Full Title: Implementing Biden’s Justice40 Commitment To Combat Environmental Racism
Author(s): Cathleen Kelly, Mikyla Reta
Publisher(s): Center for American Progress
Publication Date: June 22, 2021
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
Low-income communities and communities of color have been confronted with environmental injustice for decades, and even centuries, in the United States. From toxic dumps to polluting power plants, oil refineries, chemical companies, and other industrial facilities concentrated in their neighborhoods, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people have been forced to endure dangerous and life-threatening environmental and health risks. These troubling conditions are compounded by the harms of racial and economic inequality.
While action to end systemic racism is long past due, President Joe Biden’s commitment to direct 40 percent of his administration’s climate and clean energy investments to disadvantaged communities marks a turning point in the fight for justice. He solidified this commitment by launching the Justice40 Initiative through the landmark climate executive order he signed in 2021. This initiative aims to begin to redress the high levels of pollution, chronic disinvestment, and lack of access to capital in communities of color and low-income areas driven by discriminatory environmental, housing, infrastructure, and economic policies. Achieving the Justice40 goal would set the country on a course to correcting persistent injustice by mobilizing substantial new investments in legacy pollution cleanup, pollution-free energy and transportation, workforce development, quality and affordable housing, and critical clean water infrastructure in communities that need it the most.
This report details the actions needed to implement Justice40 and deliver real and measurable benefits to environmentally, and other, disadvantaged communities.