Advancing Racial Equity in Our Work

9.1.20

A “better world” Must be Rooted in Anti-Racism

This post is co-authored by Better World Group’s Asma Mahdi and Daniela Simunovic

The disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black and Latinx communities and recent uprisings in communities across the nation against police brutality put in plain view the ways our society, laws and economy create and reinforce racial injustice.

Government agencies, advocacy organizations, and foundations working in the environmental policy space are not exempt from the urgent call to action to address systemic injustices. Creating a better world and a more inclusive climate movement requires shining a light on the hidden, mundane places where change often stalls: the policies and processes that govern our institutions.

Better World Group has been honored to support agencies in California and Oregon who are leading the charge for systemic change. The California Coastal Conservancy is overhauling its approach to community engagement and grant distribution to include environmental justice voices. It is confronting the unequal access to open space that low-income residents and communities of color face. In Oregon, an extraordinary multi-agency effort to update the state’s Climate Change Adaptation Framework is underway that will address the specific ways that climate change affects communities of color. And the California Air Resource Board’s Community Air Protection Program is investing in community-driven plans to reduce air pollution in the state’s most affected communities.

Each of these processes requires that we dive into the policy manuals and work with our clients to re-imagine how to do business. Here are our insights gleaned from our work on these efforts to incorporate and authentically root racial justice into the hard work of leaving behind a cleaner, more sustainable planet:

1)    Be willing to look beyond your core issue. We must be open to changing outdated bureaucratic processes and rules that drive decisions. In the case of the State Coastal Conservancy, a focus on coastal-specific issues meant that the agency wasn’t taking into account that many inland Californians do not have access to the natural heritage that defines the state in which they live. By creating a process to explicitly expand the Coastal Conservancy’s focus – and funding – to include equity and environmental justice issues, the agency’s work is increasingly connected to a broader movement that links social justice to ocean conservation and fosters the future stewards of the state’s treasured spaces.

2)    Allow for tough conversations to guide next steps. In Oregon, the agencies leading the state’s response to climate change realize that resiliency planning requires confronting the state’s history of racial discrimination that has pushed low-income residents and people of color to live in places that now face greater threats from the effects of climate change. Their willingness to acknowledge those historical wrongs and develop policies to reverse the impacts of these policies in their current work is essential to charting a more just path forward.

3)    Listen to your community for answers.  Our work supporting the San Diego Port-side Community Steering Committee as it implements the Community Air Protection Program is an important effort to empower community residents to guide multi million-dollar investments that will result in cleaner air for their community. A first step was changing how the group makes decisions. We helped the group create a transparent process to guide the groups decision-making process. This created a space that ensures the voices of residents of Barrio Logan and National City who are disproportionately impacted by air pollution in San Diego and experience negative health impacts have an equal weight to scientific, medical experts and industry representatives in guiding and shaping their plan to reduce community emissions and achieve clean air.

4)   Invest in affected communities. Shifts in policies also mean a shift in investments. State agencies in Oregon acknowledged that to prioritize and support environmental and climate justice communities they need to push for more investments in communities that need the support and have historically lacked investment. In California, environmental justice leaders are pushing for similar investments that address historic wrongs and double as down payments for climate resiliency and the built environment.

5)    Develop clear accountability and evaluation metrics. As part of our work with state agencies in Oregon, we suggested how to develop clear accountability metrics to track equity and environmental justice progress that are consistent across agencies. This is imperative to hold agencies   accountable for growing their internal capacity and externally supporting and deepening their commitment to environmental and climate justice communities. Consistency across agencies will enable more cross agency collaboration and allow state agency leadership to track progress, evaluate and reconfigure internal and external policies and processes.

We are honored to be partners with government agencies that are leading the way in addressing the systemic issues that lead to racial inequities, while addressing the intersecting issues created by climate change. Changing the foundation of how our local and state agencies make decisions and investments across the board is a crucial and necessary step in building a more just and greener world.