, noun. 1. The capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress. 2. An ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. (Merriam-Webster)

  • Restoration, noun. An act of restoring or the condition of being restored: such as a bringing back to a former position or condition. (Merriam-Webster)

Background

In March 2022, The People’s Justice Council (PJC) was awarded funding under the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine award number 200013216 to implement From Resilience to Restoration (FRtR). The grant allowed PJC to develop a national online resource hub,featuring the Restoration Web, and to partner with Gulf State organizations to form state restoration hubs from Texas to Florida. Of course, FRtR’s main emphasis is on frontline communities, and PJC Executive Director Rev. Michael Malcom traveled extensively throughout the Gulf South to document restoration plans and actions. These videos comprise a major part of this toolkit. Although this grant ended in August 2023, the support of Climate Advocacy Lab and others is helping us grow From Resilience to Restoration “From the Gulf South to the Whole South'' — and beyond!

How to Get Started

We recommend that you peruse our inspiring video stories of restoration communities and plans. Here are the links to the videos mentioned in our teaser video, and more:

  • Partners such as Green the Church Louisiana are answering the call to care for the needs of their communities by utilizing their space to implement and cultivate urban gardens to combat the food apartheid that is happening in their community.

  • Roishetta Ozane of The Vessel Project took the lessons of tragedy from unstable climate conditions and severe weather disasters, created and implemented a model for mutual aid and disaster recovery.

  • In Liberty City, Florida you will find The Smile Trust. This resiliency hub is a model that should be emulated throughout the globe. Their disaster recovery rollout is resiliency. The way that they care for the community through a free health clinic, direct services, and more is restoration. The fact that this facility is connected to a church is sacred.​​​

  • The People's Justice Council spent time with Mississippi Rising Coalition. Leah and Morris took us to visit with partners who have stood resilient in the face of systemic injustice that has left them with food insecurity, inequitable disaster recovery, and water injustice. These resilient communities are moving beyond resiliency to restoration by designing resilience and restoration plans that move them from surviving to thriving.

What’s Next?

Our Original “3E” Reporting Framework

  1. Ecological Restoration: We must restore the ecosystems and corresponding ecosystem services that protect and enhance life. Communities should look to what was in place before widespread human disturbance and take steps to restore native species and functional habitats such as forests, streams, and wetlands. This includes the removal of both invasive species and human disruptions wherever possible.

  2. Economic Elevation: We must elevate frontline communities, which typically are EPA Environmental Justice (EJ) Communities and Justice40 Climate and Economic Justice Communities, to a level of economic health they likely have never enjoyed. Keeping dollars and economic power local is critical and possible ways to do this include “make, grow, and buy local” infrastructure and the formation of local, worker-owned cooperatives. It also includes defending against “economic invasive species” in the form of local economy-destroying dollar stores and mega marts.

  3. Ecumenical Restoration: We are using the word ecumenical not in its current Christian interdenominational usage but in an older, truly interfaith/philosophical sense. (Indeed, the Greek root oikos, translated as “household”, is the common root for all three of our “E-words!”) We must counter the toxic and divisive theology that has helped create our current inequities and injustices with restoration theology and philosophy.

Adding an Environmental Health Framing / Reporting Component

PJC is applying for additional FRtR funding utilizing an EEH—Ecological / Economic / Health—framework. For example, in June 2024 PJC and Auburn University were awarded a $100K grant from the CDC Foundation to implement “Together Alabama: Preparing Communities for Extreme Weather.” This will be achieved through several in-person workshops where the investigators will interact with the community, learn about their personal experiences of dealing with extreme weather events, and formulate mitigating techniques to cope with the extremes. We will supply these communities not just with information, but also practical tools such as cooling/hydration stations, to protect human health. We will be integrating this work into our FRtR local community restoration planning throughout the Gulf South. You can watch our original proposal video here to learn more.:

Adding a Collaborative Governance Framing / Reporting Component

Likewise, PJC is applying for additional funding utilizing a collaborative governance framework. Frontline communities often need to interact with all levels of government, from local to state to national, in order to move from resilience to restoration. Some tools in the collaborative governance FRtR toolkit include:

Environmental Advisory Boards (EABs)

Creating and employing Environmental Advisory Boards (EABs) can be a powerful way for frontline environmental justice communities to enhance resilience and move toward restoration. Here are some steps and considerations to help guide the process:


1. Planning and Formation​

 

2. Structure and Governance​


3. Capacity Building

 


4. Implementation and Action


5. Monitoring and Evaluation

 


6. Sustainability

 


By following these steps, frontline environmental justice communities can create and employ EABs that effectively enhance resilience and address environmental challenges.

Participatory Budgeting (PB)

Participatory budgeting (PB) is another powerful tool that frontline environmental justice communities can use to enhance resilience and move toward restoration. It allows community members to directly decide how to allocate parts of a public budget, ensuring that resources are distributed equitably and in line with the community’s needs and priorities. Here’s how these communities can effectively employ PB:


1. Community Engagement and Education

 

2. Setting Up the Process

 

3. Idea Collection and Proposal Development

 

4. Voting and Implementation

 

5. Monitoring and Evaluation

 

6. Sustainability and Scaling

 

By following these steps, frontline environmental justice communities can effectively use participatory budgeting to enhance resilience, ensuring that resources are allocated in a way that addresses their unique challenges and priorities.


Of course, you are welcome to choose other categories to track. Some of our initial partners focused heavily on cultural restoration, for example. You will find suggested resources for these and other topics on our Restoration Web national resource! You are welcome to adapt the Sample Workshop Template and Restoration Plan Template we used for our initial Gulf State cohort and view the resulting Sample Restoration Plans for inspiration.

A Sample Restoration Plan Component: Community Emergency Battery and Library of Things

The People’s Justice Council participated in the Emergency Battery Co-Lab hosted by Shareable and obtained our first emergency battery for use by our FRtR network. As we build our own program, you can start your own with Shareable’s Emergency Battery Network Toolkit. We also encourage you to check out Shareable’s Library of Things Co-Lab. Every community needs a Library of Things! Finally, Shareable’s SolidarityWorks is a learning lab for mobilizing grassroots organizers to build new social infrastructure. Our learning and action co-labs bring together organizers for training, resources, and support to initiate impactful projects.

A Sample Restoration Plan Component: WERiSE (Weatherize Every Residence in the South East)

We wish to highlight a People’s Justice Council program that we believe can serve as an important restoration plan component and is replicable across the U.S. (not just the Southeast). WERiSE (Weatherize Every Residence in the South East) utilizes low-cost caulk and weatherstripping to plug holes in housing, which is probably the single most cost-effective way to immediately lower folks’ energy bills by often significant amounts. Furthermore, by employing a train-the-trainer approach, WERiSE facilitates worker training while helping weatherization “go viral.” Finally, workers trained by this program have the option of forming local, worker-owned energy efficiency service cooperatives to keep even more dollars in the local economy.

Where Do We Go from Here?

The People’s Justice Council is working to match funders with the frontline communities that comprise our first (Gulf State) cohort. We also plan to take FRtR “From the Gulf South to the Whole South”, as well as recruit a second Gulf State cohort. Even if you are not located in the South, it is our hope that this toolkit will inspire you to restoration planning at the state and local level and provide the tools you need to get started. Please feel free to reach out to us and let us know how we can help!

Additional Recommended Resources

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