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Miami-Dade County: Climate Action
BY DANIELLA LEVINE CAVA
Miami-Dade County has a plan to finance the green industry to accelerate public and private investment, increase the supply of businesses and skilled labor, harness transformational opportunities and economic benefits for historically disadvantaged communities, and grow South Florida’s expertise as a global leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Miami-Dade County is the poster child of what a diverse, thriving metropolis can do to excel in the face of climate change.
Thanks to everyone in our community, we are taking bold actions to ensure that we not only survive but actually thrive as a sustainable city. We have so many powerful demonstrations of collaboration, commitment, and sheer determination to find great climate solutions.
In November, I was proud to participate in the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. It was inspiring to see tens of thousands of people from all around the world gathered in one place, so full of energy, ideas, and incredible drive to tackle the challenges we are facing.
In speaking on a panel with the mayors of
Athens, Greece, and Freetown, Sierra Leone, we realized that urban areas have a growing voice in developing national and international goal-setting. More often than not, action at the local level is where big ideas and wellintentioned promises are actually converted into boots-on-the-ground transformations. And all these positive changes improve the health, stability, and equitable transition to a prosperous economy.
One of the most important lessons I learned is that local governments, community partners, smart entrepreneurs, and tech innovators are often the best starting point for us to take immediate action around the world. Working together, we can have a dramatic impact in a short amount of time. Bold ideas are often best launched at the local level and then scaled up to the state, national, and international levels, and Miami-Dade County is the ideal place for this innovation to happen.
The county recently submitted our plan for financing $2 billion in green industry investment, which serves as the foundation for our application to a new federal Build Back Better Regional Challenge Grant. The vision is to launch transformational public and private investments to create new jobs and opportunities while simultaneously sustaining an aggressive regionwide program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This plan gives our county the strong financial framework to focus on three targeted industries: alternative energy, energy efficiency improvements, and sustainable, emission-free transportation.
As we move forward, our key goals are accelerating public and private investment, increasing the supply of businesses and skilled labor, harnessing transformational opportunity and economic benefits for historically disadvantaged communities, and growing South Florida’s expertise as a global leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. By doubling down on these areas, we’re building on our existing industry strengths. In fact, employment in these areas grew by 18% from 2015 to 2020, with alternative energy expanding by a whopping 110% over the same five years. Our piece of these industries in Miami-Dade are some of the most productive in the entire nation, and the opportunity here is huge. Conservatively, the total market scale opportunity is more than $24.3 billion, while transitioning the region to carbon neutrality is worth well more than
Daniella Levine Cava
Mayor, Miami-Dade County
Miami, Florida
Daniella Levine Cava was elected Miami-Dade County’s first-ever female mayor in November 2020 following a 40year career as a relentless advocate for South Florida families in public service and elected leadership. She oversees a metropolitan government with more than 28,000 employees serving nearly 3 million residents and managing an annual budget of approximately $9 billion. Mayor Levine Cava’s administration is focused on building a stronger, more inclusive, more resilient Miami-Dade by prioritizing reforms to make our county safer, restoring and reinvigorating a thriving economy that delivers economic security for businesses and families, saving Biscayne Bay and our environment, and engaging with residents to make local government more responsive, transparent, and accountable.
Miami, Florida
Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, Key Biscayne
$100 billion in new cost-saving investments.
Aside from these financing opportunities, we’re also taking many steps to make our community more sustainable. In February 2021, we launched the first-ever sea-level solution strategy, a holistic approach to make our community more resilient. And we’re tackling the challenge of rising groundwater levels head-on by accelerating our conversion from septic to sewer.
Miami-Dade County is uniquely vulnerable. We know that residents in low-lying areas are experiencing more backups than before, and that’s why we’re committed to fasttracking these projects wherever possible. The ones already underway include two new pump stations and force main projects. When finished in 2023, the stations will collect more than 500,000 gallons of wastewater from potentially compromised or failing septic systems. This effort alone will support approximately 4,000 new green infrastructure construction jobs in small local businesses. That’s a win-win for our environment and economy.
The recent infrastructure bill passed by Congress is a historic step forward that can accelerate our efforts to build a more resilient Miami-Dade while accelerating economic growth. This once-in-a-generation investment will create millions of jobs nationwide, transform our infrastructure, tackle the climate crisis, bring high-speed internet to homes across America, and modernize our public transit system.
My administration has been doing the important work to prepare Miami-Dade to partner with the federal government to invest these funds into hundreds of shovel-ready resilience projects that create good-paying local jobs. We are ready to invest funds in projects to expand transportation across our county, bring shore power to PortMiami by 2023, expand electric and solar energy as part of our fight to get to net-zero emissions by 2050, and more. We’re ready to create new opportunities for thousands of residents and businesses as we build back our economy stronger than ever.
Miami-Dade is doing great work on multiple fronts related to resilience and sustainability. For example, I appointed the county’s first-ever Chief Bay Officer, Irela Bagué, who is doing a fantastic job to protect and restore the health of our beautiful Biscayne Bay. Also, to help improve public health, I appointed the world’s first-ever Chief Heat Officer, Jane Gilbert. Extreme heat events claim more lives worldwide than all other natural disasters combined. So when we help everyone beat the heat, we’re also saving both lives and livelihoods.
I also introduced our new Heat Season Public Awareness Campaign, which will run each year from May 1 to October 31 to help people learn how to stay healthy and well while they live, work, and play outdoors as the temperatures rise. We have a new website with tips at miamidade.gov/heat.
More smart solutions include ramping up our tech industry. Many people in the tech industry around the nation have come to Miami-Dade to work remotely, which is great. We are now also ensuring that more of those jobs go to those who have lived here for a long time, trained here, and went to school in Miami-Dade County.
We’re also narrowing the digital divide between the various subsectors of our diverse population through new programs at all of our colleges and universities. We partnered with Miami Dade College to put on the Venture Miami Tech Hiring Fair with more than 35 companies and over 2,700 open positions.
I’m glad to be part of this critical conversation and looking forward to all the great work we’ll do together in the months and years ahead.
©GMCVB
