By centering community voices, the city’s initiative aims to tackle climate change while prioritizing equity, resilience and long-term sustainability for all residents.

By Cecilia Wallace – Environmental Reporter (celiadw016@gmail.com)

Roseville is embarking on a bold new effort to ensure climate solutions with its Climate Equity Action Plan.

The plan, which launched in 2023, centers on community voices and aims to address the needs of Roseville’s most vulnerable residents as the city shapes its climate future.

“Everyone experiences the effects of climate change, but some people experience them more than others, and so sometimes, folks who are lower income or in different situations might actually experience these effects,” said Roseville sustainability specialist Noelle Bakken.

The city is hoping to identify more of those vulnerabilities in the community to uplift and make sure that they thrive in the face of climate change, versus “getting bulldozed underneath the effects,” according to Bakken..

One area the city is focusing on is Roseville’s southeast corner, which is home to rental units and lower-income households and is populated by many recent immigrant communities.

“Those folks have really unique challenges, because they might not speak English, or have a lower grasp of English, so it’s harder for them to get information about severe weather events and things like that,” Bakken said. “That’s one area that we want to make sure we’re supporting those residents, and especially those new newcomers to the country, so that they feel supported and feel like they can trust the government to help them.”

“I would love for this work to create a better Roseville for generations and the decades to come, and so that they’ll be able to look back and say, ‘this is where it started.’”

In addition to identifying communities in need of sustainability support, Roseville is beginning to determine which climate goals it needs to prioritize.

“We’ve just been kind of working on projects opportunistically as they come up, so kind of if there’s funding available or if there’s interest from council or commissions or whoever,” Bakken said. “But now the Climate Action Plan, once we have this developed, we’ll have much more concrete goals to work towards and be able to point to.”

These goals include adopting renewable energy and promoting sustainable transportation, aligning with the county and state’s objectives.

During this goal-adopting process, Roseville will track its success using qualitative and quantitative data and create a space for residents to track their progress toward sustainability.

“We’re hoping to eventually put together a dashboard on the city website where folks can track how we’re doing with reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, reducing our energy usage across the city, increasing things like recycling usage, reducing vehicle miles traveled, and all that kind of stuff,” Bakken said.

Overall, Bakken hopes that this plan doesn’t just follow sustainability guidelines but goes above and beyond because “sustainability just means you’re kind of sustaining and keeping things status quo.”

“Right now, we’re making plans really, that we might not see the results of,” Bakken said. “I would love for this work to create a better Roseville for generations and the decades to come, and so that they’ll be able to look back and say, ‘this is where it started.’”