Leaders of Great Lakes cities, including Waukegan and Zion, converge to address climate action

Climate change needs to be solved at the local level.

That was the key message of this year's Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative annual meeting. The binational coalition, composed of over 200 municipal and regional U.S. and Canadian mayors and local officials, gathered in Chicago June 6-9 to talk climate action, with Illinois cities like Waukegan, Evanston and Zion joining in.

"We are in the center of the freshwater universe here. We have 80% of North America's freshwater," Cities Initiative President Jonathan Altenberg said. "When everything else dries out, and everyone else is in need, and the oceans are flooded, these communities will be impacted tremendously. We need to prepare for that."

The annual meeting has a different theme every year. In 2019 it was transforming waterfronts. In 2022, it was leveraging freshwater resources. And this year it was perfecting municipalities' climate action plans.

While at the conference, leaders signed a climate action plan pledge, committing to collaborate with other communities, educate other stakeholders on increasing climate risks and the need for effective climate action, and advocate for policies and funding that will enhance municipalities' capacity to address climate change.

"A lot of things that really get done come from local government taking the initiative," Zion Mayor Billy McKinney said. "It can be a bigger blanket with the federal government, but you really need the local municipalities to come out of their silos and work together to find the solutions and start implementing things that can impact the effects of climate change."

One major challenge is that a lot of cities don't have a plan to begin with. A recent survey of more than 130 communities in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River Basin found that more than a quarter had yet to start developing climate action plans, and just 17% are currently implementing such plans.

"Our study has shown not only that close to a majority of the communities around the Great Lakes don't have these plans, but that they have not moved them faster and farther enough," said Altenberg, also a Vernon Township trustee.

The issue with creating climate plans and acquiring funds for environmental projects like shoreline resilience projects isn't a lack of interest - it's a lack of capacity, Altenberg said. For instance, a city the size of Milwaukee has two grant writers, while Zion has none.

"We've been understaffed for the last 15 years," said McKinney, who also chairs the Cities Initiative board of directors. "Everyone's wearing more than one hat, and we just don't have the budget right now to be able to put that kind of person on staff, or to have one of our staff members to be able to go away for three months or six weeks to do training. We just don't have that capacity right now."

The challenge also revolves around accessibility. During a recent infrastructure funding cycle by the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA, just one application went in from the Midwest, Altenberg said.

"It's because of the complication and the process of getting the money to cities," Altenberg said. "There's a saying, 'Teach a man to fish,' right? But if there are no people to fish, how do you train them? That's the situation that we're in with communities, and our organization is working with the mayors to get going."

McKinney added that collaborating with other mayors and sharing best practices instead of trying to reinvent the wheel is key in the process of climate planning.

"If one thing impacts your community, it's going to impact the next. If the communities that are connected geographically aren't working together with this climate action plan, it's like you're moving into a hurricane," McKinney said. "Your efforts become for naught because one person hasn't done it, or maybe one group has done it and four haven't."

New Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who also attended the annual meeting, said collaboration as a region is critical in tackling what he called "the issue of our lifetime."

"One of the areas that I believe that we have an incredible opportunity to lead with these investments is really working with our cadre of municipal leaders around the region," Johnson said. "That's critical, because we have to make sure that we're utilizing resources strategically to meet the demands not just of the city of Chicago but the region."

While the Cities Initiative has two ongoing programs focused on providing technical project design and grant application support to individual municipalities, it also works with several mayors and governmental organizations at a time to look at the Great Lakes through a larger lens.

"Part of what we hope to do as we continue this work is to encourage more of that cross-jurisdictional collaboration," said Bridget Brown, the initiative's chief operations and programs manager. "There's challenges, though - we don't want to make more challenges for the cities - and so we're trying to find that balance. For example, in Illinois, we're working with the Department of Natural Resources and a technical consultant team to help them develop a shoreline plan for their entire north shore."

Brown said the plan, which will be in the works for another year, will provide a higher-level approach to coastal management in Illinois: where we have the most vulnerability, where priorities might be for projects and what those projects could look like.

Local projects that Cities Initiative is currently supporting include nearshore habitat enhancement and restoration in Lake Forest, shoreline protection at Openlands Lakeshore Preserve in Highland Park, and two dune management projects in Evanston.

• Jenny Whidden is a climate change and environment writer working with the Daily Herald through a partnership with Report For America supported by The Nature Conservancy. To help support her work with a tax-deductible donation, see dailyherald.com/rfa.