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A John Gibson LEgacy Program

Indiana Cities take on climate change

John Gibson co-founded Earth Charter Indiana in 2001 with a drive to create a climate-ready-and-resilient Indiana. His Sustainable Indiana 2016 program evolved into Resilient Indiana, whose mission is to realize intergenerational climate action by inspiring Indiana cities to meet the challenge of the climate crisis. John believed climate readiness is an opportunity for green-sector jobs, infrastructure innovation, local food and energy production, and community-building. For more on John, see our Remembering John Gibson page. To make a contribution in John’s honor to advance the goals of Resilient Indiana, go to our donation page.

Our goal is 20 Indiana communities engaged in climate resiliency by 2020. Here is how we are working to achieve that goal:


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Resilient Indiana emphasizes youth-led initiatives to work with engineers, planners, and elected officials to adopt Climate Recovery Resolutions at a local level. Starting in 2017, three Indiana cities passed Climate Recovery Resolutions: Carmel, Lawrence and Indianapolis. To date, seven cities have now passed youth-led climate resolutions, including, Goshen, South Bend, West Lafayette, and Bloomington. For more, see our Youth Power Indiana page.


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Our Resiliency Coordinators program officially employs climate activists as contractors for ECI, dedicated to implementing our programs in their own cities and towns. Thanks to funding from the McKinney Family Foundation, the Herbert Simon Family Foundation, and John Gibson, we have Resiliency Coordinators in seven Indiana cities. For more on this program, go here. (Pictured on the left, six our of Resiliency Coordinators at last year’s Climate Leadership Summit in Goshen.)

An important component of our work with cities is our annual Climate Leadership Summit. This event, specially created for Hoosier mayors, their staff, and municipal leaders, has expanded to serve those doing the work at the local and regional level. We offer a day of workshops and discussions to share best practices, actionable tools, and helpful resources that will assist our community leaders in their efforts to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.


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As a next step after the passage of West Lafayette's Climate Recovery Resolution on Oct. 7, 2019, a Resiliency Clinic was held at City Hall on Jan. 19, 2020. Scientists, city officials, community activists and youth leaders met to discuss what climate action looks like for their city. The Resiliency Clinic was a vision of John Gibson, who believed these clinics could bring together experts and community members to realize ambitious climate goals.


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ECI, in collaboration with the Environmental Resilience Institute formed a Resilience Cohort for municipalities interested in completing a greenhouse gas inventory. Fourteen cities participated in the 2019 cohort and eleven cities are participating in a new cohort to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the 2020. We are proud to assist this work as a community partner across the state.


For more information, contact Jim Poyser