NYS stewards spur ‘absolutely critical’ local action on climate change

As an international humanitarian aid worker, Allison Anderson has seen impoverished communities mobilize in the face of climate disasters - more so than in her own community of Pelham, New York, where flooding has drastically increased in recent years.

"There's a disconnect to me, that in some of the poorest places, you see real action, where kids in school are taught how to use flood channels to divert water, for example. But we're not doing the same thing here, in a community with many more resources," Anderson said. "I think there's more we could be doing."

The Cornell Climate Stewards program, which gives volunteers throughout New York state the tools to address the impacts of climate change in their communities, has helped Anderson inspire that local action. The 12-week curriculum - offered by New York Sea Grant (NYSG) and Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) - provides a foundation in the most recent climate science, as well as resources and best practices for advancing resilience at the local level, including how to find common ground and make progress with stakeholders who may not all agree.

"When I heard about Climate Stewards, I just thought: wow, this is amazing," Anderson said. "Not only did we do a deep dive on the science, we practiced how to talk about it and apply it to what's happening in New York state. It's also about creating community, about mentoring and building these connections that spark ideas."

The stewards commit to 40 hours of service in their communities; since the program began in 2021, stewards have established community composting systems, formed and contributed to resilience task forces, created native pollinator habitats and hosted educational events with attendance in the hundreds. In total, nearly 200 stewards have participated in the program, supported by extension educators representing 35 counties and New York City. And the program is poised to grow: the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) began funding the training last year in collaboration with the Climate Smart Communities (CSC) program, a long-standing statewide effort to support local governments in addressing the impacts of more intense storms, heat and flooding.

"There are over 1,500 local governments in New York state that are all key to making progress on emissions and addressing climate impacts, and they're all facing different hazards - we can't do this in a top-down, uniform, standardized way," said Dazzle Ekblad, NYSDEC's statewide coordinator for CSC. "The Cornell Climate Stewards program is absolutely critical for educating and engaging people and enabling them to offer their communities creative solutions."

Michael Brown, the Climate Stewards program leader, said he's seen the curriculum channel community members' passion and concern into agency.

"It's really rewarding to say that we led people from wanting to learn more and being aware of the problem to taking action," he said.

Adding capacity to local government

The origins of the program date back to a 2017-2020 multi-state assessment, led by Allison Chatrchyan, senior research associate and adjunct professor in the Cornell Law School, that determined what local governments need to address the impacts of climate change: more capacity and resources.

With knowledge of the need but a shifting funding landscape for climate-related work, Chatrchyan - along with Kathy Bunting-Howarth, associate director of NYSG and assistant director of CCE, as well as extension staff, postdocs and students - created a curriculum on a shoestring budget and began offering the program online in 2021.

"I think it's notable that it was a team of people at Cornell and their partners who saw the need for the program and built it, had a vision for it and showed its value," Ekblad said. "Now we're able to inject more resources to make it bigger and reach further, and it's a great thing to watch evolve."

The training is now available online and through county CCE offices, helping stewards fulfill that original capacity need. Anderson has even become an elected official in Westchester County, joining the Village of Pelham Board of Trustees in December.

"I knew this was an issue I wanted to bring into greater focus for local government, and the Climate Stewards program gave me this huge amount of knowledge about what's happening at the state level and what tools and resources are available for local governments," she said.

As part of her 40-hour project, Anderson and others resurrected a defunct Sustainability Advisory Board to advise the village and conduct public outreach. She established a task force for the village to pursue certifications under CSC, which could open doors for more funding, and, with the Junior League of Pelham, is creating a bioswale and rain garden demonstration site, a "learning lab" for residents interested in flood mitigation strategies they can implement at home.

"What we're finding is that there are all of these happy mediums or smaller steps you can take, which has been really rewarding," she said. "And the response has been overwhelming."

Helping educators teach climate change

Across the state, in Cattaraugus County, the Climate Stewards program came at just the right time for high school science teacher Kelli Grabowski.

Grabowski completed the training a few months before New York state approved a Climate Education Initiative that will require public schools to teach the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change. The mandate will take effect in 2027 for grades 5 through 12.

"All of my peers, from the teacher who's been in the classroom for 35 years to the teacher who stepped in yesterday - none of them have background in climate change and how to teach it," said Grabowski, who was part of a committee to develop the statewide initiative and participated in the Climate Stewards program with three other teachers. "We all felt like for us the most important piece was learning how to have difficult conversations and how to have kids discuss these issues."

For their volunteer project, the stewards hosted a workshop inspired by the Climate Stewards curriculum, with a focus on data and observable, local impacts as a common ground - like warmer winters and more flooding. They brought in community members who could speak to the changes they've seen and how it's impacting their industries, from tourism to agriculture.

"It was really well received by the teachers," Grabowski said.

Grabowski hopes to host a youth climate summit next year and plans to adapt lessons directly from the Climate Stewards curriculum.

"That's why the Stewards program is so important as a foundation for every teacher, because it gives you the content," she said. "We have to get this program to more teachers and pre-service teachers."

Toward a more connected community

Anderson and Grabowski said the Climate Stewards program helped them build new networks within their regions and across the state, including with Cornell faculty and extension staff they can now call on for guidance. And robust attendance at steward-led events shows a hunger for connection and local action around climate change, said Kelly McDonald, executive director of CCE Cattaraugus County.

McDonald was surprised when more than 50 community members showed up to an Earth Day event hosted by the county's 2025 cohort of stewards. After presentations concluded, nearly half pulled chairs into a circle to continue the conversation.

"It was people from the community who showed up, who wanted to stay and talk about these issues, who wanted to feel that they were not alone," McDonald said. "That's what the stewards give them the opportunity to do, and it was really great to see and to feel that we were all a part of it."

A new statewide online session of the Climate Stewards program will be offered starting Sept. 10, and local sessions at CCE offices are offered throughout the year. For more information, community members can reach out to their local CCE offices or to the Climate Stewards program directly.