Dialogues on Climate Justice

Dialogues on Climate Justice

Panel discussion with Daniel Borrero, Project Manager at Rockaway Initiative for Sustainability and Equity (RISE), Dr. Victoria Keener, Senior Research Fellow at the East-West Center, and Ariella Maron, CEO and Principal of Lion Advisors for Community and Environment.

Climate justice is a leading issue for planning practice and cities. Today marginalized and indigenous communities face greater risk of the adverse effects of climate change while historically having contributed the least to the problem. With urban planning at the forefront of providing long-term prevention, mitigation, and resilience strategies, it is essential to reorient our efforts to integrate racial and social equity into development goals. This panel with leading practitioners and activists in the region will grapple with questions about how climate justice is being defined, by whom, and the implications of this for urban planning. Hugo Sarmiento, Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP, will moderate discussion.


Daniel Borrero, Project Manager, Community Visioning in Edgemere at Rockaway Initiative for Sustainability and Equity (RISE)

While obtaining his B.A. in Urban Design and Architecture from NYU, Daniel Borrero continued to work for the Rockaway Initiative for Sustainability & Equity (RISE), a non-profit in Far Rockaway, Queens, that promotes sustainable urban development and tackles the issue of climate change on the peninsula. During college he worked as a lead educator with high school students. Upon graduating he took on the full-time role of Youth Leadership Program Administrator. For the next two years he focused on developing a core Youth Leadership curriculum as well as an Urban Planning curriculum for the organization. He also worked on new planning initiatives for the neighborhoods of Arverne, Edgemere, and Far Rockaway that aimed to create more public space while developing plans with the community to adapt to a changing climate. Daniel is continuing his academic career at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he is working on his M.F.A. in Architectural History.


Dr. Victoria Keener , Senior Research Fellow at the East-West Center

Dr. Keener is a Senior Research Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawai‘i and a Research Professor at the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability & Innovation. She is a Co-Lead Principal Investigator of the Pacific Regional Integrated Sciences & Assessments (Pacific RISA) program. She earned a Ph.D. in Agricultural & Biological Engineering from the University of Florida, specializing in hydro-climatological research. Dr. Keener does interdisciplinary research working with Pacific Island communities to transform climate research into resource management policies aiming to reduce climate-induced vulnerabilities. She was the Lead Author of the Hawai‘i and Pacific Islands Chapter of the 4th US-National Climate Assessment and directs the Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment (PIRCA) network and reports. Dr. Keener is appointed to the City & County of Honolulu Climate Change Commission.


Ariella Maron, CEO and Principal of Lion Advisors for Community and Environment

Ariella Maron is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she co-teaches a planning practicum focused on the Green New Deal with Douglas Woodward. She received her Masters of City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ariella Maron is Founder and CEO of Lion Advisors for Community and Environment (Lion) and a partner of the City Scale consortium. Both organizations seek to accelerate climate action through a people-centered approach, learning from what has worked and not worked in the past in the sustainability field and in parallel ones.