ROAR: REGIONAL OHIO ACTION FOR RESILIENCE

ROAR’S ROLE: ROAR functions not so much as a new organization but rather as a catalyst to spur a wide range of people, organizations, non-profits, colleges, towns, cities and communities to create specific, collaborative ventures to address the climate crisis locally, across the central Ohio region. We seek out what is possible, what is already in the works and try to expand those by encouraging cooperative action beyond typical boundaries, all with the aim of enhancing bioregional awareness and deep-level, systemic environmental change.

(THE ROAR OF BEES… NOT OF LIONS :)

Our History

ROAR PRINCIPLE #1: FACING WHERE WE ARE

“[Here is] the real truth we have been avoiding: climate change isn’t just an ‘issue’ to add to the list of things to worry about, next to health care and taxes. It is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message—spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions—telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. Telling us we need to evolve.”

-Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything (2014)

ROAR PRINCIPLE #2: BIOREGIONAL REGENERATION

“Humanity is beginning to explore the fertile ground of creating win-win-win solutions that drive cultural, ecological and economic regeneration. Innovating integrative, whole-systems design solutions is about creating shared abundance through collaborative advantage. Such innovations optimize the system as a whole, rather than maximizing short-term economic gains for a few […] We are collectively going through a maturation process which requires us to redefine how we understand our relationship to the rest of life on Earth.”

-Daniel Wahl, Designing Regenerative Cultures (2015)

ROAR PRINCIPLE #3: FOSTERING POSITIVE, LOCAL VISIONS

“The word is getting out that our global economic system is simply not working. Around the world we are witnessing a truly positive cultural evolution. We are re-learning what ancient indigenous cultures knew: that the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’, and the human and non-human, are inextricably intertwined.”

-Helena Norberg-Hodge, Local Is Our Future: Steps to an

Economics of Happiness (2019)

ROAR PRINCIPLE #4: CONNECTING COOPERATIVE DOTS

“What if … the change we need to see in response to the biggest challenges of our time came not from government and business, but from you and me, from our communities working together? As we put it [in found Transition Towns], ‘If we wait for governments, it will be too late. If we act as individuals, it will be too little. But if we act as communities, it might just be enough and it might be just in time.”

“Bringing about the world we want to live in, the world we want to leave to our children is, substantially, the work of the imagination, or what the educational reformer John Dewey describes as ‘the ability to look at things as they are as if they could be otherwise’. It seems a lot of other people are reaching the same conclusion. In 2009 Paolo Lugari, founder of the Columbian sustainable living experiment Las Gaviotas, wrote that ‘We are not confronting an energy crisis, but one of imagination and enthusiasm’.”

-Rob Hopkins, From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of the

Imagination to Create the Future We Want (2019)

Our Present

The Initiative for Collective Application of Funds from the Inflation Reduction Act / Fall 2022

Purpose: Seeking ways that we as higher education institutions in central Ohio can spark efforts to channel funds from the IRA which can engage individuals, small businesses, and our own institutions (collaboratively and individually) to create substantial long- and short-term projects, cross-campus and cross-regionally, with educational, environmental and economic benefits for all.

Jeremy King
Denison University

Solar cooperative for residential & small business solar
Land “Green” bank
Large-scale greenspace and watershed conversation/restoration & expansion
- Working with TNC & others to preserve large swaths of forest & farmland in the wake of the INTEL microchip factory Ohio
Community solar on brownfields
- Power to low income homes
- SRECS to bigger orgs/businesses

Shelly Douglas, Julie Smiley
Green Columbus

Tree seedling & pollinator plant distribution for community groups
Expand urban forestry
Southside canopy restoration
- Private property/landlords
  - e.g. Church for All People

Jennifer Fish
Franklin County Soil and Water

Stormwater infrastructure updates
SW basins need help – not enough $
Water quality monitoring
Funding for rain gardens & native plant projects & incentives on residential & business property
Funding for conservation projects including stream restoration, floodplain establishment, wetlands

Kristy Meyer, Zach McGuire
Smart Columbus

American Edition Neighborhood Project.
- Lead = Sustainable Columbus
Columbus Regional Green Fund.
Lead = Clean Energy Partners
Micro-grids in low-income neighborhoods.
- Interest – Smart Columbus
Energy Efficiency & renewable energy for business
High School Student Energy Auditor Training Program.
- Lead = ImPact / MORPC
Corridor Safety Improvements.
- Lead = City Public Service
Solar Recycling Research.
- Lead = SWACO/Rumpke
LinkUS.
- Lead = COTA, Public Service
Solar & Energy Efficiency at Columbus Schools
- Lead = MORPC
EV promotion.
- Interest – Smart Columbus
E-bike rental from Library.
- Lead = MORPC or Smart Columbus
Community Charging Infrastructure.
- Lead = Clean Fuels Ohio, Smart Cbus, Dept. of Public Service.

Laurie Anderson
Denison University

My work supports projects by engaging students and a network of partners in data collection in service of the project focus. For example, a tree-planting initiative in low income neighborhoods could involve student workers in labor, data collection, pre- and post-planting, and data analysis.
I am very interested in replicating these efforts across institutions, sites and communities.

Our Future: Fostering Cooperative Action for Facing the Climate Emergency in Central Ohio

Higher Education Collaborative: A Blueprint for Action

The HEC will serve the following functions:

Clearinghouse: Clarify and make more visible/ available what we’re already doing.

Gather data, resources, and models to serve regional cooperation.
Track our collective carbon footprint; sharing methods for reduction.
Provide contacts with farmers and others in regional food production.
Produce an “internship bank” for coordination between area institutions.
Seek curricular exchange, tracking expertise across our campuses.

Connector: Vet, coordinate and promote dynamic, forward-thinking solutions.

Apply clearinghouse resources for developing projects between entities that already exist, asking, “Who is doing what and how can we build on this regionally?”

Catalyst: Establish new ventures, collective grants, on-going projects

Grow the scale and effectiveness of our efforts to address the climate crisis and reshape the regional economy.

Calling Card: Establish central Ohio as a center for bioregional regeneration between small-sized cities, colleges, businesses and non-profits.

Take on Daniel Wahl’s call for colleges becoming “bioregional learning and innovation centers.”
In an era of climate crisis, shrinking budgets and a smaller traditional student population, drawing on a wider base for regeneration and visionary change. What is “next version of college”?

Example : Central Ohio Collaborative Prairie Corridor
Linking Campuses, Non-Profits, Area Schools, Government Agencies,
Metro Parks, Churches and Individual Landowners

Colleges take the lead to unite prairie projects across the region and foster new ones
Form a central office to help schools, churches and others shift “beyond the lawn”
Hire a “roving prairie team” to spread expertise across the region, educate public, etc.
Track research on regional transformation, in the facing of massive suburban sprawl, including carbon sequestration, habitat restoration, wildlife preservation
Include wetland and reforestation components
Establish internships between our colleges for “person power” to clear invasives, establish new areas, conduct research, share expertise between schools
Do outreach education, tapping into Doug Tallamy & the Home-Grown National Park
Provide “centers for land preservation” in the midst of one of the fastest growing areas in the country à providing a model for shaping less random growth
Draw in expertise from the Land Institute, Wes Jackson and others on alternative methods of food production
Demonstrate “bioregional regeneration” in action!!