- Biden Administration has used race-neutral approach to environmental justice policymaking in order to avoid potential constitutional hurdles and legal challenges.
- EJ advocates were initially unhappy with the White House but have since begun praising the approach.
- The White House approach “implicitly accounts for the impact of race” without necessarily using race as the primary indicator.
By E&E News CLIMATEWIRE | January 24, 2023
The White House was widely criticized a year ago for not using racial demographics to identify disadvantaged communities that would be targeted for extra climate aid.
The nation’s leading advocates for environmental justice were furious, saying that race must be considered because biased policies like redlining had forced minorities into heavily polluted neighborhoods that are vulnerable to climate impacts.
But the colorblind approach has succeeded at prioritizing minority neighborhoods, an E&E News analysis shows…
While the White House chose to omit race and ethnicity as indicators in selecting disadvantaged communities, it analyzed dozens of environmental and demographic factors that in many cases are closely correlated with race, such as income levels and exposure to pollution…
The strategy is now winning praise from former critics and legal scholars who say it appears to be on strong legal footing.
Read more from E&E News CLIMATEWIRE.
