The Miami Climate Alliance works for equity and resilience by activating community through strategic action, increasing understanding of climate change as a threat to all forms of justice, and building urgency around our shared community well-being. Our mission is to achieve justice for all of Miami's communities in the face of climate change and its effects.

At The Miami Climate Alliance, we are uniquely positioned to translate climate injustice into systemic change. We act as a bridge, connecting like-minded organizations that might otherwise work in isolation.

As a local hub for climate justice, we help members identify intersectional issues, work in coordination with other local organizations, and connect with resources in order to build collective power. We also identify opportunities to advocate collectively and organize diverse voices to speak in unison on topics of importance to all.

Our equity-driven agenda intersects with many public policy issues affecting our frontline communities, including affordable housing, mass transit, emergency preparedness and disaster response, food security, extreme heat, tropical diseases, sunny day flooding, saltwater intrusion, and ICE Detainer/Sanctuary Cities policies. In fact, at the FY 2017-18 County budget hearings, dozens of MCA members advocated for issues beyond climate action, including speaking against proposed cuts to public transportation and in favor of additional funding for affordable/green housing – both of which were achieved.

The Miami Climate Alliance was convened in 2015 by a diverse group of nearly 100 Miami-Dade residents (including community leaders, students, staff of social justice organizations, environmentalists, scientists, teachers, and climate activists) to organize the Miami People’s Climate March.

While organizing the march, we discovered that there was no mention of climate change and $0 were allocated toward climate action in Miami-Dade County’s $6.8 million budget for the 2015-16 Fiscal Year. By mobilizing over 200 informed and passionate residents, our efforts during the budget hearings led to the creation of the County’s Office of Resilience and the first-ever Chief Resilience Officer.

Since then, the MCA and its member organizations have played a decisive role in building Miami’s leadership within the national climate justice movement. We have played a lead role in securing local and state climate policy wins — including getting County leadership and several local municipalities to support the Paris Accords and policies regarding the expansion of solar through co-ops and the waiver of permit fees for PV installations.

As global warming increases, so does the threat to the city we call home. Miami-Dade county is vulnerable to the effects of climate change and sea level rise, being declared as the city most at-risk to these effects by the U.S. National Climate Assessment in 2014.

Despite the risks we face as a city, little is being done to address the issues surrounding climate change. Now more than ever, as we work to build people-centered solutions for living with sea level rise, it is critical that our community demand action from our elected leaders.

We exist to unify the voices of Miami residents and local organizations, to build power, and to achieve climate justice.