Fifth National Climate Assessment
20. Social Systems and Justice

Emissions Are a Consequence of Social Systems

Social systems produce and distribute climate change and its impacts through mechanisms such as economic growth, population dynamics, social and economic inequities, governance, militarization, and world-economic integration (KM 2.1).^5,6,7,8 Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and especially carbon emissions, are a significant and measurable outcome of energy use that leads directly to climate change (KM 3.1), the impacts of which are largely determined by social systems.^9,10,11,12 The relationships between emissions and standards of living in higher-income and lower-income nations exemplify unequal access to the benefits of industrialization and world-economic integration^{13,14,15,16,17} and highlight different responsibilities for the human drivers of climate change.^17,18,19,20 Industrial processes over the past two centuries produced GHG emissions and improved quality of life, but these benefits have not been equitably distributed.^21,22,23,24 However, some societies (e.g., countries or smaller subnational units) have achieved high levels of human well-being, such as increased average life expectancy or perceived high quality of life, without consuming substantial amounts of fossil fuels per capita.^{25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33}

Relationships between emissions and other social features are evident across time and space and at different scales. National-level carbon emissions are strongly associated with economic growth.^{34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41} Using regression analysis, researchers have also identified structural factors that shape the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions. For example, the relationship between emissions and economic growth is stronger for nations with greater levels of income and wealth inequality or whose economies are more reliant on natural resource exports.^{42,43,44,45,46,47} All else being equal, nations with larger and more capital-intensive militaries have higher emissions,^48,49,50,51 most notably the United States.^52,53,54 Conversely, nations with a stronger environmental civil society or more gender equality experience a decrease in the relationship between economic growth and emissions.^55,56,57

Carbon emissions, overall, have a positive association with population size.^39,58,59,60 Population growth is higher in lower-income nations than in higher-income nations and contributes to rising energy consumption and carbon emissions, although empirical research also suggests that such population growth threatens global climate stability less than higher-income nations’ carbon-intensive economic activities.^61,62

Subnational analyses show that increases in emissions over time are moderately lower in US states with a greater concentration of environmental nongovernmental organizations⁶³ and in US states with legislators exhibiting strong environmental records.⁶⁴ This research points to the role of governance and related institutional arrangements in mitigating emissions.

Climate Impacts Are Distributed Unevenly

While all people are exposed to human-caused climate change stemming from GHG emissions, social systems shape the degree of exposure and distribute climate impacts across people and places over time (KMs 4.2, 5.2, 11.2, 15.2, 23.1, 31.2). Exposure and impact are differentiated in the social science and climate change literature. As an example, flood exposure is understood as the probability of water inundation and risk to infrastructure, whereas flood impacts could be the displacement and housing insecurity that result from preexisting conditions interacting with the inundation or high water.⁶⁵ Individuals and communities that have lived at the margins of, or have been purposely excluded from the benefits of, industrialization have a greater probability of exposure to pollution and negative environmental impacts.⁶⁶ For example, in the United States, Black and BIPOC individuals and communities, members of low-income households, immigrants with limited English proficiency, unhoused individuals,^67,68,69 rural communities,^70,71,72,73 and agricultural workers are disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards^66,74 and climate change (Figures 4.15, 4.16, 18.2; KMs 4.2, 11.2, 14.3, 15.2). The convergence of exclusion, exposure, and impacts places unequal burdens on these individuals and communities, sometimes referred to as overburdened communities.

The burdens of climate change and social inequity become acute during disaster events^{71,75,76,77,78,79} and can be exacerbated by governance decisions.⁸⁰ Hurricanes Maria and Harvey, for example, had disproportionate impacts on minority households, renters, multifamily households, and low-income families due in part to governance decisions related to aid distribution and documentation requirements (Box 4.2; KMs 23.1, 23.5; Figure 26.3). In this case, application and appeals processes for disaster assistance required documentation that some residents did not have or required the navigation of complex aid structures that some people could not successfully find their way through.⁸¹ This left those same families and communities struggling to meet basic needs in the immediate aftermath^82,83 and unable to access funding for rebuilding. These obstacles to recovery can have long-term generational effects related to the loss of savings, housing insecurity, and displacement. For example, people who migrated to California from the southern Midwest during the Great Depression fared worse than native Californians for at least a generation.⁸⁴ The absence of data and data collection, such as demographic and hazard data, compounds the challenges of equitable governance during disasters. Data limitations in territories, for example, have direct impacts on the availability of resources and the visibility of at-risk populations.^85,86,87

Policy processes and governance also influence the formation of socioecological landscapes before and after climate change–related disasters.^88,89,90 For example, the use of a cost–benefit analysis for the allocation of hazard mitigation funding, and disaster-related assistance for rebuilding, gives priority to areas of denser population and higher-value housing stock.⁹¹ Pre-event social vulnerabilities, such as a lack of clear title for real estate, lack of financial capital, and subpar housing leave some populations at greater risk of negative impacts following a disaster.⁸¹ For example, a family without clear title may have a more difficult time proving home ownership in order to access federal rebuilding assistance, and subpar housing may be more difficult to insure and repair.

Structural Inequalities Affect Outcomes

Even when all citizens are treated the same under the law, differential outcomes may result if the law ignores structural inequalities.^92,93 For example, when aid is delayed or not readily available following a disaster, low-income individuals and families may lack access to food and shelter even when those costs will be reimbursed. Under these same conditions, middle- or high-income individuals and families often have greater access to credit and other financial resources that allow them to spend money now and then wait for reimbursement.⁹⁴

All levels of government (including federal, state, and county) shape the impacts of climate change and are impacted by a complex variety of social systems (Figure 20.2). Inclusive, rapid governance responses that promote adaptation and mitigation are challenging to create,^95,96 in part because governmental institutions have difficulty innovating quickly.⁹⁷ Conditions that create the disaster impacts described above occur over decades or centuries, while governance responses to these impacts are asked to be created in far less time in order to be effective. The United States’ three-branch system of government was designed to prevent those in power from taking quick action and harming those in the minority.⁹⁸ Stemming from this arrangement, a key challenge for climate adaptation and mitigation is how to react to quickly changing circumstances given the slow pace at which legislative action and other forms of governance occur (KMs 4.3, 31.3).

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Climate change governance is complex and multifaceted.

Figure 20.2. This figure recognizes the complex interaction of multiple social systems that give rise to governance. Climate change impacts, and the impacts of adaptation and mitigation strategies, will all be mediated by governance decisions and actions. Understanding this complex interplay allows the social scientists who study climate change to make predictions regarding climate impacts and to assess where governance systems are expected to produce climate justice or injustice. Figure credit: Jacksonville State University.

One example of adaptive governance in the face of climate risk occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a broad coalition of civil society and local, state, and federal government actors came together to address flood risk and to create structures and organizations that continue to drive risk reduction for all hazards. Tulsa was the most frequently flooded city in the United States from the 1960s through the 1980s.⁹⁹ Almost 40 years ago, a coalition of concerned citizens and flood victims brought pressure to bear on city hall to address the problem. This coalition was eventually joined by government and elected officials and supported by federal partners, which led to a comprehensive floodplain management approach that has served as a model for other cities.¹⁰⁰ The city was able to enact stricter land-use regulations and draw on federal incentives through the Community Rating System to garner public and political support.¹⁰¹

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How People Know About Climate Change

Researchers in the social sciences and humanities have studied the ways in which people and groups learn about and understand human–nature interactions, including climate change.^102,103,104 Epistemology is the name for the study of how people develop knowledge. For both scientists and nonscientists, epistemological assumptions influence an understanding of what the drivers of climate change are, what kinds of evidence matter, and what are seen as appropriate and ethical responses to its risks and impacts.^{105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112} For example, climate modelers may use computer models to predict the thinning and reduction of Arctic Sea ice in order to produce more accurate maps and forecasts. Indigenous Arctic walrus hunters might instead draw on their experiences and observations to better understand the complex interconnections among ice thickness and timing, ocean currents, walrus behavior, prey dynamics, accessibility of hunting locations, travel safety, and food security to make decisions about the long-term sustainability and health of their community,¹¹³ which may conceptually include both walruses and people.

Recognizing that knowledge emerges out of different histories and traditions can lead to new insights regarding mitigation and adaptation (Box 23.1).^{114,115,116,117,118,119,120} For climate scientists, the principal driver of climate change is understood to be GHG emissions.¹²¹ From this perspective, climate mitigation involves reducing emissions. In contrast, people who have been excluded from the benefits of industrialization, or disproportionately harmed by industrial processes, might see the principal driver of climate change as the social systems and ethical arrangements that allowed for the simultaneous exploitation of land, animals, and peoples.^{77,119,122,123,124,125,126,127,128} If climate change is understood as an outcome of socioeconomic and ethical arrangements that resulted in exploitation and discrimination, then reexamining those arrangements also becomes necessary.^{129,130,131,132,133,134,135} Most often these insights are not contradictory but rather expand the universe of possible solutions for climate adaptation and mitigation.^136,137

Art × Climate

Audrey Martin
The Way We Were
(2022, paper scraps, acrylic, charcoal, gouache)

Artist’s statement: “The Way We Were” is a reflection on the connecting elements of the human species. As a climate-aware mental health care provider, it's clear to me that attending to the planet means attending to each other. I see collaboration - weaving between disciplines, partnering between diverse ways of thinking - to be the key component in our response to climate change. This piece represents the awkward and dreamy wonder of our species and offers that we are, in connection to other life on this planet, a species worth saving.

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Artworks and artists’ statements are not official Assessment products.

A promising area of research that takes different forms of knowledge seriously is called coproduced or cocreated research (Figure 20.3).^138,139,140 While coproduction is an increasingly widely used term with varied definitions (Figure 20.3), coproduced climate change research projects often integrate community-based insights and solutions to climate change with scientific insights and solutions. Coproduced research often foregrounds nonscientists, such as Indigenous Knowledge holders or multigenerational farming communities, as experts within their own knowledge contexts (KMs 18.3, 31.5). This kind of research can give rise to community-based resilience efforts. Research in the Arctic, for example, has been particularly successful at experimenting with coproduction, especially in integrating Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge bases.^141,142 However, integration can fail if power dynamics, goals, trust, and compensation within research teams and epistemologies are not equitable.¹⁴³

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Coproduction is a way forward to include multiple epistemologies, or knowledge traditions, but must be defined to be productive.

Figure 20.3. This figure demonstrates the diverse approaches to coproduction and focuses on the need to define what a research team means when seeking to do a coproduced research project. The two items in the top right quadrant are descriptive lenses, while the other six are normative lenses. Adapted with permission from Bremer and Meisch 2017.¹³⁸

One important consequence of different epistemological assumptions is that different people and groups perceive climate change risks and possible solutions in widely different, often compatible, but sometimes conflicting, ways.^144,145 For example, the politicization of climate change in the US helps to explain differences in public perceptions of severity and concern as a function of demographic factors such as gender and political ideology.^146,147 In this case, women and liberal-identifying individuals report relatively higher levels of concern and support for mitigative action and policy. In contrast, climate change is a relatively less polarizing issue among racial and ethnic minorities as well as socioeconomically disadvantaged groups compared to White populations and higher-income groups.¹⁴⁸ In part, beliefs and concerns about climate change have been shaped by well-documented, intentional efforts by industry groups supportive of the continued use and promotion of fossil fuels to misrepresent the uncertainty and knowledge about climate change and downplay the risks to society.^{149,150,151,152}

Processes for Promoting More Effective Climate Change Engagement Efforts

As suggested above, diverse communities have distinct knowledge traditions within which people interpret climate change. These diverse communities also engage with climate science and information in different social and cultural settings. There have been numerous explicit efforts over the past few decades to build greater levels of public engagement with the issue of climate change and climate science. These climate change engagement efforts have taken many forms, including traditional expert-to-public communication products (e.g., USGCRP National Climate Assessments, documentaries, journalism) and more participatory activities (e.g., public art installations, town meetings, deliberative democracy forums).¹⁵³ These efforts occur in both formal (e.g., K–12 and college classrooms) and informal (e.g., zoos, museums) settings and are sometimes tied to intentional educational activities; however, much climate change engagement occurs outside formal classroom settings.

Significant efforts and resources have been put into improving the effectiveness and accessibility of climate change information and engagement activities over the past decade. One outcome of these efforts has been collective learning regarding processes and actions that improve effectiveness of climate change engagement efforts. We describe some of these insights below.

First, establishing clear, measurable objectives with well-defined benchmarks or desired outcomes leads to more effective communication products and processes (Figure 20.4); bringing key stakeholders into the process at this early stage can improve effectiveness.

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A simple three-step process of communication can improve climate change engagement with diverse stakeholders.

Figure 20.4. Simple changes can help facilitate communication about climate change. Identifying the stakeholders, tailoring the process of communication and knowledge creation, and setting clear objectives for everyone involved has been shown to be an effective process. Figure credit: Rutgers University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Oregon State University–Cascades.

Second, to inform real-world decision-making, information needs to be calibrated to the needs of target audiences;^154,155 importantly, communicating relevant information sometimes involves translating science into accessible and actionable language, whereas in other cases it involves incorporating diverse forms of knowledge into communications products and efforts. For example, farmers and forest owners often have different informational needs with respect to climate change impacts and implications for management: whereas farmers may be most interested in seasonal forecasts or timescales of a few years, forest owners may be more interested in projections of trends for the next few decades. Climate change communicators must know—or put in place processes to uncover—the needs and epistemologies of their intended audiences.

Third, including intended target audiences throughout the process of developing communication products¹⁵⁶ both promotes procedural justice and increases the likelihood that such efforts meet shared goals.^157,158,159 In parallel, communicators—including formal and informal science educators—may in some cases better meet their own and audiences’ goals via setting- and audience-specific trainings that provide a strong grounding in both climate science and effective communication, such as the National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation.^160,161

Fourth, efforts that have been successful in engaging people on climate change across existing ideological and cultural divides generally do so by addressing the things people care about most, such as livelihoods, homes, investments, local communities, and family.^154,162,163 It is not always necessary to connect relevant impacts to climate change to motivate action, and doing so can sometimes backfire; for example, providing environmental-benefit information (green labels) on energy-efficient products decreased the chances of their purchase by conservatives relative to when no label was provided.¹⁶⁴

Fifth, engagement outcomes also strongly reflect the relationships and levels of trust between intended audiences and messengers. The use of trusted messengers increases acceptance and use of climate change risk information. For example, parents, teachers, peers, and scientists are considered trusted messengers for youth audiences, and the use of targeted messages and trusted messengers can increase engagement even among adversarial audiences;^165,166 similarly, experimental research has found that classroom-based climate change curricula offered to school-aged children can influence the climate change beliefs and engagement of adults who interact with those children.¹⁶⁷

Sixth, pervasive uncertainty surrounding climate change (including public uncertainty) continues to be a major challenge to communication, but there is evidence that certain practices can help people understand the likelihood and magnitude of expected or possible changes and their implications for decision-making.¹⁶⁸ For science communicators, these include avoiding unfamiliar probabilistic statements and combining verbal and numerical assessments of likelihood—for example, when describing an outcome as “unlikely,” simultaneously providing the corresponding numerical assessment of “0%–33%” probability;¹⁶⁹ using visualizations to show probabilistic information;¹⁷⁰ transparently discussing possible ranges for future outcomes or impacts, including both worst- and best-case scenarios;¹⁷¹ and focusing attention on the types and magnitude of expected impacts rather than on when, specifically, those impacts might occur.¹⁶³ Commonly used technical phrases such as “1-in-1,000-year event” can often lead to mistaken beliefs or expectations about the probability of repeat occurrences of disasters such as flooding or wildfire.

Implications of Engagement Efforts for Decision-Making and Justice

A growing evidence base identifies how and when engagement and communication can lead to changes in climate decision-making.^{114,172,173,174} Some work suggests that such efforts can, over time, move people from unawareness of the issue to initial awareness to more active and involved engagement at the personal and collective levels.¹⁷⁵ Although many engagement efforts aim to increase knowledge about climate change and climate science or shift attitudes, some efforts are more directly aimed at supporting mitigative and/or adaptive behavior change related to climate change. For example, extensive work on social norms messaging—which communicates information about the behavior of others, or expectations of behavior, and provides cues and social pressure—finds evidence that such information can influence several climate change-relevant behaviors, including household energy consumption.¹⁷⁶

Efforts to engage diverse groups and communities with the issue of climate change also have critical upstream and downstream justice-related implications. For example, engagement activities or processes that actively work to include diverse stakeholders throughout the knowledge creation and/or application process (in, for example, setting objectives, developing content, and drawing implications) are more procedurally just than top-down efforts that simply attempt to provide actionable information to those groups.¹⁷⁷ Recognitional justice is similarly promoted by inclusive engagement efforts and inhibited when diverse, climate-impacted communities or groups are excluded from the process of setting engagement and/or knowledge-creation objectives. Thus, efforts to engage diverse publics, and the epistemologies and struggles they inhabit, within climate change decision-making are a key mechanism through which justice-related outcomes or objectives can be either realized or thwarted, intentionally or unintentionally.

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Human Migration May Be a Pathway to Climate Justice or Injustice

The concept of climate justice is useful in understanding how the impacts of climate change, and the impacts of climate change mitigation and adaptation, are distributed across communities. Climate justice recognizes that the inequitable distribution of resources and other social and political capital impacts the capacity for adaptation during times of upheaval, including the upheaval created by climate change. Human migration is a complex response to pressures created by social, political, economic, and environmental systems, including climate change.^178,179 The dynamic interactions among climatic changes, market processes, governance decisions, and historical inequity make human migration a critical example of how climate change interacts with preexisting social processes to alleviate or exacerbate inequity (Figure 20.5).

In the United States, climate change–related disasters are not yet a major driver of migration.^180,181 Most counties affected by hurricanes deviate only temporarily from their pre-disaster growth trend, although the demographic composition of affected areas may change.^{182,183,184,185} Historically, most communities have adapted to climate hazards by engineering protections and adaptive technologies.^186,187,188 As climate change impacts overwhelm the protective ability of these solutions, as is expected to occur in the future (KM 9.2), communities are expected to adapt by accommodating hazards or by relocating away from hazardous areas.^189,190

Recent hurricane events illustrate how extreme weather has displaced unprecedented numbers of people, mostly temporarily, and caused billions of dollars in damages.^{191,192,193,194,195,196,197,198,199} Tropical storms pose an ongoing threat to about one-fifth of the US population that lives in coastal communities along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts.²⁰⁰ Further, every US region experiences climate-related hazards (KMs 21.1, 22.4, 23.3, 24.2, 25.1, 26.1, 27.4, 28.1, 29.2, 30.3). Efforts to predict future migration depend on assumptions about how climate hazards will affect the habitability of places far into the future, mostly informed by models of sea level rise or heat extremes.^201,202 These climate impacts are predicted to unfold gradually and unevenly, producing unpredictable impacts at small temporal and spatial scales. Governance that does or does not anticipate climate hazard events, and does or does not account for past harms, will determine whether migration will exacerbate inequities or offer a pathway toward climate justice (Figure 20.5).

Past experience with weather-related disasters illustrates the complexity of the relationship between environmental change and migration (Figure 20.5). Disasters that destroy housing and infrastructure have the potential to displace people from their homes, neighborhoods, and communities. Yet social systems that govern land and property—such as housing markets, homeowners’ insurance, and federal disaster recovery housing assistance—promote in situ housing recovery for most homeowners (but notably not for renters and those with precarious title to property).²⁰³ For example, federal disaster assistance and private insurance incentivize many homeowners to rebuild in place, a social system that aligns with residents’ place attachment.^204,205,206 Homeowners maintain and rebuild their housing to protect its market value and increase its resilience to future hazards.²⁰⁷ In contrast, historic and ongoing discriminatory real estate practices, such as redlining and predatory lending, sort low-income and BIPOC households into environmentally risky neighborhoods and deteriorated housing^66,208,209 and into rental housing or housing types that are more susceptible to disaster-related damage, such as multiunit buildings and mobile homes.^{210,211,212,213,214} The low property values in these neighborhoods and renters’ tenuous connection to their homes also make residential mobility after a disaster more likely. For example, homeowners may be unable to repair and rebuild their homes because insurance and disaster recovery assistance align payments with pre-disaster property values, creating large gaps in the ratio of funds to rebuilding costs.^215,216 Rental properties, which house a disproportionate number of low-income and BIPOC households, are rebuilt more slowly than owner-occupied housing, driving up rents and limiting the number of affordable rental units.^203,207,217 Consequently, more residential mobility is observed among renters and those lacking clear title to their property.^{182,185,218,219,220} Additionally, upheaval in housing markets after disasters is associated with increases in evictions and gentrification, as real estate speculators buy up deeply discounted properties for development.^221,222,223 Thus, there are multiple housing-related pathways through which low-income and BIPOC households are displaced or compelled to migrate as a result of climate-related disasters. These processes can therefore exacerbate pre-disaster inequalities through unjust governance and unequal distribution of risk and resilience.

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Social systems create just or unjust conditions that influence migration outcomes.

Figure 20.5. Research shows that social systems exert influence on migration. Historically, forced migration has exacerbated inequities and caused social harm. It is not yet understood how these dynamics will play out under conditions of climate change and whether climate-inflected migration can be a pathway toward climate justice. This figure captures, conceptually, how migration may exacerbate inequity or be a remedy. Figure credit: Oregon State University–Cascades, Brown University, Jacksonville State University, and Puget Sound Partnership.

Current US policies governing relocation away from locations where repeated hazard events have occurred involve home buyout programs. Voluntary homeowner buyout programs have been used as a piecemeal strategy for hazard mitigation, often as part of post-disaster recovery assistance.^224,225,226 However, buyout programs often lack transparency, resulting in public distrust and low participation, as well as disproportionate participation in low-income and BIPOC communities.^227,228 Buyout programs tend to be pursued in counties with higher property values, more home equity, and higher proportions of White residents, yet within these counties a greater number of buyouts tend to occur in BIPOC neighborhoods, suggesting home buyouts are an inequitable mechanism for moving people out of harm’s way (KMs 18.2, 21.3, 22.1).²²⁹ Furthermore, home buyout programs have been deemed inadequate to the scale and complexity of managing relocation away from climate-related hazards.²³⁰ Programs designed to relocate residents out of areas exposed to hazards in a way that promotes climate justice would consider these historical and ongoing social inequities and take steps to mitigate their impact.

Art × Climate

Nathan Kensinger
Managed Retreat
(2015, photograph)

Artist’s statement: Over the past decade, I have documented the first “managed retreat” from climate change and sea level rise in New York City, photographing and filming as three neighborhoods have been demolished and returned to nature. This body of work explores the sacrifices that are being made, as communities face the reality of increased flooding, erosion, and storm surges caused by climate change and sea level rise.

View the full Art × Climate gallery.

Artworks and artists’ statements are not official Assessment products.

Relocation as an outcome of flooding can be prevented or forestalled with the preservation and installation of green infrastructure, such as riparian zones, wetlands, trees, parks, and other green stormwater management systems.^{231,232,233,234,235} However, if justice is not taken into consideration, these same adaptation projects that alleviate climate-related displacement can cause the displacement of low-income residents, as property values often rise when improvement and hazard mitigation projects are planned and executed, leading long-time residents to be priced out of the market.²³⁶ Climate adaptations therefore can create social risks similar to those of climate-related disasters.

What Are Just Transitions?

Central to climate justice is the concept of a just transition—or just transitions, as approaches may be diverse and locally specific. The idea of a just transition emerged from labor environmentalism in the 1970s. Labor union leaders recognized the need to support workers who lost their jobs due to stricter environmental policies or whose jobs exposed them to toxic materials.²³⁷ Just transition approaches focused on the creation of green jobs and training workers to fill these jobs. In the past 40 years, the concept of just transitions has broadened and now refers to mitigating and adapting to climate change in a managed process that ensures equitable access to jobs, environmental goods, and quality of life.²³⁸ If efforts are made to shift the economy away from fossil fuel extraction, thus displacing workers in coal, oil, gas, and other energy sectors, job creation and training will continue to be vital components of just transitions. This broader approach to just transitions emphasizes that poor and BIPOC communities that have experienced the brunt of environmental injustices, including both pollution and climate change impacts, are the least responsible for these impacts.²³⁹ Without just transitions, these inequities are expected to be exacerbated as society moves away from fossil fuel extraction, responds to climate adaptation and mitigation processes, and shifts toward a sustainable and green society (KMs 5.3, 14.3).^88,240

Just transitions recognize the capacity of green infrastructure not only to mitigate hazards, capture carbon, and provide local cooling but also to redress past harms and minimize social inequities. For example, decisions about where to place green infrastructure might take into account legacies of unjust social systems and ongoing social inequality that shape the unequal access of BIPOC and low-income communities to environmental amenities and their overexposure to environmental harms.^{241,242,243,244}

The green infrastructure equity index can help provide a more nuanced examination of communities and their access to green space.²⁴⁵ Not taking into account these forms of justice has been shown to contribute to the uneven distribution of urban green infrastructure.²⁴⁶ Other examples have shown that using spatial tools and indices examining the built environment that include racial, social, and economic indicators can help us understand the inventory, condition, and distribution of green infrastructure²⁴⁷ and use that information to promote equity.

Current Policy Creation as Part of Climate Justice

Mitigation and adaptation policies and programs are being implemented at federal, state, and municipal scales in multiple sectors (KMs 31.1, 32.5) and have implications for climate justice (KMs 31.2, 32.4). Both Colorado and California have charged agencies with creating plans to guide their transition away from coal, with a focus on economic diversification, job creation, and workforce training for former coal workers. Colorado’s Just Transition Action Plan, approved in 2020, acknowledges a commitment to communities disproportionately impacted by coal power pollution.²⁴⁸ California’s Office of Planning and Research is in the process of creating a Just Transition Roadmap. Executive Order N-79-20, which mandates the roadmap’s creation, includes language highlighting the disproportionate impact of coal pollution on low-income and BIPOC communities; however, it is still uncertain whether the roadmap, like Colorado’s plan, will be focused on former coal workers.²⁴⁹

The Federal Government has also enacted a portfolio of environmental, climate, and economic justice policies that seek to ensure no one is left behind by climate change and energy transformations. These are examples of policies that seek to incorporate climate justice into governance structures. The Justice40 Initiative,²⁵⁰ a policy that aims to ensure that 40% of the benefits in these investments flow directly to disadvantaged communities, is one example. Other indices and geospatial and measurement tools—such as the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool and the National Risk Index—have been developed to gauge whether climate exposures and impacts or the impacts of climate adaptation and mitigation are being distributed equitably. In addition, federal civil rights laws such as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,²⁵¹ Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973,²⁵² and Section 308 of the Stafford Act²⁵³ are written to ensure that the implementation of environmental, climate, and economic policies do not discriminate against protected classes. The outcomes of these programs and the efficacy of these indices in leading to just and equitable access to resources have yet to be realized or analyzed.

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