Event recap: Sustaining the Movement for Environmental Justice
In July 2022, the USC Equity Research Institute and the Office of Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell co-hosted Sustaining the Movement for Environmental Justice, a convening for local policymakers, researchers, and community organizations. The event focused on the environmental justice landscape in Los Angeles County and upcoming federal and state infrastructure funding opportunities through the lens of environmental equity.
The most prominent federal environmental justice funding program soon to be available to local governments and community-based organizations will be Justice40. As a federal all-of-government initiative created by a 2021 Executive Order from President Biden, Justice40 seeks to ensure that “40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.” Over the past year, federal agencies have been publishing lists of covered programs under their jurisdiction; these projects cover investments in climate change, clean energy and transit, affordable and sustainable housing, training and workforce development, reduction of legacy pollution, and the development of water infrastructure.
In February 2022, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan introduced the California Justice40 Act in the California Assembly to codify the federal Justice40 goals into state law. This legislation stipulates that at least 40% of the expected $45.5 billion in funding that California will receive over the next five years under the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act must “provide direct benefits to disadvantaged communities.” The bill would also establish a Justice40 Advisory Committee to provide oversight. The California Justice40 Act has been passed by the Assembly, and is currently awaiting Senate approval.
Governments, nonprofits, and community-based organizations will soon have the opportunity to apply for environmental justice grant funding through programs covered by Justice40, California Justice40, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The availability of funding for environmental justice in the immediate future is not in question – and in the words of Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell, these programs provide an opportunity to incorporate equity into infrastructure funding and environmental justice policy from the beginning of the process. Indeed, the next obstacle at the intersection of these realms is the equitable distribution of funds to projects that provide benefits to disadvantaged communities in Los Angeles.
This question was the catalyst for Sustaining the Movement for Environmental Justice.
After introductory remarks from Supervisor Mitchell and USC ERI Director Manuel Pastor, two panels of experts and advocates spoke about Justice40 from their perspectives and professional experiences. The first set of panelists discussed the role of research and data analysis in increasing equity in federal Justice40 funding and future infrastructure grant funding opportunities. The second panel focused on opportunities for alignment and collaboration amongst local environmental justice advocates. Folks then had the opportunity to share their top priorities for environmental justice in Los Angeles and to hear the perspectives of attendees from the realms of policy, academia, and advocacy.
Throughout the convening, panelists and attendees coalesced around three main imperatives for environmental justice in Los Angeles: capacity building, incorporating equitable collaboration from the beginning of the planning process, and using data to assess project outcomes and impacts.
First, it is imperative that we work to build the resource and technical capacity of community-based organizations to ensure that they have equitable access to opportunities for grant funding.
As an attendee who manages a capacity-building program assesses, those communities and organizations that have been the most successful in gaining California Climate Investments (CCI) project funding over the past decade are those with the resources to identify funding sources, meet with program officers, and keep in the loop of grant opportunities. This often favors larger governments and organizations with higher capacity to hire workers and build relationships with funders, leaving less-resourced communities with fewer funding opportunities. Importantly, it is often these very communities who need environmental justice funding the most.
As a policy director for a local nonprofit pointed out to attendees of the convening that capacity building within community-based organizations and amongst residents of environmental justice communities will require a coordinated effort between the City, the County, and organizations themselves. Throughout this process, it will be important to avoid approaching capacity building through a perspective of deficit. Instead, agencies must recognize that capacity building takes time and continual investment and commitment to amplifying community voices.
An exemplar of equitable capacity building in the Los Angeles environmental justice space has been the coordination and facilitation of climate justice peer-to-peer learning groups, which allow organizations to build collective power and ownership. Similarly, the Climate Equity Series has worked to amplify community voices in the environmental justice space while building community access to participation in climate projects.
Second, agencies must center equity and community collaboration from the start of the infrastructure planning process, instead of prioritizing existing projects for funding without considering community benefits.
A local public worker in the environmental sector shared with attendees the need to build a pipeline of projects that have been designed from the outset with an equity-centered approach. This may require taking advantage of imperfect funding opportunities in the immediate term as such projects are developed, with a view of transitioning away from these practices as quickly as possible. A capacity-building program manager asserted that if environmental justice communities are not involved in the planning and screening process from the beginning, we cannot meet the stated Justice40 goals of such community empowerment.
How can we achieve this goal? A nonprofit policy director offered that we have to make sure that folks know how environmental justice and infrastructure investments are already impacting their daily lives. This allows them to fight injustices and to collectively imagine how their communities can look with environmental justice campaigns.
One such example in Los Angeles has been the decade-long push from community-based organizations in South Los Angeles to end neighborhood oil drilling. Communities identified the health hazards that were being inflicted upon them, and collectively fought a successful campaign to enact policy to remove oil and gas wells from their neighborhoods. This is also an example of working directly with communities to determine what projects they want to see. To ensure that future environmental justice and funding projects can have similar success, we must also invest in training community-based organizations in providing technical input and ensure that people speaking a multitude of languages have participatory access to the infrastructure funding process.
Finally, we must use data and research to adequately measure important indicators of systemic inequities and to assess whether discrete projects are leading to equitable community benefits.
An academic in environmental policy stressed to attendees the importance of making the development of research metrics and screening tools as a collaborative process between scientists, government agencies, and community advocates. One such example is the inclusion of race as an indicator in screening tools, which has been advocated by community-based organizations and academic experts in the development of federal screening tools.
A public sector environmental worker also discussed the importance of using data to assess where the desired project benefits are actually accruing. In many infrastructure projects, benefits may not accrue as expected, and it is vitally important to monitor the distribution of community benefits to ensure their equity.
Ultimately, Sustaining the Movement for Environmental Justice was a valuable opportunity for environmental justice advocates from different professions, areas of expertise, and perspectives to learn from each other in our collective fight to ensure environmental equity in infrastructure projects and funding opportunities. Such opportunities are slated to expand in the near future: the proposed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 would include $60 billion in direct funding to support environmental justice communities and includes other provisions like methane reduction and tax credits for factories to reduce carbon emissions that would provide additional indirect emissions exposure benefits to low-income communities.
This bill and others like it are only possible because environmental organizations – from large national nonprofits to local community-based organizations – have put in decades of work advocating for increased environmental legislation and for equitable policy solutions to environmental injustices that have been created and perpetuated by inequitable policies of the past. We must all join this fight by supporting and getting involved with environmental justice organizations in our own communities in Los Angeles, from the Greenlining Institute to SCOPE to the coalition members of STAND-LA. Only together can we work towards increased environmental equity for all Angelenos.
About the author:
Austin Mendoza (he/him/his) is an ERI Research Assistant and a Master of Public Policy student at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, concentrating in environmental and social policy. His research interests include environmental and climate justice, immigration, and racial inequity in California, with a particular focus on Los Angeles. In particular, he is passionate about creating research and communications in partnership with local communities in order to bring lived experiences and accessible storytelling into the realm of academia. Austin is originally from San Diego, and received a B.S. in Psychobiology from UCLA.