Our team just wrapped up our Corporate Working Group in Austin, an intimate gathering of twenty corporate partners, local stakeholders, industry leaders, and expert speakers. Conversations featured nuanced discussions on environmental justice, Texas-specific energy development, funder priorities, nature, mining, and corporations’ roles in the energy transition. Future 500 also presented our research on corporate nature strategies and environmental justice. Below is a recap:

Lourdes Rodriguez (CEO of the David Rockefeller Fund) spoke to the Rockefeller Fund's priorities, which focus on justice, climate, and the arts for social impact.

Lourdes highlighted the foundation’s shift in the last 35 years when the organization evolved from a charitable organization to an impact funder focused on meaningful work in underserved areas. Regarding the energy transition, the foundation seeks to properly weigh the human cost of decarbonizing industrial activities. This approach requires companies to go beyond the technical aspects of the energy transition; to embrace community-driven solutions, civil society advocates, and attention to underserved regions. The foundation believes in trust-based philanthropy, which places decision-making power within the communities served and seeks to be integrative in guiding advocates in effecting change. Environmental justice is one component of a larger picture, a bigger movement for justice that recognizes the multi-faceted burdens fenceline communities face in industrial zones. Through energy democracy and community-owned solutions, companies can build generational change that reinvests wealth into marginalized communities.

“You’re not just in the business of sustainability, you’re in the business of Solidarity”

• Lourdes Rodriguez

Marilu Hastings (EVP of the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation) detailed the foundation’s focus on energy, water, and biodiversity, as well as future plans for the Permian Basin.

Marilu also runs the Mitchell Innovation Lab, which is working on a consortium made up of government, universities, and corporations in the Permian Basin called the Permian Energy Development Lab. The Permian Basin in particular is critical to the Texas energy system, and has huge potential for renewable energy and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in the future. As infrastructure for the energy transition develops, working with local communities and having cross-sector collaboration on projects become increasingly important to the long-term viability and social license of the project. 

Michelle Diggs (Senior Director of Environmental Justice at 3M) highlighted operationalizing environmental justice (EJ) internally, internal alignment, and data driven work. 

Community listening, collaborating with peer corporations, enacting consistency for regular conversations, and putting policy into practice are all recommendations to embed EJ into corporate practice. She highlighted the importance of understanding what community means and how it’s defined differently depending on your operations. Communities may be interlinked and engaged with multiple corporations simultaneously; in order to avoid overwhelming community members, it may be helpful for corporations to find NGOs or representatives as a medium for speaking with the larger group. At the same time, Michelle spoke to the difficulties of scaling EJ and the divisive opinions that community members can have on EJ. Ultimately, EJ should be driven by robust, thoughtful engagement and data that becomes implemented in policy. 

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