With the Chesapeake Bay as the backdrop, Carolina Peña-Alarcón prepares for a teachable moment about climate change at Sandy Point State Park near Annapolis during her annual celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. Together with partners from the Maryland Park Service, the National Park Service Chesapeake, and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, it has developed bilingual fact sheets, a renewable energy card game, and pictures of windmills and solar panels for kids to color in.
Peña-Alarcon is the director of the National Program for EcoMadres, which was founded four years ago as a grassroots project within the Moms Clean Air Force, itself a branch of the Environmental Defense Fund. “We are a community of over a million parents and caregivers united to educate and raise voices to protect the health of children and communities,” she said.
On a day of clear blue skies with seagulls circling above, I welcomed Eric Machado and his nine-year-old daughter from Honduras for a visit with relatives from the state who brought them here. Machado takes the subjects for his students back home where he works as a social studies teacher. “I like that they do it. It is important to be better informed,” he said. “It is no secret that environmental conditions in my country are not what we want,” he said, acknowledging that problems such as deforestation, soil erosion, and increased risks from severe weather are all exacerbated by Global warming.
Health risks higher among Hispanic children
Peña Alarcón’s mission is to raise awareness about health issues among Hispanic children and families, who are disproportionately affected, she says, by air pollution and exposure to chemical toxins. “Hispanic children represent one in six children in the United States and have a higher risk of asthma attacks exacerbated by air pollution than white children,” she said, referring to a study by the National Institutes of Health.
“When there are opportunities like these, we are here,” she said, encouraging positive domestic steps such as paying electric school buses and taking advantage of government cuts to electric vehicles, measures woven into the Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law by President Biden in August. “[It’s] “The start we need,” she said in an online post, adding that the new legislation “will improve the health of communities with environmental justice concerns by reducing pollution, and increasing access to clean transportation, clean energy and green spaces.”
Peña-Alarcon has credentials to support what she preaches. She immigrated to the Washington region from Bolivia in her early twenties in 2001. She used an undergraduate degree in finance to obtain a diplomatic visa and worked with several UN agencies, the International Organization for Migration, the Pan American Health Organization, and the US National Renewable Energy Agency. Energy Lab, and the Organization of American States, where it promoted sustainable development beginning in 2004.
It takes worms to fish, which is the first lesson this young American girl from Honduras learns before fishing from shore on Hispanic Heritage Day at Sandy Point State Park, with gear on loan at the event. Photo by Roseanne Skirbel.
“I found my calling for environmental action there,” she said, adding a master’s degree in environmental and energy management to her growing resume. She led the push for the transition to renewable energy across the Caribbean from the OAS regional office in Saint Lucia. This situation coincided with Hurricane Thomas in 2010, among the most powerful storms to ever hit the island nation. Crops are destroyed, homes are washed away, key infrastructure destroyed, leaving in their wake, landslides flash floods, death, and homelessness.
From an international civil servant to a grassroots activism
As a witness to these events, Peña Alarcón says she gained new insights that will guide her work in the future.
After more than a decade of being involved in work on sustainable development, health and immigration issues in Latin America and the Caribbean, Peña-Alarcón’s next step was to embrace the grassroots environmental movement to volunteer locally with Anacostia Riverkeeper, Eco-Action Arlington, and Moms Clean Air Force, which led to her current job with EcoMadres and a refocusing of her career.
Latinos are the second largest voting bloc in the country, and also the fastest growing. This is one of the reasons why the Environmental Defense Fund has focused on engaging the Hispanic population. According to a 2021 PEW Center survey, the majority of Hispanic respondents report that global climate change and other environmental issues have affected their local communities.
This is where she feels she can make a difference, Peña-Alarcon says, meeting and talking with whoever comes to her table on this day, but also forging partnerships with environmental activists in many states, including in Maryland, where Latinos make Up to 12% of the population.
“We are educating the relationship between pollution, climate change and human health, so that the voices of people affected by air pollution are heard so that they can demand fair solutions for clean air and a livable planet from local and state-elected officials,” he said.
Peña-Alarcon will use its voting power for the first time in the midterm elections. She became a US citizen on September 24.
Originally published at San Jose News Bulletin
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