This 2022 Dow Distinguished Award-winning project was focused on greening low-income, self-managed housing in São Paulo, Brazil. The project aimed to advance the connections between environmental protection, climate change mitigation, and social justice by assisting community partners in remediating degraded land designated for affordable housing. The team pursued climate protection through carbon sequestration via tree planting and habitat restoration in order to promote a circular economy through a closed-loop tree nursery, which would provide a source of income for the community and raw materials to meet future housing needs. This project built upon previous collaborations between self-managed housing movements in São Paulo and students from the University of Michigan.

Project Report