Gov­ern­ment has long been com­plic­it in cre­at­ing our nation’s struc­tur­al racism.

The nation was found­ed with slav­ery enforced by the state, and south­ern states con­tin­ued to enforce Jim Crow even after Eman­ci­pa­tion. In The Col­or of Law, Richard Roth­stein defin­i­tive­ly estab­lish­es that the U.S. gov­ern­ment spread seg­re­ga­tion to the North as the price of south­ern sup­port for the New Deal. Fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments col­lud­ed with devel­op­ers and bro­kers to lim­it access of aspir­ing Black home­own­ers to white neigh­bor­hoods, result­ing in gov­ern­ment-cre­at­ed ghet­toes. To this day, police vio­lence is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly direct­ed against peo­ple of col­or, most recent­ly in the George Floyd mur­der by Min­neapo­lis police.

Along with res­i­den­tial exclu­sion and seg­re­ga­tion envi­ron­men­tal racism intro­duces anoth­er lev­el of harm. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the dirt­i­est of indus­tri­al facil­i­ties have been locat­ed in pre­dom­i­nant­ly black and immi­grant neigh­bor­hoods. These neigh­bor­hoods also have been delib­er­ate­ly exposed to sources of pol­lu­tion—high­ways, incin­er­a­tors, fac­to­ries, oil-fired pow­er plants, and more. Study­ing Cal­i­for­nia, the Union of Con­cerned Sci­en­tists esti­mat­ed that African Amer­i­cans and Lati­nos are exposed to about 40 per­cent more par­tic­u­late mat­ter from cars, trucks, and bus­es than whites. The cumu­la­tive result is much high­er lev­els of pol­lut­ing par­tic­u­late mat­ter in Black neigh­bor­hoods and seri­ous health con­se­quences.

Fur­ther, the “Fourth Nation­al Cli­mate Assess­ment,” a con­gres­sion­al­ly man­dat­ed report on cli­mate change and its impacts pub­lished by the U.S Glob­al Change Research Pro­gram in 2018, warned that cli­mate change dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affects low-income com­mu­ni­ties and com­mu­ni­ties of color—and empha­sized that gov­ern­men­t’s need to work close­ly with those com­mu­ni­ties to devel­op solu­tions.

In this moment, it is time for every city to reframe urban cli­mate action so that reme­dies for these wrongs inflict­ed on com­mu­ni­ties of col­or are at the fore­front. Equi­ty is hard­ly men­tioned in most urban cli­mate action plans, but that is chang­ing. A few cities are lead­ing the way on mak­ing it a focus—both in process and in con­tent.

Austin is among a hand­ful of cities exem­pli­fy­ing a broad­er and more rep­re­sen­ta­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion process in devel­op­ing and imple­ment­ing cli­mate action plans. Austin is a city marked by envi­ron­men­tal racism stem­ming from its 1929 mas­ter plan that zoned indus­tri­al uses almost exclu­sive­ly in minor­i­ty neigh­bor­hoods.

Austin has been revis­ing its Com­mu­ni­ty Cli­mate Plan dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Zach Baumer, Austin’s cli­mate pro­gram man­ag­er, relates that racial equal­i­ty and full par­tic­i­pa­tion rep­re­sent­ing the city’s diver­si­ty were key prin­ci­ples guid­ing the process and the con­tent.

Before the plan­ning process start­ed, the city’s Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Office worked with a local human rights activist and com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er, Dr. Tane Ward, to cre­ate a cli­mate equi­ty anti-racism train­ing pro­gram that all staff and com­mu­ni­ty activists involved in plan­ning and out­reach for the Com­mu­ni­ty Cli­mate Plan Process.

A key aspect of inte­grat­ing equi­ty into the cli­mate plan­ning process is effec­tive out­reach. Baumer worked with Austin’s chief equi­ty offi­cer for ongo­ing guid­ance on who to work with in the com­mu­ni­ty and which groups were a must to have at the table dur­ing our process. Two years pri­or, the office hired an equi­ty and inclu­sion fel­low, Celine Ren­don, for a sum­mer intern­ship (fund­ed by the Urban Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Direc­tors Net­work). Ren­don was hired back in the fall of 2019 as a com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment spe­cial­ist to draw on her skills, knowl­edge, and con­nec­tions with local envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice groups. Hav­ing the trust of these groups, she set up meet­ings and made many con­nec­tions with indi­vid­u­als to par­tic­i­pate in the plan­ning process. While find­ing com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers will­ing to par­tic­i­pate in the process took two weeks dur­ing the pre­vi­ous plan­ning process (five years ago), this time the office allowed three months to recruit a more diverse set of par­tic­i­pants.

The out­reach effort achieved the city’s goal for peo­ple of col­or to com­prise more than half of the res­i­dents par­tic­i­pat­ing in the three-month plan­ning process. A total of 140 peo­ple in five work­ing groups were engaged in deter­min­ing goals and strate­gies. Each com­mit­ted to attend­ing two two-hour plan­ning meet­ings per month for six months. Par­tic­i­pants were asked if they need­ed com­pen­sa­tion for their time to par­tic­i­pate in the process, and those who request­ed it were reim­bursed $500 for the full com­mit­ment.

A sep­a­rate group of 12 cli­mate ambas­sadors was recruit­ed to talk to peo­ple and gath­er feed­back from res­i­dents on changes they want­ed to see in their neigh­bor­hoods. These ambas­sadors were not cli­mate activists, but were known in their com­mu­ni­ties through var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty, arts, or oth­er orga­ni­za­tions. The ambas­sadors were cre­ative in their outreach—holding house par­ties, going to church groups, and then switch­ing to tele­phones and vir­tu­al venues once Covid-19 required social dis­tanc­ing. Ten indi­vid­u­als were paid $1,500 each for their out­reach and report­ing and two orga­ni­za­tions that served as ambas­sadors received $3,000 each. The notes from inter­views and inter­ac­tions were record­ed in reports, and then sum­ma­rized into pre­sen­ta­tions to city staff and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers active in the plan­ning process.

Assess­ing each goal of the plan was the next step of keep­ing racial equi­ty front and cen­ter. On this front, Austin is one of sev­er­al cities adapt­ing an equi­ty assess­ment tool devel­oped by the Local and Region­al Gov­ern­men­tal Alliance on Race and Equi­ty, a nation­al net­work of local, state, and region­al gov­ern­ment work­ing toward racial equi­ty and increased oppor­tu­ni­ties and the Urban Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Direc­tors Net­work, which cre­at­ed the Equi­ty Foun­da­tions Train­ing com­plet­ed by staff of the Austin Office of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The equi­ty tool allows cities to exam­ine poli­cies, plans, pro­grams, and bud­gets to elim­i­nate indi­vid­ual, insti­tu­tion­al, and struc­tur­al racism. The first ques­tion in the sev­en-step analy­sis of any goal of the plan: “Who ben­e­fits and who will be bur­dened?” The tool builds aware­ness to help city staff bet­ter rec­og­nize the unin­tend­ed racial con­se­quences of their work.

We see sev­er­al fac­tors relat­ed to Austin’s suc­cess: staff who have been through equi­ty and anti-racist train­ing; a staff mem­ber ded­i­cat­ed to out­reach and engage­ment; mul­ti­ple ways of engag­ing res­i­dents of col­or; pay­ing advi­so­ry com­mit­tee mem­bers and offer­ing child­care so par­tic­i­pa­tion can be sus­tained over time; and a process that ensures that equi­ty is baked into all goals and strate­gies. Austin ben­e­fit­ted from net­work­ing with oth­er USDN cities that were pio­neers in this approach, in par­tic­u­lar staff from Port­land and Seat­tle.

Oth­er cities could learn from Austin and the hand­ful of oth­er cities. But first we need a com­mit­ment to build cli­mate jus­tice into all cli­mate action plan­ning.