Oral Remarks: Environmental Justice Policy Recommendations for the Andrea Harris

Social, Economic, Environmental, and Health Equity Task Force – September 29, 2020

Ryan E. Emanuel, Ph.D.i

2020 has brought into sharp focus the fact that racially marginalized communities make up an
outsized share of Americans who are affected by COVID19, subjected to police brutality,
exposed to air and water pollution, and threatened by climate change. I am grateful that
Executive Order 143 includes a call for environmental justice, but I would urge this
subcommittee to carefully consider what it means to ensure what the EPA describes as the “fair
treatment and meaningful involvement of all people” in environmental decision-making. On its
face, the statement is fairly positive, but if it is not scrutinized carefully, we run the risk of
watering down the potency of environmental justice policy. That power, of course, is to actively
undo existing patterns of inequity in the distribution of environmental benefits and harms in our
society.

Decades of scientific evidence confirms that marginalized communities, mostly black and
brown, host a disproportionately large share of polluting infrastructure in the US. Yet despite
more than 25 years of federal environmental justice policy, the pattern hasn’t disappeared.
Research, including work led by me, suggests there are multiple reasons why this may be so, and
I will share two of them. First, decision-makers rarely use rigorous metrics and benchmarks to
evaluate disproportionate impacts of proposed actions on poor or minority communities. We
don’t see what we don’t measure. Imagine planning the COVID19 response without
standardized data on infection rates or benchmarks! Yet that is basically where we are when it
comes to environmental justice. This subcommittee can recommend policies that incorporate
rigorous demographic metrics and benchmarks into decision-making. Metrics alone are not the
answers, but the answers must include metrics.

Second, the participatory nature of environmental justice affirms that an agency or developer
cannot decide unilaterally how justice will be preserved or restored. All too often, polluters
decide for themselves what, if any, amends will be made to communities they impact.
Atonement, when offered at all, usually involves hackneyed claims of job creation or economic
development – claims that are almost always made without regard for the wishes of the actual
people living in the community. Public engagement, too, is often treated as a one-way flow of
information from regulators or developers to the community. This philosophy disregards the
deep, place-based knowledge about the environment, public health, and other areas held within
communities, particularly Native American Tribes in North Carolina, which are virtually never
consulted on major projects affecting their people and lands. This subcommittee can recommend
clearer standards and accountability procedures that ensure interactive participation of
marginalized peoples in decision-making. These include clearly-articulated standards and
expectations for Tribal consultation.

i
Author Note: Emanuel is a Professor, University Faculty Scholar, and Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor in the Department of Forestry
and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University. He is a citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina from the Saddletree
district where – according to NC DHHS – more than 5% of the population has been infected with COVID19. Emanuel received no compensation
or support to produce this statement.