Seven Agencies Sign MOU Launching American Climate Corps

Imagine, if you will, an old Western movie, where a new sheriff enters the bar and announces he has come “to clean up this town.” Now, extrapolate that idea from not just one, but thousands of sheriffs, and change the “clean up” goal from lawlessness to climate preservation.

Seven federal agencies — the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Interior and Labor; AmeriCorps; and the Environmental Protection Agency — recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to serve as a blueprint for the new multiagency American Climate Corps (ACC) initiative, which draws inspiration from the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program that put millions of young men to work addressing the twin environmental and economic crises of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. The ACC initiative seeks put at least 20,000 young people this year on career pathways aligned with high-quality employment opportunities in industry sectors or occupations, including apprenticeship readiness and registered apprenticeship programs, in the growing fields of climate resilience and clean energy in both the public and private sectors.

The initiative will work under existing authorities and in coordination with existing programs administered by or with federal agencies, tribes, state and local governments, territorial governments, labor unions, and nonprofit organizations to advance climate resilience, tackle climate change and to further the goals of the seven agencies. “The ACC initiative will improve the lives of individuals and communities throughout the nation and its territories while helping the U.S. face intersecting challenges, including the catastrophic and disproportionate impacts of climate change and unequal access to training, higher education and high-quality careers,” according to the MOU.

Among the actions to achieve the goals of the initiative include:

• convene listening sessions with key stakeholders, including but not limited to potential applicants; current corps partners; workforce development organizations; labor unions; tribal, territorial, state and local governments; nonprofit and philanthropic organizations; educational institutions; and relevant Federal Advisory Committee Act committees across the federal government to understand current interests, assess capacities and explore opportunities;
• collaborate with partners to expand and develop outreach, recruitment and retention strategies and partnerships to effectively engage underserved, disadvantaged and underrepresented communities;
• undertake a federal governmentwide review of federal statutes and hiring authorities, and align those authorities across agencies to remove barriers and expand corps opportunities nationwide;
• explore interagency and public-private cooperation to streamline systems, reporting mechanisms, programs, and contract and grants administration, and to improve accessibility in those areas across the federal government;
• establish performance goals and objectives, reporting metrics, evaluation criteria and resource requirements to assess ACC accomplishments; and
• collaborate to increase awareness of federal funding and partnership opportunities, including multi-agency funding opportunities where appropriate.

It will be interesting to see how this initiative develops over time and whether it achieves its broad goals.

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