In his first month in office, President Biden issued an Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, which directed all federal agencies to take a “government-wide approach” to combating the climate crisis. The order called for the creation of the Justice40 Initiative, which promises to deliver 40 percent of the overall benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy, among other areas, to so-called disadvantaged communities.
To help decisionmakers identify these communities, the White House Council on Environmental Quality released a Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool in February. The existence of such a tool is integral to Justice40’s goal of delivering benefits to communities most in need; to deliver benefits to specific groups, policymakers must first be able to clearly and consistently identify them. But many have criticized the tool’s methodology for defining “disadvantaged” communities—particularly its exclusion of race, which is one of the most consistent predictors of environmental hazard exposure.
Given the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the ongoing investments funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the American Rescue Plan Act, the next several years will see an unprecedented level of spending in many of Justice40’s covered areas. Ensuring these investments advance not only climate action but also racial equity more generally will require concerted efforts from federal, state, and local leaders.
Our recently published guide targeted toward local actors applying for competitive federal funding for public transit, bicycle, and pedestrian projects catalogs a wide range of data sources leaders can leverage alongside the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool. Many of these data sources are disaggregated by demographic characteristics, such as race and income, and can help decisionmakers not only identify communities to prioritize for investment, but also assess the equity impacts of projects more broadly.
Local leaders interested in simultaneously addressing the climate crisis and advancing racial equity can consider the following four strategies, informed by this and related research, to embed data-driven and equity-centric practices into their projects and decisionmaking processes.
- Apply a racial equity lens throughout project lifecycles, not just during selection
Racial equity shouldn’t be a standalone criterion applied only during the project selection phase, but rather a lens through which projects are conceived, executed, and evaluated. Local leaders can embed practices that will advance racial equity into a project’s operations, such as by contracting with local Black-owned businesses, prioritizing unemployed or underemployed workers for available jobs, or by requiring more inclusive participatory planning and budgeting processes.
They can also embed racial equity into decisionmaking processes by conducting equity impact analyses throughout the project lifecycle. For example, the City of Seattle developed a Racial Equity Toolkit (PDF) to “guide the development, implementation and evaluation” of policies and programs, so that racial equity considerations are addressed at every stage. - Collect and track disaggregated data
When evaluating whether a project is meeting its racial equity and climate goals, understanding who specifically within each community is likely to benefit and how is key. Investments in projects within specific communities don’t necessarily lead to better outcomes for residents, especially if they are imposed on communities without any consultation or in active opposition to their wishes. Thus, projects should at least collect data on relevant outcomes disaggregated by race and gender. They should also consider collecting additional demographic information, such as age and disability status, because accounting for intersectional identities can help localities understand the effects of compounded disadvantage.
Local leaders should ensure systems are in place to track all relevant disaggregated data before a project begins. If such systems do not yet exist, leaders should consider making investments in local data capacity, including by increasing funding for new technology, hiring dedicated staff, and supporting the data collection efforts of community-based organizations. - Meaningfully involve community members
Gathering input from community members is critical to ensuring that projects meet local needs and challenges. Doing so not only enables policymakers to develop more responsive solutions, but also helps establish community buy-in and builds legitimacy for the resulting projects. Community input can offer insights that even the most robust quantitative data fail to capture and can be especially informative when a projects’ impacts are difficult to quantify.
Localities should build in opportunities for community input at all project stages and ensure the input collected represents all members of the community in question. Offering compensation for community members’ time, whether monetary or in-kind, is one way to ensure underrepresented members can participate. Incorporating the views of community members who have traditionally been denied the ability to participate in civic processes can help remedy past harms and may spur future participation, which can help ensure that benefits to communities—both tangible and intangible—outlive any one project. - Create plans to mitigate potential harms
Though Justice40 focuses on measuring the benefits to “disadvantaged” communities, it is equally important to mitigate the potential harms, which may often be unintended or unexpected. For example, a project proposing to develop bicycle and pedestrian paths connecting low-income neighborhoods to commercial corridors may have many positive effects, including greater access to opportunity for more residents, lower emissions through reduced car use, and better health and safety outcomes. But, as with other transportation and infrastructure projects, it can also lead to gentrification and increased housing costs, which may displace residents with low incomes.
Local leaders should seek to identify both the potential benefits and the potential harms of any project, even those that may be hard to quantify, and create plans that will maximize benefits and minimize harms. When it comes to transportation projects, this may involve bundling investments in multiple areas, such as housing and employment, that, when combined, can address a community’s most pressing needs.
The Justice40 initiative is one way for local leaders to leverage federal funds to advance racial equity and address the climate crisis. But to ensure benefits from investments accrue to the communities most in need, policymakers should be intentional about embedding equity considerations across the lifecycle of their projects.
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