Environmental Justice Resources
Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. This goal will be achieved when everyone enjoys:
– The same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards, and
– Equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.
Recent studies of NO2 concentrations provide strong evidence that reducing emissions from heavy-duty diesel engines will reduce the disparity in exposures to traffic-related air pollutants. Moreover reductions in exposures to traffic-related air pollutants are linked to better health outcomes including reductions of emergency room visits from asthma attacks. Please see below for some resources that may be of interest.
Environmental Justice and Systemic Racism Speaker Series
This series explores how understanding and addressing systemic racism and the roots of disproportionate environmental and public health impacts is key to integrating EJ in the policies and programs of EPA and other environmental agencies to achieve environmental protection for all people.
National Center for Civil and Human Rights
The National Center for Civil and Human Rights recently put together an excellent webinar describing the relationship between redlining and current environmental disparities including the current climate crisis. Check it out at the link below:
EJ Small Grants Program
Since its inception in 1994, the Environmental Justice Small Grants (EJSG) Program has awarded more than $29 million in funding to over 1400 community-based organizations, tribal governments, and Native American organizations working with communities facing environmental justice issues.
The Environmental Justice Small Grants Program supports and empowers communities working on solutions to local environmental and public health issues. The program is designed to help communities understand and address exposure to multiple environmental harms and risks. Environmental Justice Small Grants fund projects up to $75,000, depending on the availability of funds in a given year. All projects are associated with at least one qualified environmental statute.
Resources for Community-Port Collaboration
Emissions from diesel equipment operating at ports disproportionately impact nearby communities that are often comprised of low income and minority populations. Through the EPA Ports Initiative, EPA is working to support effective communication and engagement between the port industry, communities, and other port stakeholders. To promote community-port collaboration for effective planning and engagement, EPA developed the resources and toolkit available at the link below.
EJSCREEN
EJSCREEN is an environmental justice mapping and screening tool that provides a nationally consistent dataset and approach for combining environmental and demographic indicators. EJSCREEN users choose a geographic area; the tool then provides demographic and environmental information for that area. All of the EJSCREEN indicators are publicly-available data. EJSCREEN simply provides a way to display this information and includes a method for combining environmental and demographic indicators into EJ indexes.
Please Note: EJSCREEN is a screening tool. Screening is a useful first step in understanding or highlighting locations that may be candidates for further review. However, it is essential to remember that screening-level results: do not, by themselves, determine the existence or absence of environmental justice concerns in a given location; they do not provide a risk assessment; and have other significant limitations.
Additional Mapping Tools
Please check back for future website updates!
Got Resources to Share?
This page is currently a work-in-progress. Nonetheless, we would be remiss not to share the resources above with you. If there are additional resources that you recommend we add to the page, send an e-mail to resources@stridecollaborative.org and it may be added to the site.