CORE HUB

The North Coast of California is known for grassroots leadership in problem solving.

Political power here is grown from the ground up, rooted in lived experiences and collective wisdom. It is a region committed to shaping its own future.

The Redwood Region Climate and Community Resilience (CORE) Hub, a grantee of The California Endowment’s Social Bond initiative, embodies this philosophy. Since its founding in 2021, CORE has become a catalyst for grassroots climate justice solutions in Humboldt, Del Norte, and Trinity counties—places too often overlooked in traditional climate planning.

For Tribal Nations, power outages can last days, sometimes weeks, underscoring the urgency for locally driven, durable solutions.

CORE Hub’s efforts are grounded in a powerful belief: the people most affected by climate change are best suited to solve it.

For more than a century, this region has suffered from extractive systems that led to logging over 90% of old growth redwood forests and destructive gold mining practices. Today CORE seeks to rewrite that story by equipping communities to not only imagine a healthier, more resilient future—but to build it.

In 2024, CORE and its network of partners played a pivotal role in shaping regional policy and infrastructure with equity at the center. This included engaging Tribal leaders, local advocates, legal experts, and environmental scientists to respond to the largest proposed industrial development in the region: federally licensed offshore wind farms.

CORE helped coordinate positions on safety, environmental protections, and development terms—ensuring grid improvements and maritime infrastructure reflect local and Indigenous priorities. The coalition also pushed for federal recognition of Tribal co-stewardship rights in Pacific waters, an essential move toward honoring sovereignty and sustaining ecological balance.

In late 2024, the Hub hosted the first Northern California Tribal Microgrid Summit, bringing together Tribal leaders, government officials, and energy professionals.

The gathering surfaced critical barriers—and bold solutions—for advancing energy sovereignty, workforce development, and regulatory reform.

Through this work, CORE is not only investing in systems change, it is also investing in people. These efforts are redefining what it means to build power in rural California. The community-led, equity-driven solutions emerging from the Redwood Region are already transforming lives, and they offer a vital model for resilience that California—and the world—needs.

When resilience is rooted in community, the future becomes something we shape together.