Urban Releaf: Saving Urban Neighborhoods and Creating Jobs

In 1999, Shakur founded Urban Releaf, a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to plant­ing trees in the urban land­scape of Oakland as well as pro­vid­ing job train­ing and edu­ca­tion for local youth. The orga­ni­za­tion focuses its efforts pri­mar­ily in East and West Oakland, oth­er­wise known as the “flat­lands” because of their geo­graphic and socio-economic con­trast to the nearby “hills” (where there is an abun­dance of trees—and wealth). Since 1999, Urban Releaf has planted 15,600 trees and worked with over 4,000 youth through their Urban Forestry Education program.

Urban Releaf is not merely a response to unat­trac­tive city streets (com­mon not just to Oakland but to dis­ad­van­taged places nation­wide) but also to the envi­ron­men­tal haz­ard known as the “heat island effect.” This dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion is com­mon in urban areas in which there are few trees and an abun­dance of dark or cement sur­faces that radi­ate heat and increase the tem­per­a­ture above those of sur­round­ing areas—a dan­ger­ous duo when com­bined with more extreme heat waves asso­ci­ated with cli­mate change.

The heat island effect is not an equal oppor­tu­nity affair: research in California and the U.S. shows that com­mu­ni­ties of color are likely to have far less shade from tree canopy and more asphalt and other imper­vi­ous sur­faces. And the effect is not only detri­men­tal to imme­di­ate human health and com­fort, but accord­ing to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it con­tributes to increased air pol­lu­tion, green­house gas emis­sions and energy con­sump­tion as peo­ple try to fight the heat with air con­di­tion­ing and other cool­ing measures.

Urban forests and tree-plantings have the power to alle­vi­ate the heat island effect as well as cli­mate change itself. For exam­ple, shade trees help cool build­ings and can reduce cool­ing costs by 30 per­cent. Also, 100 healthy, large trees remove 300 pounds of par­tic­u­late mat­ter and ozone and 15 tons of car­bon diox­ide from the air each year. 

With the com­bi­na­tion of free­ways, indus­trial land uses and ports sur­round­ing Oakland, the rate of asthma hos­pi­tal­iza­tion are two to three times greater for chil­dren under 5 years of age liv­ing in North, West and East Oakland than in the rest of Alameda County.

Shakur says one of the most obvi­ous imped­i­ments to health and well­be­ing in com­mu­ni­ties affected by the cli­mate gap is the lack of information.

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