General 5 — Regional Climate Action Roadmap and Toolkit

Environmental Justice

Environmental Justice Solutions

Placemaking is an important tool for environmental justice action. By investing in local assets, areas that are at risk will benefit from enhanced quality of life and lead to better implementation of the state’s climate goals.

Having diverse sustainable businesses will be critical to both achieving the state’s goals and ensuring that a community has the appropriate amenities such as supermarkets, stores, and recreational spaces.

Having diverse sustainable businesses will be critical to both achieving the state’s goals and ensuring that a community has the appropriate amenities such as supermarkets, stores, and recreational spaces.

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Regional Strategy

Climate change is a threat multiplier that is felt most acutely among people, and in places, that are already at a disadvantage. The legacy of environmental injustice in Hudson Valley “disadvantaged” communities is reflected in land use and resource management patterns that lead to increased risks in the face of extreme weather, floods, and overall stress – as well as diminished quality of life and public health stresses. Environmental justice is equal access to resources for the clean energy transition and to build climate resilience, but it is more. The large-scale work of redesigning our local energy systems, transportation and the built environment, to address climate change brings a larger opportunity: re-imagining the design of neighborhoods and the use of resources to reverse patterns of neglect and build local assets.

To begin this generational process, a group of trusted leadership organizations representing the impacted communities should organize a collaborative network. This is a vehicle to build collective expertise in planning and urban design, and in social enterprise development. With this expertise and knowledge base, historically marginalized communities can bring climate technologies and resilience-building work into circulation on their own terms. In the process, they can reclaim and redesign their public spaces and development patterns. This group can drive coordinated pursuit of the funding opportunities associated with climate action and their use for positive local transformation through community-driven placemaking and enterprise development.

This Coalition has created a network representing the historically marginalized “disadvantaged” communities and will develop programs to build expertise and a support system in the disciplines of urban design, environmental restoration, economic development and fund development. We will facilitate the identification of on-the-ground projects and assist in developing funding and people-power to accomplish them, resulting in physical assets and enterprises supporting climate resilience that are owned by trusted groups in these communities.

Who Cares? A Partial List of Stakeholders:

Climate Action Council Just Transition Working Group

https://climate.ny.gov/resources/climate-justice-working-group/

EPA Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool

https://www.epa.gov/ejscreen

For the Many

https://www.forthemany.org

Glynwood Food Sovereignty Fund

https://www.glynwood.org/what-we-do/regional-food-programs/food-sovereignty-fund.html

Good Work Institute

https://www.goodworkinstitute.org

Justice40 Initiative