Climate change is a threat multiplier. Its impacts are greatest for those with the most limited resources and access to supports. Environmental justice work must tackle deeply rooted, complex relationships of power, culture, and economics that have resulted in these kinds of inequities and vulnerabilities. All these inequities are magnified by the instability that comes with a changing climate.  

While New York City has a well organized, seasoned coalition of environmental justice organizations that have crafted a NYC Environmental Justice Road Map, the Hudson Valley does not -- yet. The Hudson Valley Environmental Justice Coalition, formed in 2019, provided valuable education through online forums. It is currently dormant but could likely be revived as a platform for setting a collaborative agenda for climate justice.

In spite of this gap - especially since the surging of public awareness around racial and environmental justice that began in the summer of 2019 – the organized response to environmental inequities in the Hudson Valley has been maturing. Once isolated efforts have strengthened their connections and power bases, but there are still few if any organizations that are actively defining environmental justice issues regionally and mapping out integrated strategies for tackling them. At least five types of organizations are at work on some aspects of environmental justice:

• Service and advocacy organizations focusing on the safety net and human rights, including religious organizations and social service agencies, that step up to advocate when they uncover specific injustices impacting their constituents (e.g. Rural and Migrant Ministries);

• Traditional civil rights organizations including the NAACP;

• Environmental organizations such as Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, and Hudson River Watershed Alliance, that proactively address the environmental and climate justice implications of their issues of focus;

• BIPOC led organizations focusing on sovereignty, empowerment and economic/ workforce development such as Nubian Directions, Blacc Vanilla Community Foundation, RETI Center, Kingston Land Trust’s Land in Black Hands program, Soul Fire Farm, For the Many and North Star Foundation’s Hudson Valley funding program;

• Capacity building and support organizations such as North Star Fund’s Hudson Valley grant-making program (focusing on black led organizations) and the Bard MBA Program’s NYC Lab.

• State agencies and institutions, which are mandated by Executive Order 22 to create and implement decarbonization plans that reflect direct  35 - 40% of investments into disadvantaged communities and stakeholders.

Just as environmental injustice is systemic and has been pervasive, environmental justice could be advanced more systemically by creating a platform for collaboration among these interests. Patterns of injustice have developed over generations, but this is a time of possibility for addressing them with ambition and imagination.  With the last few years of awakening and new levels of public commitment to environmental and racial justice, there is an opportunity for more coordinated strategies that make a difference at a meaningful pace and scale.

New York’s policy framework is designed with this in mind. Communities have a real opportunity to build assets and advance their well-being if they are fully aware of the funding resources and tools that can be accessed. The Hudson Valley is served by one of the federal Justice40’s Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and run by West Harlem Action for Environmental Justice (WE-ACT).  In current work for environmental justice, there are at least two types of strategic focus:  advocacy for funding programs with equitable access (e.g. the work of For the Many in the climate policy coalition NY-RENEWS) and projects that directly increase minority ownership of assets that are related to sustainability and climate justice (such as the BIPOC entrepreneurship andfarming movements).  There is untapped potential in integrating these thought processes, and building collaboration among the organizations involved.  This would strengthen both minority owned enterprises and historically disadvantaged communities by making the full benefits of Climate Act and federal Inflation Reduction Act funding available, not only for access to clean energy but for resilient and thriving neighborhoods where quality of life is defined by residents in their own interests.

Through this approach, there is an opportunity to re-invent the places that have been fragmented, deprived of resources and allowed to deteriorate, by bringing together local coalitions and multiple funding streams to redesign public spaces for environmental and economic well being, using processes that are fundamentally guided and controlled by the people who live in those places.

Climate change is making weather extremes worse, and the brunt of those disasters is not experienced evenly. “The burden of climate change and the associated natural disasters that have become more common and more severe is unevenly felt,” writes Christian Weller from the University of Massachusetts Boston. In the U.S., he says, “Black and Latino families, for example, are much more likely to be displaced by natural disasters – hurricanes, floods, fires, tornadoes and other events such as extreme cold or heat — than white families.”

The insurance industry is adapting quickly to climate change, and it turns out that these “reductions, withdrawals, and claim denials disproportionately affect low-income and communities of color,” writes Sharon Lewis of the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental and Economic Justice. It's true not only for the impacts but in some cases the responses, too: climate change affects us all, but it doesn’t affect us all equally.

Investment of money, caring and political capital into the built environment in this way is important, too, because communities of color have been shown to be more vulnerable to differences in financial support for rebuilding from disasters.  According to climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, systemic injustice requires systemic reversal. Political power and  institutional policies are essential components.  But while civil rights and equal participation are necessary for forward-looking justice, they are not enough to right past wrongs. The public spaces and development patterns that were so inequitably created, must be reversed. The essence of this is for communities to take back their physical environments.  The holistic practice of participatory community design has become known as placemaking. Placemaking principles were first developed by the Project for Public Spaces, a national organization that arose as a democratic alternative during the Urban Renewal period. Placemaking shows how communities can regain control of public spaces and take the lead on redesigning neighborhoods, waterfronts, downtowns, corridors, parks and plazas to work better for people. It builds local assets and access by focusing on four themes for reclaiming the neighborhood:  uses and activities, sociability, connectivity and aesthetics.

Increasingly, the practice of placemaking is being used to advance climate resilience and social justice at the neighborhood scale. This practice recognizes the breadth of co-benefits that can be drawn from community-led planning and development processes that not only advance climate solutions  but also bring community benefits in terms of safety, connectedness, amenities, and aesthetics.

• Green infrastructure is a source of resilience in floods and heat waves – and a public health benefit every day. 

• Local solar arrays with battery storage keep the lights on when the grid goes down while also providing direct economic benefits to local owners.

• Urban farms, community gardens, orchards and parklands reduce the greenhouse gas impacts of transporting food, improve air quality, promote fitness, and provide opportunities for skill building. 

• Thriving local small business districts provide jobs and build wealth while potentially strengthening the in-state supply chain of critical materials, another specific provision of  the Climate Act’s Scoping Plan.  

Placemaking provides new leverage for priority communities to utilize Climate Act resources. While they consider ways to utilize Climate Act resources to promote energy security with solar arrays, battery storage, energy efficiency, district geothermal, cool roofs and green infrastructure, communities can think more broadly about how to design the neighborhood landscape so that it connects people through public space, and builds assets that make the community a better place to live.

Examples of placemaking for climate resilience, with these kinds of co-benefits, can be found in the best of the rebuilding activity in metropolitan New York City in the aftermath of Hurricanes Sandy, Lee and Ida. Hoboken, New Jersey, in particular, has leveraged funds for rebuilding infrastructure, redesigning streetscapes with pervious pavement and redesigned roadways for better rain catching, rain gardens built at a height that makes their walls usable as public seating, as well as reduced parking and expanded pedestrian spaces to encourage sociability and community activities in any weather.  There is fast growing interest by public institutions, such as houses of worship and libraries, organizing new services and physical improvements to serve as “resilience hubs,” another opportunity for community-driven creativity that is in motion in public libraries including Kingston, Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Beacon and Spring Valley.

Community driven projects in this spirit are beginning to emerge, such as:

• Kingston Land Trust’s Land in Black Hands initiative which has secured a 25 acre parcel for urban forest and farming;

• “Planting Power Newburgh,” an environmental restoration effort that integrates an environmental justice curriculum;

• The Regional Connector project developed by Newburgh and Beacon residents to connect Newburgh pedestrians and cyclists safely to the Beacon-Newburgh Bridge and across to the Beacon train station;

• Multi-stakeholder efforts to re-envision Newburgh’s waterfront - an area of extensive displacement of residents using eminent domain under Urban Renewal - using a Brownfield Opportunity Area grant for community-driven visioning to guide the City’s planning work.

A community can only capture these benefits if its residents have the capacity to participate. Public health, wellness, issue literacy, education and training are essential resources for achieving environmental justice, and can be addressed as an integrated practice both in schools and in the community. STEM education is an essential foundation for technology careers and for informed citizenship, but historically disadvantaged communities often face the greatest economic and institutional challenges in delivering quality STEM education. There is a special opportunity in revitalizing school systems as an environmental justice strategy, and in the process expanding the concept to the notion of  STRREAM – Science, Technology, Resilience, Restoration, Engineering, Arts and Math has been applied to these integrated approaches.  Institutions including SUNY New Paltz are developing widely applicable approaches to this more holistic, empowering education.  

There is a unique opportunity for community-based organizations, in particular,  to leverage decarbonization funds and other resources in a coordinated way.  Steps forward most likely include:

• self-education and training in community design principles; 

• building familiarity with the major pools of funding and fund development strategies;

• identifying priority projects and revenue models for successful implementation that build the community’s assets, generate revenue and create jobs and business opportunities;

• collaborative experimentation to make these projects real.

This opens up possibilities to build local assets, promote community wellness and nurture the local workforce and small business ownership.  The economic development discussion in this Road Map reinforces the value of  placemaking and social enterprise l to create not only a workforce but a community of motivated, involved people.

All these dimensions of environmental justice can only be achieved through coordinated,  systemic and community-based approaches.  State and federal funding priorities establish baseline goals and resources for making clean energy and local environmental restoration available in the communities that have experienced the greatest injustices.  But whether  these opportunities come and go, or provide a foundation for more lasting change, depends on how these funding resources and opportunities are creatively leveraged by organized communities.