Clik here to view.
WHEN THE ROSE FOUNDATION’S New Voices are Rising program received a federal grant in 2022, the effort — which is led by youth of color from predominantly underserved communities around the East Bay — had a rare opportunity to grow.
“It gave us the chance to expand our water-based work,” said Mykela Patton, a New Voices are Risings’ alum who is now the program director. That included hiring and bringing on two new high school-aged fellows who have been testing and monitoring the water quality in the region. “It also gave us more support to connect with other community partners doing work at Lake Merritt and other watersheds along the Bay.”
New Voices are Rising was a grantee in a $25 million water-focused program from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — and it was just one of many focused on environmental justice that were funded by the Biden administration’s multi-billion dollar Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). The program is scheduled to extend through 2026, but as the incoming Trump administration has promised to shift away from environmental justice work, it’s likely that New Voices Rising and other environmental justice groups may have to find new sources of funding or scale back their work.
“It will hurt,” said Aiko Pandorf, the interim executive director of the Rose Foundation, but added, “we have to remember that youth in our communities have been enduring disproportionate pollution and contamination for decades — regardless of the presidential administration. And our work to give folks the tools to advocate for themselves and their communities will continue regardless.”
The Rose Foundation is far from alone, as many working for clean air, clean water, and a stable climate wait for the next shoe to drop, and work with federal agencies to ensure they have received as much of the remaining funding from the BIL and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as possible before Jan. 20.
Justice40 Initiative progress in jeopardy
Project 2025, the transition playbook written by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, calls for a sea change in the way the federal government will approach low-income and under-resourced communities. Not only does it support a repeal of the BIL and IRA and “the rescinding of all funds not already spent by these programs,” but it also calls for wholesale elimination of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. And it describes the current administration’s environmental justice efforts as, “energy policy to advance politicized social agendas.”
The playbook calls out the Justice40 Initiative, which mandates that at least 40% of the benefits of certain federal investments — including many funded by the IRA and BIL within over a dozen federal agencies, including the departments of energy, commerce, transportation, and agriculture, just to name a few — must flow to disadvantaged communities.
“We have to remember that youth in our communities have been enduring disproportionate pollution and contamination for decades — regardless of the presidential administration. And our work to give folks the tools to advocate for themselves and their communities will continue regardless.”
Aiko Pandorf, interim executive director of the Rose Foundation
Announced in 2021, via an executive order from President Joe Biden, Justice40 has been far from a panacea. The effort has been criticized for leaving race out of the discussion of its criteria, and it hasn’t always been easy to track its effectiveness as the money has often been slow to move from government agencies and into the states.
As Silvia González, Director of Research at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, put it recently, “a drawback of Justice40 is that the 40% is aspirational. It does not require direct investments (on the ground) and could be interpreted as a ceiling and not a floor/minimum investment.” In addition, she said, “it’s still early to fully measure the tangible impact on disadvantaged communities.”
However, González added, “Justice40 initiative and IRA set a critical precedent by directing significant resources toward frontline communities in California and throughout the nation.” And she was glad to see new funding streams and increased visibility for those communities.
For some organizations, it’s especially challenging to consider the idea that lawmakers could hit the brakes on the work the Justice40 Initiative is making possible, just as it’s beginning to pick up speed.
KD Chavez, executive director of the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), a Berkeley-based group that connects over 100 environmental justice organizations around the country, saw the Justice40 commitment as the culmination of decades of work to put frontline communities at the center of the response to the environmental degradation they face daily. “Finally getting the win and then having it potentially taken away is something that our communities are very upset about,” said Chavez.
According to the EPA database, the agency has so far awarded over $104 million via the IRA and BIL in the Bay Area alone.
Clik here to view.
But some funds are still outstanding. Case in point, Climate Justice Alliance is one of eleven organizations that were designated Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmakers. Each has been awarded $50 million, $40 million of which is to be granted to smaller community-based programs focused on efforts to monitor air and water quality, build green infrastructure, do environmental justice trainings for youth, and work on emergency preparedness and disaster resiliency.
While the EPA has awarded about half of the funding so far, another $334 million has yet to be dispersed. And Climate Justice Alliance, which is the designated grantmaker for four western states including California, has yet to receive any funding at all. Dec. 6 was the formal deadline, which will leave just a few short weeks for potential grantees to apply for and receive the funds before the next administration takes office.
In late November, several Republican lawmakers called attention to CJA’s openly anti-Zionist messaging and support for Palestine and accused the EPA Director Michael Reagan of supporting an “antisemitic” organization with federal funding.
It’s not clear whether that opposition is playing a role in the delay. In response to a request for comment, the agency said, “EPA is working to fulfill the commitments made to communities and maximize benefits to urban, suburban, and rural communities that have endured underinvestment and legacy pollution for too long.”
“If this funding is not obligated,” Chavez said, “they would be taken off the table and reallocated to pay for the very measures that we are trying to prevent, like mining, fracking, and investment in big oil.”
California forges ahead
On the state level, lawmakers have built a framework in recent years that should continue to support climate justice work, even if losing federal funding could slow the pace.
Yvonne Chi, the deputy secretary for equity and environmental justice at California EPA, pointed to the fact that California was one of the first states in the nation to codify environmental justice into statute.
Chi added that, “the state’s whole-of-government approach to implementing the priorities outlined in Justice40 is well underway, including ensuring that federal funding reaches underinvested communities. California plans to see these efforts through regardless of changes at the federal level.”
Statewide efforts will also receive a boost from the $10 billion California Climate Bond, Proposition 3, which was approved by 60% of voters in last month’s election, and includes language modeled after Justice40 baked in. Earlier this year, state Sens. María Elena Durazo, Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, and Dave Cortese pushed to ensure that a significant portion of the bond’s funds be spent in communities most impacted by pollution and climate change.
Clik here to view.
What this means, says Ryan Schleeter, communications director of the nonprofit Climate Center, is that when the state makes “investments in a broad array of climate resilience solutions — everything from climate smart agriculture to wildfire preparedness to drought mitigation — 40% of those funds have to go to disadvantaged communities.”
And given California’s role in the climate movement nationally, Schleeter added, “I think we can expect to see a lot of other states emulate that approach. That happens every time California pursues any big piece of environmental policy; it’s replicated elsewhere, for better or worse.”
Not all the projects funded by the IRA are supported by the environmental justice community, however — and that’s an important complicating factor. As UCLA’s González put it: “It’s always challenging to fill a gap left by federal funds. On the other hand, (cuts to IRA funds) could slow more controversial projects — like carbon capture and storage, lithium mining, and even a national cap and trade program — that, despite their potential benefits for a transition to a lower-carbon economy, have raised significant environmental justice concerns.”
This article was produced with support from the Climate Equity Reporting Project at Berkeley Journalism.
The post Bay Area climate justice groups fear losing progress if federal funding is withdrawn appeared first on Local News Matters.