Abstract
Background:
Environmental justice policies have grown in prominence over the past several decades. However, few studies have sought to characterize the perceptions of organizers and policymakers across U.S. cities engaged in implementing contemporary environmental justice policies and investments.
Methods:
We conducted 19 in-depth interviews with municipal policymakers and organizers to understand how communities experience and understand the root causes of environmental injustices in U.S. cities, the characteristics of existing and proposed policies intended to address environmental injustices, and perceptions and lessons learned for equitably engaging communities and overcoming barriers and unintended consequences.
Results:
A range of municipal policies are being implemented to address injustices in U.S. cities, including grant-based programs for targeting green amenities and infrastructure toward communities most in need and requirements for land use decisions and industrial activities. These efforts are broadly consistent with Justice40 goals. Respondents shared key lessons for implementing environmental justice policies in U.S. cities, including emphasis on procedurally just and meaningful engagement, building trust in government and self-efficacy, procedural and distributional equity in program design and implementation, anticipating and addressing unintended consequences such as green gentrification, and balancing environmental justice improvements with other quality-of-life interventions.
Conclusion:
This article fills a critical research gap and provides insights for Justice40 implementation by focusing on the perspectives of policy implementers and organizers working in urban communities with histories of discrimination and neglect and identifying opportunities to inform environmental justice policy implementation by examining the root causes of environmental injustices. To achieve progress, more must be done to help communities build support for environmental justice policies, target and allocate resources, facilitate meaningful engagement, and avoid unintended consequences.
INTRODUCTION
Environmental injustice, defined as the disproportionate exposure of communities to pollution and climate hazards, has been recognized as a problem within the United States for decades. 1 These harmful hazards are often clustered in neighborhoods that are also poor, racially segregated, and historically disinvested. 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 Environmental injustices are often a product of structural racism, which encompasses racially discriminatory policies, practices, and norms that privilege white majorities at the expense of people of color. 7
Environmental justice policies, which aim to address these challenges, have grown in prominence through regulatory approaches, legal challenges, and state and federal policy priorities. 8 In 2021, the Biden–Harris administration launched the Justice40 initiative, which aims to “deliver at least 40 percent of the overall benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy to disadvantaged communities.” 9 Guidance accompanying Justice40 encourages agencies to consider a variety of data, indices, and screening tools to identify disadvantaged communities, including persistent poverty, racial and ethnic residential segregation, disproportionate environmental stressor burden, and impacts from climate change. 10
The initiative encompasses federal grants, financial assistance, procurement activities, staffing, and other appropriations related to climate, safe housing, workforce development, pollution remediation and clean energy, transportation, and water and is intended to complement efforts within states and municipalities to reorient existing and planned investments.
Several environmental justice policy studies have focused on procedural justice and collaborative governance, whereas others have sought to assess policy adoption and impacts on disparities in environmental hazard exposure and access to amenities. 11 , 12 , 13 These studies have found limited evidence of policy effectiveness and suggest several challenges: implementation difficulties, ambiguities related to how environmental justice is defined, inadequate enforcement and follow-through, and narrow emphasis on procedural rather than distributive justice. 14 Although some studies have described stakeholder perceptions of environmental injustices and movement priorities, few have characterized the perceptions of leaders engaged in implementing environmental justice policies. 15 , 16
This article addresses these critical gaps and provides insights for Justice40 implementation by focusing on the perspectives of frontline policy leaders and community organizers implementing environmental justice policies and interventions in eight U.S. cities. The aim of this analysis is to provide practical guidance for ongoing municipal policy efforts and related Justice40 initiatives by describing (1) how leaders serving communities with histories of racial discrimination and neglect experience and understand the root causes of environmental injustices, (2) existing and proposed policies intended to address environmental injustices, and (3) perceptions and implementation insights for equitably engaging communities and overcoming barriers and unintended consequences related to achieving impact.
METHODS
This qualitative study is a component of a broader investigation of the association between historical redlining practices and environmental hazards in U.S. cities. We conducted 19 in-depth interviews through telephone with 13 organizers affiliated with Groundwork USA and 6 current or former municipal policymakers or advisors representing 8 U.S. cities between January 2021 and August 2021. Groundwork USA and their local affiliate Trusts focus on improving the physical environment through community-based partnerships that empower people, businesses, and organizations to promote environmental, economic, and social well-being.
We developed a 12-item semistructured interview guide that focused on interviewee perceptions of the experiences of local community residents with environmental hazards as well as their perceptions of the scope and effectiveness of existing and proposed environmental justice policies. We recorded, transcribed, and deidentified each interview, which typically lasted 60 minutes. The study was considered not human subjects research by [Blinded] institutional review board.
Study sample
We identified organizers and policy advisors with insight into environmental justice-related policies through consultation with Groundwork USA and their local affiliates. 17 Organizers included senior leaders or program coordinators within Groundwork Trust affiliate organizations.
We selected organizers given their focus on grassroots programming, engagement with residents in neighborhoods affected by environmental injustices, and advocacy on behalf of diverse groups of residents. We selected organizers who had subject matter expertise in environmental justice policies and were intimately familiar with resident perspectives on environmental injustices. Although we considered interviewing individual residents, we decided to focus on community-engaged organizers given their knowledge of residents' concerns in multiple neighborhoods.
We also selected policy advisors given their unique role in advancing environmental justice policy and deep subject matter expertise in environmental justice policy development and implementation. Policy advisors included current or former council members, senior advisors to legislators, and senior staff within departments or offices related to environmental quality or sustainability. We identified cities with historical environmental justice challenges in which Groundwork was actively engaged and selected small, medium, and large cities that were distributed across U.S. census regions. Each participant received an Amazon gift card upon successful completion of the interview.
Analysis
We organized our analysis based on a deductive approach in which concepts of interests and corresponding codes were identified before data collection. We developed an initial codebook, which was applied to a subset of transcripts by two members of the study team in Dedoose. The codebooks included both descriptive codes intended to characterize environmental hazards and corresponding policy solutions, as well as thematic codes related to the underlying research questions (e.g., perceptions of the historical basis of environmental hazards). The two main coders then coded the same excerpts and compared results. Once a satisfactory level of agreement was reached, a member of the study team coded the transcripts in NVivo. Once coding was completed, we thematically analyzed and summarized the excerpts.
RESULTS
We conducted 19 in-depth interviews through telephone and video with 13 environmental justice organizers and 6 policymakers spanning 8 U.S. cities. The characteristics of cities included in the analysis are provided in Table 1.
Characteristics of Cities and Respondents Included in the Study
Community organizers and policymakers' understanding of environmental injustices
We found organizers and policymakers were generally aligned in terms of their understanding of environmental injustices. Neighborhoods are cumulatively affected by multiple overlapping environmental hazards. Organizers and policymakers in all cities indicated that neighborhoods identified as priorities for environmental justice policy interventions were affected by multiple environmental hazards. The extent to which environmental hazards were clearly understood and identified by residents as a policy priority varied.
In some instances, residents were cumulatively affected by multiple hazards, yet most concerned by hazards that were especially evident or were most concerned about broader economic, safety, and educational challenges. The types of hazards most apparent to residents were related to air quality, trash, flooding, noise pollution, and water quality, much of which was related to emissions from local industrial facilities and heavy traffic, as they had a compelling impact on quality of life.
Environmental hazards are not isolated from other socioeconomic burdens, which can take priority. Organizers and policymakers noted that in many instances, neighborhoods that were perceived by leaders as being disproportionately affected by cumulative toxic stress stemming from environmental hazards were also besieged by poverty, low quality housing, and poor health. In these cases, the relative importance of environmental hazards was diminished. The extent to which hazards were perceived by residents as policy priorities depended on competing concerns such as high unemployment, community safety, and inadequate housing. Respondents indicated that residents had adapted to recurring hazards such as street flooding or flooding in basements. As one organizer noted,
The people who live in that neighborhood, they've lived with the flooding for decades. That to them it's no longer has a big of a deal as we see it as. …The environmental hazards that [organizers] see and [are] using as a rallying point are not necessarily the environmental hazards that the community [believes] are paramount.
Policymaker sentiments
Policymakers were generally more attentive to underlying economic and public health inequities that were present in neighborhoods affected by environmental hazards. They noted that communities with environmental injustice were also afflicted by low employment, poor life expectancy, and challenges related to public safety, transportation safety, and sewage infrastructure. Policymakers expressed an interest in acquiring data to better understand inequities. As one policymaker noted,
Often, we're working with aggregated data and it's difficult to say which populations are more vulnerable or more impacted by a given topic. Increasingly, we're getting better data and are able to tell a more accurate story.
Although respondents cited current and legacy planning decisions for environmental inequities, it is not clear that there is widespread understanding of these linkages. Organizers and policymakers identified both contemporary and historical root causes underlying environmental injustices. Respondents noted that contemporary causes of injustices were often driven by land use decisions and industrial regulation that reinforced the industrial nature of neighborhoods, as well as longstanding disinvestment fueled by power inequities (e.g., regional incineration and sewage facilities being clustered in poor communities).
With respect to historical factors, both organizers and policymakers observed that environmental injustices were often the result of industrial decline, highway construction, racially discriminatory redlining and related policies, racially motivated disinvestment, and legacy landfills/industrial sites. Highway construction in the mid to late 20th century further exacerbated inequities within neighborhoods by cleaving existing communities, displacing long-term residents, and introducing new sources of air pollution and flooding hazards. As one organizer noted,
Segregation and communities being separated from one another just got worse in the mid 1900s when [an interstate] was built, and that split the city in half… It really cleaved a lot of neighborhoods in two. A lot of neighborhoods were completely destroyed to make them, mainly African American and lower income neighborhoods, were completely wiped away.
Organizer sentiments
Organizers in particular highlighted the role that redlining and discriminatory residential policies and practices played in exacerbating inequities by ensuring neighborhoods remained racially segregated, geographically separated, and disinvested. In some instances, respondents felt racial minorities were pushed into these neighborhoods, which were typically more dense and lacking necessary infrastructure. As one organizer noted, “They put a moat, pretty much around the neighborhood, with either roads or pollution.” In many instances, the negative effects of environmental hazards were regularly experienced but not perceived to be the result of policy or planning decisions. As one organizer commented,
[Trash is] visible. It's easy to see. … But what is producing it? … Do I know that my metropolitan sewer district decided to place their sewage plant in this neighborhood? Or do I just think this is the way it is in my neighborhood?
Similarly, hazards like heat were experienced by residents, but believed to be intractable on account of there not being clear indicators of the problem's severity or an understanding of how the problem came to be. As one organizer noted,
You don't think [it's] hot because my neighborhood has concrete covering 95% of the surfaces… Again it's the devil you know. It's not the devil you don't. You can blame the sun, [but] unless you have the working knowledge [of] 100 years of historical development as to why your neighborhood looks like it does, you're not going over to point to why [the temperature] might be higher.
Characteristics of municipal environmental justice policies
Respondents identified municipal policies being implemented to address urban environmental injustices, many of which are consistent with Justice40 program categories (Table 2). 18 Most policies entailed procedural or distributive efforts intended to equitably involve affected communities in land use decisions, development plans, and investments in infrastructure and community amenities. Of particular interest to policymakers and organizers were grant-based programs intended to fund local environmental justice improvements through green, gray, and blue infrastructure and amenities.
Selected Municipal Policy Interventions Intended to Address Environmental Justice Hazards by Justice40 Program Category
RVA, Richmond, Virginia; SDG&E, San Diego Gas & Electric Company.
Perceptions related to implementing environmental justice policies
Organizers and policymakers raised several potential promising practices learned from developing and implementing municipal environmental justice policy.
Perceptions related to just and meaningful engagement
All respondents recommended more procedurally just and meaningful engagement with communities affected by environmental injustices in long-term planning, definition/boundary setting, grant making, and neighborhood-level improvements. Organizers and policymakers generally agreed that conventional forms of engagement were often inadequately funded, disjointed, and failed to elicit perspectives from representatives of communities disproportionately harmed by environmental injustice.
Policymaker sentiments
To overcome engagement barriers, policymakers suggested linguistic accommodations, compensating residents, working with professional facilitators, ensuring broad representation, particularly from affected communities, hiring engagement staff from affected communities, and building trust by first responding to solutions that have been articulated and are broadly supported by existing residents. One policymaker noted the importance of balancing data-driven approaches (e.g., resource allocation based on vulnerability indices) with community-driven priorities.
Organizer sentiments
Organizers described a variety of potential successes and challenges associated with meaningful engagement. One organizer described a promising model in which engagement was focused intensively on the needs of a particular neighborhood.
The model was a deep dive with eight community members who were paid for their time over six meetings…The idea was to hear from residents how these issues are impacting them day to day …There was an effort to produce a neighborhood map of where food access was an issue, where pedestrian safety was an issue… [It's] a neighborhood scale climate action plan… [It's] thinking about how these issues manifest [on] a block by block level rather than a city level.
Organizers noted that residents may be dissatisfied with existing engagement efforts given skepticism based on frustrating experiences during prior engagement and a lack of continuity in engagement efforts. Respondents suggested that engagement may be complicated if communities are disinterested in or fearful of creating change or are reliant on industry implicated in hazards. Respondents expressed concern about whether extensive engagement was a good use of residents' time, particularly when dealing with communities that were experiencing a broad range of challenges. As one organizer noted,
Do we plant the trees ourselves because we know the community and they trust us? Or do we use our time to lobby the city to plant those trees at a [larger] scale? … I feel this tension around the time and effort that community members can give. [We] know they're dealing with so many other things in their lives. [Yet] we're focusing their efforts on these sort of smaller scale things.
Perceptions related to trust in government
All respondents noted that trust in government and self-efficacy played a big role in how residents perceive environmental actions and the extent to which they are willing to engage in environmental justice program and policy implementation.
Policymaker sentiments
Policymakers emphasized the trade-offs between the urgency of environmental justice action, competing municipal demands related to growth and housing, and statutory requirements on how funds should be spent, with the need for meaningful and deep engagement and trust building. Policymakers shared that residents remain concerned about legacy hazardous sites despite assurances from policymakers about remediation activities. As one policymaker noted, trust is a critical prerequisite to successfully engaging partners in remediation efforts:
[The] community just didn't have good understanding of [remediation activities] because the trust wasn't built up and it was lost easily. …We're still seeing the repercussion of that when we talk about air quality. The questions we get are who comes up with those standards? And who owns that air quality monitor?
Organizer sentiments
Organizers suggested sequentially pairing engagement with in-depth education on the causes and effects of environmental hazards and procedural pathways for addressing hazards (e.g., how city grant making and planning influence neighborhood conditions). They noted that broader public understanding was critical to addressing the sentiment that hazards were an accepted part of the urban environment.
Perceptions related to procedural and distributional equity
The importance of prioritizing procedural and distributional equity in green infrastructure programs emerged as another lesson learned. All respondents encouraged introducing procedural and distributional equity-related decision points within the context of allocated funding and planned green infrastructure, amenities, and neighborhood improvements. They noted these strategies were particularly important in cities with limited support for environmental justice. For example, procedural equity in funding programs may entail deep and meaningful community consultation, and distributional equity may entail requirements that a certain percentage of benefits are directed to communities with concentrated environmental hazards.
Policymaker sentiments
Policymakers noted the importance of procedural equity in how programs are designed and how benefits are distributed. They suggested involving residents in decision-making about grant eligibility, assessment criteria, and award procedures. One policymaker suggested funded projects should be developed in partnership in communities and that municipalities should avoid complicated funding procedures that limit access for local organizations in communities affected by environmental injustices. Alternatively, grants could include capacity building support to help community-based organizations remain engaged as implementation partners.
With respect to equitably targeting investments, several policymakers highlighted the utility of objective indicators, indices, and geospatial tools documenting environmental hazards and climate risk (e.g., geospatial visualizations demonstrating heat islands). They noted these resources were also critical in building public and policymaker understanding of environmental injustice and policy solutions. For initiatives already funded on the basis of objective measures (e.g., canopy cover), policymakers suggested adding equity considerations into existing indicators (e.g., overlaying indicators of climate risk, poverty, and/or resource allocation) and focusing on bringing all neighborhoods to a minimum threshold.
Organizer sentiments
In addition to seeking input on what problems exist or how funds should be allocated, organizers suggested gathering input on the process/disruption posed by projects (e.g., street closures) and the specific types of features that are being added (e.g., what type of recreational resources). Relatedly, organizers encouraged policymakers to consider the procedural equity within workforce and contracting efforts related to environmental justice policies given resident concerns about local hiring.
Perceptions related to unintended consequences of environmental justice policies
Policymakers and organizers emphasized the importance of anticipating and addressing unintended consequences such as green gentrification and displacement.
Organizer sentiments
Organizers in particular noted that residents were concerned that the potential benefits of environmental justice policies would serve future, not current, residents and that current residents would be displaced by changes in property taxes or rents after improvements. These perceptions were most common in regions with a constrained housing supply and in cities with limited public engagement and are reportedly present among homeowners and renters. As one organizer described,
When I was going around [to] see if people wanted trees in their front or back yards. [A resident] and I were speaking and [she] confided in me [that] this isn't going to make a difference, [that] we're planting trees for the white people that are going to come in after.
To mitigate unintended consequences such as green gentrification, organizers suggested that remediation and redevelopment must contain protections for existing residents and practices to mitigate displacement; include robust community benefit agreements and concessions from developers; and be backed by partnerships that include housing, community, and environmental stakeholders. As one organizer noted,
If you're only focused on increasing the housing stock, you're going to be left without any green spaces. If you're only focused on green spaces, you're going to get green gentrification… I would say that to push forward at more comprehensive view, [we need] coalitions and partnerships with organizations focused on housing, workforce development, and poverty alleviation and state and federal [agencies] to have [a] broader and more comprehensive view in how they design funding programs…
Policymaker sentiments
Policymakers noted that in some cases, incentives intended to promote green development (e.g., tax abatements for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification) were utilized by more affluent residents and thus accelerated gentrification. These sentiments and outcomes, even if they are uncommon, may undermine support for environmental justice policies. Policymakers noted that engagement that focused on the preferences of residents would likely avoid conflicts about who stands to benefit from planned improvements. For example, a policymaker described a waterway restoration effort that included kayak launches, which were poorly received by existing residents as a form of cultural displacement.
As they described, “We don't need kayak launches on this creek, the Black folks here don't have kayaks, we don't own kayaks, we don't go kayaking, that's not what we need.” Some residents were also concerned that improvement efforts would disrupt the small amount of green space communities currently have.
Perceptions related to balancing environmental justice policies with quality-of-life policies
Finally, policymakers and organizers suggested municipalities should balance environmental justice improvements with other quality-of-life interventions.
Organizer sentiments
Organizers noted the conflict between solutions targeting environmental hazards, which are increasingly being funded as policy priorities, and longstanding yet underfunded challenges related to infrastructure, housing, and economic development. Organizers noted that some residents were frustrated that money was available for green infrastructure, but not longstanding needs.
Policymaker sentiments
Policymakers suggested more could be done to demonstrate linkages between seemingly unrelated quality-of-life challenges with climate risks. As one policymaker noted:
People's homes are really the hazards that are affecting them. People are living in poor quality homes, that indoor air quality is not up to par… There is that tension between what needs to happen, what can happen, and what the people [see] as their pressing needs. Because if you're in poverty and your pressing need is that [your] roof is caved again, do you actually care that the road floods all summer when you already know how to get around it?
DISCUSSION
We conducted a qualitative analysis of stakeholder perspectives on environmental justice hazards and policies in U.S. cities. Our findings suggest that community leaders believe residents may be unaware of the direct and explicit actions that lead to environmental injustices. Drawing linkages between existing hazards and historical or proposed policy decisions may serve to bolster support for proposed policy solutions and clarify how solutions fit into broader efforts to address quality-of-life concerns.
Our analysis suggests that although organizers and policymakers leading municipal policy efforts understand the root causes of environmental injustices, more should be done to help residents draw linkages to local concerns, view hazards as tractable policy problems, and build trust and self-efficacy in the belief that progress can be achieved.
We found that although organizers and policymakers are generally aligned in terms of their understanding of environmental injustices and corresponding policies, there are some noteworthy differences. Policymakers are relatively more focused on procedural and distributional improvements to policy implementation and stakeholder engagement. Organizers are relatively more focused on building resident understanding of environmental justice, avoiding unintended consequences, and deepening meaningful engagement with residents.
As described in Table 2, we identified a range of municipal policies being implemented to address environmental injustices in U.S. cities, including grant-based programs for targeting green amenities and infrastructure toward communities most in need. This shift toward targeted need-based investment focused on historically disinvested communities reflects a significant departure from conventional green infrastructure investment strategies, which have historically favored equality or demand-based approaches. 19 Emerging need-based programs are generally consistent with Justice40, which prioritizes disadvantaged communities and need-based benefit allocation.
Although most organizers and policymakers included in our study expressed a clear understanding of which neighborhoods were disproportionately affected by hazards, many expressed an interest in additional indicators, indices, and tools that can help target benefits. A range of multidimensional federal, state, and local screening tools and indices have emerged to help identify neighborhood-level vulnerability to environmental hazards and risk (e.g., Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, EJScreen, CalEnviroScreen). 20 , 21 However, guidance on how to use these tools to assess risk, allocate benefits, and supplement with hyperlocal knowledge of hazards, priorities, and stakeholder capabilities may be especially useful to municipalities implementing programs.
Respondents shared promising practices for implementing environmental justice policies in U.S. cities, including emphasis on procedurally just and meaningful engagement; building trust in government and self-efficacy; prioritizing procedural and distributional equity in program design and implementation; anticipating and addressing unintended consequences such as green gentrification; and balancing environmental justice improvements with other quality-of-life interventions.
Meaningful engagement emerged as a critical implementation challenge. Given the cost of intensive engagement efforts, policymakers should consider allocating adequate funding for engagement and supporting community-based organizations engaged in longer term consultative activities. Despite the critical importance of engagement, policymakers were concerned about the potential effectiveness of engagement approaches (i.e., are they reaching the right people and eliciting real preferences) and the time and cost trade-offs.
In some domains (e.g., transportation and housing), public consultation efforts have encountered unanticipated delays and costs, legal challenges, and dominance by narrow interests or nonrepresentative stakeholders. 22 , 23 , 24 To address these difficulties, municipalities may consider appropriately scoping engagement activities and soliciting targeted input from specific communities or stakeholders. Although meaningful engagement is prioritized within Justice40, our analysis suggests that prioritizing engagement strategies within each stage of policy development and implementation may help improve stakeholder buy-in and acceptance. 25
Organizer and policymakers are particularly concerned by the potential unintended consequences of environmental justice policies, particularly green gentrification, housing unaffordability, and physical and cultural displacement. Our analysis suggests municipalities that are pursuing environmental justice interventions should explore strategies to integrate affordable housing policies and antidisplacement initiatives, including community empowerment programs, public investment in housing, tax relief and tenant protection strategies, market-based interventions, and collective ownership models. 26 , 27 , 28
Finally, to ensure policies are maximally responsive to community concerns, organizers and policymakers should consider integrating or pairing environmental justice policies with programs intended to address longstanding community priorities related to health, economic, public safety, and quality-of-life improvements. Focusing on problems and potential solutions that have been previously articulated may be critical to building trust in historically disinvested communities that may be skeptical of narrowly targeted programs.
Limitations
This study has important limitations. Our findings do not encompass the full range of environmental justice policy options being considered within U.S. cities and are not intended to establish an inventory of policy options, nor causal explanations about the success of environmental justice policies. Rather, this study provides in-depth perspectives from a sample of organizers and policymakers who provide key insights on facilitators and challenges to environmental justice policy implementation. In addition, our analysis provides a high-level summary of stakeholder themes related to a wide variety of policies but does not offer an in-depth study of specific policies.
Our study does not account for differing perspectives on environmental justice in rural communities, which have long been present in the United States, but less often focused on. Finally, our analysis focused on perceptions among organizers and policymakers who work closely with local residents. Future research should characterize resident perceptions of Justice40 initiatives.
CONCLUSION
Our analysis suggests that municipalities are actively implementing need-based environmental justice policies and infrastructure improvements that are generally consistent with the goals of Justice40. To achieve progress, more must be done to help communities build support for environmental justice policies, target and allocate resources, facilitate meaningful engagement, and avoid unintended consequences.
Footnotes
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank the community organizers, policymakers, and policy advisors who participated in the study for their insights and contributions to the project.
AUTHOR DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No competing financial interests exist.
FUNDING INFORMATION
Funding for this research was provided by gifts from RAND supporters and income from operations.