The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded $325 million in Community Change Grant funding to 21 projects to help marginalized communities reduce pollution, increase resilience to climate change, and build community capacity.
Industrial facilities are most often located in or near Black, Latino, Indigenous and low-income communities, exposing residents to disproportionately high levels of pollution, public health risks and hazardous working conditions. Donele Wilkins created the Green Door Initiative after experiencing the impact of these inequities in her community in Detroit.
Equitable and Just National Climate Forum’s Recommendations for the Design of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental and Climate Justice Program
Earlier this month, the Center for Earth, Energy, and Democracy (CEED) together with other member organizations of the Equitable and Just National Climate Forum (EJNCF) took part in a Request for Information (RFI) process on the Inflation Reduction Act and Climate Justice Program.
The Equitable and Just National Climate Forum (EJNCF) strongly supports the creation of an Environmental Justice (EJ) Scorecard to evaluate federal government performance on achieving environmental justice. On January 2021, President Biden signed the Executive Order 14008 on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, which directed the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to create a historic tool that would be the first government-wide assessment on environmental justice. The EJNCF submitted recommendations to the White House Council on designing the EJ Scorecard. A summary of those recommendations are below.
In response to the release of the beta version of the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool from the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Equitable and Just National Climate Platform co-authors, a coalition of environmental justice and national environmental groups, released the following statement:
The House of Representatives passed the Build Back Better (BBB) Act today, which will invest $1.75 trillion in meaningfully improving the lives and livelihoods of people all across the United States. The BBB Act includes $162.9 billion to advance environmental justice priorities supported by the Equitable and Just National Climate Platform (EJNCP) co-authors. This major package of investments supports environmental and climate justice block grants and other programs to clean up pollution and create toxic-free communities, healthy ports, and climate-resilient affordable housing and community infrastructure. The Build Back Better Act also invests in pollution-free energy and transit, trucks and buses, a Civilian Climate Corps to create clean energy and resilience jobs in communities, research and development infrastructure at Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs), funding for community engagement to equitably implement the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), and much more.
Today, the White House announced a Build Back Better (BBB) framework that includes substantial investments in environmental justice, including environmental and climate justice block grants, investments in healthy ports, community pollution clean-up, equitable and sustainable community development, a Civilian Climate Corps, a Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator, investments in Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs), rebates and tax credits to cut energy costs for households, and more. In response, the Equitable and Just National Climate Platform released the following statement:
The Sunrise Movement and other progressive groups are joining with environmental justice advocates and national environmental groups in calling for the Build Back Better Act to include critical funding that will allow the Biden Administration to meet the president’s commitment to deliver 40% of the benefits of his historic climate and infrastructure package to communities that have historically suffered from a lack of investments and opportunities.
In response to the House Committees on Energy and Commerce, Financial Services, Education and Labor, Transportation and Infrastructure, Ways and Means, Natural Resources, and Agriculture markups of their Build Back Better bills, the coauthors of the Equitable and Just National Climate Platform, a coalition of environmental justice and national environmental groups, released the following statement:
