Trump cut their climate jobs. This secretive network found them new ones. — SkimNews
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- Climate Reserve has placed 50 climate experts in new roles by the end of this month, backed by tens of millions of dollars, after being conceived at an Aspen Global Change Institute workshop in July 2024 with 30+ climate experts.
- Aparna Shrivastava, a former senior climate official in the Biden administration, leads the initiative and plans to triple its funding by the end of next year.
- The network has resuscitated federal projects including EJScreen, an online pollution-mapping tool, and is running international work tracking sea level rise in Panama and greenhouse gas emissions in five African countries.
- Fellows have been placed at organizations including the Environmental Protection Network, University of Minnesota, Open Environmental Data Project, Federation of American Scientists, Data Foundation, and climate nonprofit Spark.
- The group operates with secrecy around some operations to shield fellows from Trump administration targeting, since many still rely on or plan to apply for federal funding.
- Climate nonprofit Spark is hiring two Climate Reserve fellows, with one coordinating greenhouse gas measurements across five African countries and another translating the science into policy recommendations.
Why it matters: The Trump administration fired thousands of climate scientists and scrapped billions in grants, but Climate Reserve has privately resettled 50 of them and plans to triple its funding by next year. With fellows across six partner organizations and revived federal projects like EJScreen, the network is absorbing institutional knowledge the administration tried to eliminate.
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