With Climate Justice for All: Community Action to Mitigate Climate Change and Build Equitable Green Futures
More than 40 percent of Americans lived in counties affected by climate-related disasters in 2021, from hurricanes in the East to wildfires and drought in the West, to a historic cold snap in Texas, to heat waves and tornadoes. Scientists expect millions more people will be directly affected by climate-related disasters in future years. Such events and the overall effects of the warming climate have greater adverse impacts on poor communities and communities of color, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA’s Fourth National Climate Assessment in 2018 and an additional report in 2021 detail health impacts from worsening air quality and more extreme temperatures, employment disruptions due to weather events, and damage to property from flooding and other disasters. The report found, for example, that Black people are projected to face higher impacts of climate change compared to all other demographic groups, including higher childhood asthma diagnoses and the highest projected increases in extreme temperature-related deaths, while Indigenous people are projected to experience the most flooding due sea level rise, and Latinx people are projected to experience the most employment disruption due to extreme weather.
“Climate justice” refers to the recognition of these unequal impacts and the movement to address them directly through organizing, advocacy, and mitigation and adaptation strategies. Calls for climate justice are increasingly being translated into action at the national, state and grassroots levels.
The White House’s proposed “Build Back Better” bill included several elements that attempt to address the inequitable impacts of climate change with sweeping measures including billions in energy-saving retrofits for publicly financed affordable housing and investments in clean energy production. With that bill on the back burner, there are other federal and state policy moves that are also effective, if more modest. They include executive branch actions such as the Justice40 Initiative, seeking to ensure that 40 percent of discretionary domestic program spending goes to climate justice and equity efforts in underserved communities. The bipartisan American Rescue Plan infrastructure bill that passed at the end of 2021 also includes climate components, mostly about transportation and other infrastructure needs.
Community developers and other practitioners committed to greater equity, like LISC and many of its partners, are pursuing climate justice through their work. Several of LISC’s local offices have been pursuing this work in their communities, and LISC has convened a “Green Team” to look at the issue with a nationwide lens and examine how to lift up local examples of this innovative and very necessary work. Across all of LISC’s sites that are active on climate justice, the top priority is centering the people most affected by the issue in the planning and the work that stems from it.
Climate Justice Approaches
There are many ways to pursue climate justice, from grassroots actions to lobbying Congress. In this article, we will focus on three: Dealing with the climate-related challenges that are impacting people now, preparing for future impacts from storms and other events, and ensuring a place for lower income people in the new “green economy.” (Others have been captured in more detail in a LISC Research report of 2020.)
Addressing Current Climate Impacts
A critical angle of climate justice is mitigating the effects of rising temperatures and shifting climatic conditions such as drought and more extreme weather. Temperature extremes cause economic impacts as well as health problems. People face rising energy costs from our attempts to combat hotter summers, that is, if they are fortunate enough to have climate-controlled dwellings. For those who do not have shelter or who are sheltered in places that are not cooled, the rising heat can be downright dangerous.
LISC Phoenix approaches its work with an emphasis on the social determinants of health, and heat mitigation is no exception. LISC Phoenix has worked with The Nature Conservancy to engage the community and develop heat action plans in three Greater Phoenix neighborhoods. LISC then began focusing on one of the neighborhoods, the Mesa Care neighborhood, working with Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation to help the neighborhood create a “resiliency hub” that will include planning for cooling, access to food, and establishing a central location to coordinate emergency response.
Although people often refer to “global warming,” extreme cold and more severe winter storms are also the result of climate change. As energy costs rise and it costs more to heat homes, people with lower incomes can face stark difficulties during the winter. In Buffalo, NY, for example, 97% of the housing stock was built before the first energy code and is not equipped to deal with extreme temperatures, lacking adequate insulation or climate control, or both. LISC Western New York supports community-based partners like PUSH Buffalo that work with low-income homeowners and landlords on weatherization efforts to help homes better handle both heat and cold, minimizing costs and improving affordability.
LISC Western NY is also leveraging its connections with local government and institutional partners to support community organization participation in city, county and NY state climate conversations. Larger and older nonprofit organizations in the city have already been at the table. LISC has been focused on centering racial equity and BIPOC leadership in climate conversations and addressing the obstacles that prevent smaller organizations, many of which represent neighborhoods that are home to majority BIPOC residents, from participating. In this way, LISC is helping residents of those neighborhoods to have a role in conversations that affect their present and their future.
While climate change leads to more, and more intense, precipitation in some places, it brings reduced precipitation in others. This leads to water scarcity, and the twin impacts of water cycle changes and development of formerly agricultural land result in food shortages. LISC Phoenix is working on a food liberation pilot that addresses both issues. Near downtown in South Phoenix, the damming of Rio Salado decades ago signified the death of agriculture for people who lived along the river. To make matters worse, there are also now 21 landfills along the river’s route, which contributes to contamination of agricultural land and a critical water source, and concentrates hazardous materials and pollutants in communities of color. Says LISC Phoenix Executive Director Terry Benelli, “The river does not flow. It’s the red line between haves and have nots.”
The connection between brownfields and food justice was starkly apparent when community members approached LISC and asked for help to figure out a way to clean up the landfills along river so people living there can farm their ancestors’ land again. LISC hosted an event on this topic called Politics of Place, and the City of Phoenix sought and received an award from the EPA to clean up the landfills and help the river flow once more. LISC Phoenix is now managing a revolving loan fund for brownfields with a pipeline of 17 different properties along the river. LISC is building in a racial equity lens to focus outreach for these funds to developers of color, in order to ensure they have opportunities to use the associated loan and grant funds for their projects. LISC is also working with 15 other groups as part of a food liberation lab that brings food into communities that lack access. Many of these communities were already food deserts and then were hit hard by the pandemic. The food lab provides culturally sensitive assistance for communities with religious or cultural food traditions, such as American Indian or Muslim populations. “They’re feeding communities with what their ancestors ate,” says Benelli.
Disaster response and recovery has been a significant part of LISC’s work since 2005, when Hurricane Katrina decimated the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Mississippi, particularly low-lying, lower-income communities. With weather-related disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires becoming more frequent and more intense, LISC routinely finds itself helping the already vulnerable communities it serves cope with the ruinous impacts of new events. After the Camp Fire decimated Paradise, California, Rural LISC worked with its longtime local CDC partner, Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP), rebuild affordable units in an area that suffered an acute housing shortage even before the fire. In Texas after Hurricane Harvey, LISC helped convene stakeholders in rural Texas counties and worked with town and county governments, county water authorities, local nonprofits, funders and national organizations to coordinate needs assessments focused on stabilizing critical infrastructure damaged by the hurricane, and craft an economic development strategy for the area. The Government Investments and Technical Assistance program at LISC provides technical assistance to HUD CDBG-DR grantees to assist with organizing long-term recovery efforts through housing and economic development efforts; working in hard hit places like Paradise, CA, Puerto Rico, and Talent, OR.
Preparing for Impacts to Come
Just as important as recovering from the effects of current climate disasters is preparing for those to come. The effects of major storms are most often felt by those who can least afford to weather them and the racial wealth gap tends to widen in the aftermath of storms. Preparing communities and individuals to be climate resilient is critical so that the effects of disasters will be less extreme, recovery times will be shorter, and the process easier.
Pre-disaster planning and risk assessment can help communities and residents be more prepared in the event of storms or other incidents. Rural LISC is supporting local community organizations with funding and technical assistance to establish Business Continuity Planner and Local Disaster Leader staff positions. In the event of a disaster, these personnel will be specially equipped to guide their organizations’ involvement in recovery efforts on behalf of the communities and neighbors they represent.
In Boston, LISC is supporting resiliency assessments in multifamily buildings. In these exercises, LISC provides a consultant to examine the building, suggest possible upgrades, and work with a planning team to outline safety protocols in the event of a disaster or disruption, including where to meet and how to ensure continued access to needed resources. Once these assessments are complete, LISC hopes to support the residential coordinators or building management teams to work with the residents to ensure that the recommendations make sense and obtain resident input into the final plans.
In addition to preparing people, it’s also important to prepare the built environment for a changing climate. LISC Boston has a building decarbonization program that provides grants to help affordable housing owners with properties approaching rehab to identify energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrade opportunities so the properties will be more resilient and have less environmental impact. LISC Boston also tries to ensure these upgrades do not hit the consumers’ bottom line. “We want to make sure our community members are not seeing increased energy costs as we transition to a decarbonized economy,” says Emily Jones, LISC Boston Senior Program Officer. “That is why, in addition to supporting and advocating for more upfront building decarbonization funding, we are also pushing for utility rates that are affordable at all income levels.”
Madeline Fraser Cook, LISC Director of Government Investments and Technical Assistance and founding director of LISC’s Green Development Center, agrees. “One of the most important pieces of this work is that you get more people in communities [who] this conversation typically does not reach, [so that they get] to see the fruits of environmental stewardship. When they see solar on the building, or see the notice to tenants about new solar panels or walk by a green infrastructure project in their neighborhood, that starts making the climate change conversation concrete. It shows what it looks like at the ground level and how it has an impact on their daily lives. That is how you start to build a community of advocacy around this issue, because it’s real.”
Economic Inclusion
As America and the world pursue new technologies that allow us to consume less energy and have a lighter impact on the planet, environmental justice leaders have formulated the Just Transition concept, which lays out strategies to ensure we make this shift in ways that are both environmentally sound and racially and economically just. As the path forward requires a new workforce with specialized skills, some LISC offices are supporting local partners that provide training to help lower-income residents build the skills necessary to participate in this growing sector. LISC’s local programs are also thinking about how to help residents outside the economic mainstream participate in the shift to greener transportation infrastructure.
LISC Greater Newark is working with its Financial Opportunity Center partners and the local public service electric company, PSE&G. The goal of the partnership is to train individuals in underserved communities to be able to participate in the labor force through the wave of new green opportunities and technologies. “These are the jobs of the future. The future is here,” says Senia Cuevas, LISC Greater Newark Program Officer for Economic Development. “What we wanted to do is make sure our communities don’t continue to miss out on these waves, that they are equipped with skills and education to be able to participate in this new pathway in a significant way while at the same time increasing their income.” LISC’s goal is to equip workers with skills to secure gainful long-term employment, and partnering with employers in need of labor helps ensure that there will be opportunities available at the end of the training. Green technologies represent a rich market for placement. In the partnership with PSE&G, LISC’s partners are training participants to secure technician opportunities with PSG&E suppliers that start at $17-19 per hour.
LISC Western NY is also looking at how to capitalize on new climate mitigation strategies to simultaneously accomplish community development goals. As part of its small business development strategy, LISC is making connections and building capacity of BIPOC small businesses, helping position them to compete for contracts to execute infrastructure transition work called for in the state climate plan. The office is also focusing on equitable transit-oriented development and leading conversations locally about how transportation choices affect communities. LISC Western NY Livability Investment Program Officer Brittany Perez explains that they are looking at “how to integrate clean energy solutions and improve infrastructure for multimodal mobility, which will both increase access for a wider range of people and mitigate the environmental impacts of traditional car infrastructure.” Inequality also influences personal climate choices. “There are a lot of incentives such as tax rebates, but a lot of people can’t front those dollars,” says Julie Barrett O’Neill, LISC Western NY Executive Director. “Older homes with outdated electrical systems also create pragmatic barriers to owning electric cars. All of the ecosystem is set up to benefit those who have historically had credit and capital,” says O’Neill.
Getting Started with Climate Justice
Through LISC’s lens, climate justice work relies on two core principles of community development: community engagement and partnership.
Community engagement: LISC local staff recommend starting by talking to the people most affected by climate justice issues. Phoenix’s Benelli says, “The community has got to be the one setting the table for these discussions. They can’t be invited after plans have already been made. The community needs to be developing the plans, telling the entity leading the work whom to invite and making sure everything coming out of the discussion is directly from the community.”
Western NY’s O’Neill concurs: “We do a lot of listening and make sure we are stepping back at appropriate times. There are so many opportunities to be more just, more inclusive and really follow the lead of communities on this. We have to create more times in the process for listening. We can’t rush through it.”
Without this buy-in, “you will lose the momentum,” Benelli says. “You might attract a few people who are excited, but next thing you know they are displaced from the neighborhood and the work falls apart.” The best and most authentic outreach often comes through less formal means, according to Benelli. She recommends pláticas as an effective form of informal community conversations that can help you get into serious topics.
Taking engagement a step further, it is important for resident leaders and community organizations to be equipped with evidence and data that supports their climate justice aims. O’Neill explains, “We are far beyond talking about recycling or using LED light bulbs. People are concerned about the health of their children and their capability to live in their homes and they need to be equipped with the data to see what needs to happen for that to be possible.” That means not just providing data, but translating it into practical, everyday information and realistic community solutions that residents can advocate for on their own behalf. “That is really shifting the power in those [advocacy] conversations to the people most affected,” says O’Neill.
Partnerships: As in most endeavors, partners are necessary for implementation of climate justice strategies. “We have to share the lift; it’s a heavy lift,” says Cuevas. LISC local staff recommend performing environmental scans to determine who is committed to this work in your community or region and is truly pursuing it. Cuevas continues, “I think we are at the point where most organizations understand this is an issue and they may already have in writing some commitments, but it’s the implementation piece that often lacks unless you have significant partners.” LISC may have significant benefit to offer to these partners, such as the ability to facilitate connections to underserved populations they may wish to impact.
Fraser Cook advises, “connect with people who are outside your sphere because this is cross-cutting work. Use that information to explore partnerships, collaborations and advocate together for a state government that supports this work.” Because federal support can be variable, Fraser Cook recommends cultivating strong state-level ties in terms of program design and allocation of resources.
When thinking about what partners to cultivate, consider:
- Community-based organizations and coalitions focused on environmental and climate justice
- Academic institutions can be key partners in supplying the demographic and climate data you need to support your climate justice work. Reach out to environmental sciences or related departments at a local college or university.
- Faith based groups often see climate justice as part of their mission and can be helpful in engaging community members.
- Foster good relationships with your local utility, even if you are concerned that their position might be adversarial. Fraser Cook says, “Conversations are not always easy, but they need to happen. Utilities are going to be in this space, no matter what.” Many companies now have equity or sustainability positions on their staffs, which can be a good place to start.
Staff: Finally, consider your in-house capacity for taking on climate justice work. Organizational climate initiatives often start out at the behest of someone on staff, so assess the interest of your staff. Says Newark’s Cuevas, “This is a little bit of extra work, but there are a lot of individuals that are personally passionate about it. Start by asking the team if anyone has an interest in leading this type of work.” Alternatively, you may decide to hire especially for this effort. Even if you don’t hire for a green position itself, a candidate with a green background might be appealing. LISC Western NY Executive Director O’Neill was formerly the green initiatives director for the City of Buffalo, so the climate justice ethos is woven into her work.
However we begin, it is clear that the time for climate justice is now. “We don’t have the time anymore to say to communities that we are going ignore the impacts of climate change,” Fraser Cook states. “We have to agree we are going to invest in this work. There is an urgency that needs to be part of the messaging, and a call to action that we have to treat this as part of the civil rights movement. We have to just say, ‘It’s time to act!’”