“We need to ask: how do we honor place? How do we embody justice? How do we regenerate life? How do we grow participation? How do we foster resilience?” –Andy Lipkis

Welcome to the Water Learning Series: Los Angeles. Throughout 2024, we have been hosting conversations with organizations, community projects, tribal organizations, activists, organizers, and leaders from LA and places impacted by LA’s water story. This is Session 10. We have one conversation remaining in the series.

We are joined once again by Andy Lipkis, who was also the guest in Session Two. Andy is a visionary and pioneer in urban forestry and watershed restoration in Los Angeles, as well as the founder and project executive of Accelerate Resilience L.A. (ARLA). Through his decades of ground-breaking work on behalf of living infrastructures, Andy has remained faithful to a vision of a water-sufficient Los Angeles despite continued water importation and waste.

Drawing on his experiences in organizing, partnerships, public policy, and his love of Los Angeles, as his birthplace and home, Andy articulates a vision of what LA can become, delving into history, philosophy, and logistics. Andy speaks about the necessity of informed, empowered, and engaged communities stewarding water as crucial to shifting LA’s water story from one of scarcity to abundance.

Listen to Session Two to hear Andy Lipkis’s first conversation in the Water Learning Series.

Andy Lipkis
Andy Lipkis has spent his life crowdsourcing climate resilience, both coordinating flood emergency disaster relief and addressing long-term causes and vulnerabilities. At age 18, he founded TreePeople, and served as its president from 1973 to 2019. Lipkis is a pioneer of Urban and Community Forestry and Urban Watershed Management, the principles of which have spread across the world. He has consulted for Los Angeles, Seattle, Melbourne, Hong Kong, London and other megacities, helping plan for climate resilience and adaptation. With climate change impacts already creating a chronic emergency for cities around the world, Andy’s work has demonstrated promising new ways for individuals, communities and government agencies to collaboratively reshape urban tree canopy, soil, and water infrastructure to save lives and grow a more livable future.

After retiring from TreePeople in 2019, Andy launched Accelerate Resilience L.A. (ARLA), a fiscally sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, to inspire and enable people and local governments to equitably accelerate climate resilience in Los Angeles.

Hosted by: Kate Bunney

Produced & edited by: Anne Carol Mitchell

Intro music by: Mamuse 'River Run Free' - featuring Walter Strauss

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