Funding for this Program
The USDA Forest Service, authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Community Forestry Assistance Act of the 1990 Farm Bill, has allocated funding to the Georgia Forestry Commission for statewide distribution, in partnership with the Georgia Tree Council.
Subtitle D, Sec. 23003 (a). State and Private Forestry Conservation Programs via the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) appropriated $1,500,000,000 to provide multiyear, programmatic, competitive grants. Of this total allocation $9,750,000 was allocated to Georgia to be distributed statewide over a 5-year period. Urban and Community Forestry (U&CF) is also covered under the Agency’s Justice40 Initiative established through Executive Order 13985. To advance the mission of Justice40, proposals should deliver the benefits of IRA investments through established partnerships with local organizations working to support disadvantaged communities experiencing low tree canopy and environmental justice.
The USDA is a partner on the Interagency Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Promoting Equitable Access to Nature in Nature-Deprived Communities, which seeks to reduce the number of people without access to parks and nature in their communities. The America the Beautiful Initiative supports the prioritization of locally led conservation and park projects in communities that disproportionately lack access to nature and its benefits.
The priority of the Georgia ReLeaf program is disadvantaged communities as per the Census Block Group Lookup App. This is a geospatial mapping tool to identify census tracts that are overburdened by climate change, pollution or other environmental or socioeconomic factors. These communities are considered disadvantaged because they are overburdened and underserved.
Other government sanctioned data sources may be considered, but the focus is on the Census Block Group tool. Also visit treeequityscore.org to learn more about why trees are critical for every community and how to determine a community’s tree equity score, a measure of how well a neighborhood is benefitting from healthy community trees.
