Did you know in 2017, NYC became the first city to formally introduce environmental justice into city decision making? Local Laws 60 & 64 establish an agency taskforce & independent EJ Advisory Board to identify & address environmental injustice. More: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/cpp/our-programs/environmental-justice.page

To understand what environmental justice means, we must first address environmental injustice. We live in a great city, but one with a painful history of racial, economic, and environmental inequality.

In our city & across the US, low-income communities and communities of color—those with the least amount of power and contribution to environmental degradation—experience a disproportionate share of poor environmental conditions.

In NYC, injustices can be seen in heat vulnerability, asthma rates, housing quality, and more. The images below show how strong the connection can be between social vulnerability and climate vulnerability throughout the city.

These disparities are the result of a long history of segregation, poor housing quality, lack of investment, and the inequitable siting of pollution-intensive public & private infrastructure – like peaker plants – in low-income communities and communities of color.”

The City’s Environmental Justice laws seek to close these disparities & reform the processes that led to them in the first place
https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=2460360&GUID=0C9F8C9D-5F14-4C1E-B4AD-37BB96F82BA3&Options=&Search=

Similarly, Climate Justice is the recognition that the same historically overburdened communities are most vulnerable to a rapidly changing climate. Climate change has proven to exacerbate existing inequality, and we have to fight as a city to ensure we break this vicious cycle.

As we implement our City’s Green New Deal, we’ll use a lens of environmental and climate justice to ensure that decades of injustice are addressed and that the economic benefits of our green investments are distributed equitably. https://onenyc.cityofnewyork.us/