Climate Justice Gains Attention

The U.S. EPA has been working for decades to support communities across the country in addressing environmental justice challenges, and a variety of provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 reflected a federal commitment to reduce the exposure of underserved communities to direct climate impacts and fund programs to address chronic disinvestment and environmental neglect. The fate of these efforts is uncertain, however, under the current administration.

On the global scale, while wealthy nations have contributed the most to climate change, less industrialized countries have disproportionately felt the effects. One proposed solution is climate reparations, and the United Nations' COP29 climate conference saw reinforced commitments from industrialized nations to triple contributions to a climate-change loss and damage fund for nonindustrialized countries from $100 billion USD to $300 billion USD.

Planners must continue to consider how to address climate justice issues for historically underserved areas and populations in their work.