Rural Climate Partnership

Rural America’s challenges will not be fixed overnight or solved with strategies imported from the cities or the Coasts. Only long-term collaboration, locally-led initiatives, and a real understanding of how rural communities work will help hard-working rural people, small businesses, and family farmers flourish. This truth guides our work.

The Rural Climate Partnership is 100% focused on rural America in its climate work. We utilize a place-based, sustainable job and economic development strategy to empower our rural communities to protect what we love about where we live. We’re in the business of creating bright spots, lifting up rural leaders, and preparing the ground for transformative progress.

Through grantmaking, technical assistance, and shared learning, we center the resilience and leadership of rural communities. Every family in America — no matter where we live — should have the opportunity and tools to build a good life. We point to the possible by telling rural stories of success and creating real partnerships.

Josh Ewing, RCP Director

Born and raised in western Nebraska, Josh has lived and worked in rural America most of his life. The Ewing family runs a cattle ranch that was severely damaged in a drought-induced wildfire in the summer of 2022, so Josh knows firsthand the impacts a changing climate has on rural folks. Josh and his wife Kirsten live in the tiny town of Bluff, Utah, where he serves as a volunteer firefighter and EMT.
Prior to helping launch the Rural Climate Partnership, Josh dedicated the previous decade to working with Indigenous Tribes to protect Bears Ears National Monument, a culturally rich landscape at threat from oil drilling and uranium mining. In addition to conservation leadership, Josh has a background in public-interest communications and has developed a reputation as a strategic coalition builder able to work across party lines and cultural divides.

A climber, landscape photographer, and archaeology geek, Josh spends most of his free time exploring the canyons and mesas of southeast Utah.