Environmental justice is a foundational tenet of the Aspen Institute’s Energy & Environment Program, guiding its priorities and strategies and underpinning its work. In recent months, the program has redoubled its commitment to centering environmental justice in its existing programming and ensuring that new programming is focused specifically on addressing inequities that exist in the energy, environment, and climate policy spaces.

The environmental justice movement was born out of the realization, acknowledgment, and desire to address the grim reality that the most vulnerable communities in America—primarily low-income and communities of color—carry the greatest burden of negative environmental impacts. Throughout our nation’s history, these communities have disproportionately been the victims of toxic waste dumps, landfills, power plants, and sewage treatment plants, among other environmental harms in their water and air. To move toward achieving justice for these communities, there must be a fair and equitable re-distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. Part of achieving that goal will require us to significantly break from tradition and the status quo and broaden what is at stake and who must be involved.

The environmental justice community has worked to expand the definition and interpretation of what the “environment” means by looking beyond conservation and natural resources, defining the environment as the space “where we live, work, play, learn and pray.” It has also worked to broaden the view of environmental action from the transition of coal to renewables and the cleaning up of toxic waste dumps and mining sites, though these actions are an important part of the overall equation, to broader systemic change. The environment includes the water we drink and the land we live on and environmental justice work aims to guarantee access to these collective resources, and broaden access to the decision-making processes that control those resources.

Read the full article about driving equitable access to water and public lands by Kate Jaffee at The Aspen Institute.