Socioeconomic Monitoring and Assessment
We engage in primary, applied, and participatory research to develop important lessons about community well-being and natural resource uses and jobs.

Community Forestry and Natural Resources
Community-based natural resource management posits that in order to sustain ecosystems, communities and workers that depend on those ecosystems must be sustained as well. Healthy forests and water and healthy communities are not independent entities, but two halves of a common whole. Sustaining healthy communities and ecosystems requires changing the ways we do science and formulate and practice democracy, economic policy, and resource management.

Environmental Justice
Environmental Justice means equal protection under the law to live, work, and play in a safe and clean environment. The Sierra Institute works to increase the participation of underserved, low-income workers and their families in discussions and decision-making that affect their health and livelihoods.

Rural Community Development and Capacity Building
Rural communities are undergoing dramatic changes as natural resource and agriculture dependent economies and lifeways give way to tourism and service-based economies. These changes have impacts like changing demographics, lack of affordable housing, worker displacement, loss of family jobs, insufficient access to healthcare, and declining school enrollments. The Sierra Institute works to understand these changes and their effects on rural communities, and to build the capacity of communities to respond proactively.

Click on each of the program areas links to learn more about the kinds of work we do, with examples.

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