An official website of the Environmental justice framework
An environmental justice framework includes assessment tools and approaches to mitigate unjust and inequitable decisions and conditions, and to maximize environmental benefits for all communities – especially overburdened communities. A framework assesses and reviews processes in public policy planning, including engagement, but may also be used during or after project or policy implementation, such as evaluation. A framework also uncovers underlying actions that contribute to and produce disparate exposure and unequal protection from environmental hazards.
This section defines environmental justice and related terms, describes framework components, details environmental disparities data and related tools, and presents environmental justice assessments and measures.
The environmental justice framework provides guidance on how to integrate environmental justice principles into the practices and policies set by Imagine 2050.
The Met Council’s commitment to environmental justice starts with a renewed pledge to build relationships with communities overburdened by ambient health risks to understand their experiences with practices that have perpetuated environmental injustices. Together - identifying regional policies and investments that will improve our shared stewardship of the region’s land, water, and air - we can repair past harms and improve community health and safety.
Defining environmental justice and overburdened communities
Environmental justice is the right for all residents to live in a clean, safe environment that contributes to a healthy quality of life.
"Environmental justice means diverse ways of understanding human and non-human relationality and changing culture."
-Urban Roots youth member
The Met Council recognizes that environmental justice centers, but is not limited to, Black communities, American Indians, people of color, disabled communities, immigrants and refugees, and low-income communities who have and continue to experience a legacy of racism or other structural or systemic barriers that have resulted in environmental injustices, harms, and risks.
Environmental justice requires necessary adaptations to regional services, requirements, policies, practices, processes, and decisions, starting with Imagine 2050, to support a healthy and safe region.
Overburdened communities137 are those who bear less responsibility for climate change yet are disproportionately affected by the cumulative impacts of climate change and environmental hazards. The impacts of climate change affect everyone, but due to systemic factors and no fault of their own, some communities are disproportionately burdened by the effects of climate change and environmental risks.138
Environmental justice is not limited to human communities. Natural communities (water, land, air, animals, plants, fungi) are just as vital in environmental justice processes and policies. Natural communities are living beings that also unjustly bear the burdens of climate change. Respecting the holistic health of the environment includes understanding the intrinsic relationship between human and natural communities. When applying the environmental justice framework, we must ensure that natural communities are included in decision making and actions.
Despite these systemic challenges and threats, overburdened communities continue to empower themselves and thrive. Many overburdened communities have produced community-specific solutions related to environmental injustices. Prioritizing overburdened communities in engagement and co-creating contextualized solutions in partnership mitigates harmful outcomes and instead creates pathways for reparative solutions that benefit everyone.
Historic patterns in discriminatory land use practices elicit environmental injustice
American Indian displacement and genocide
American Indian people have historically been and currently are strong leaders in the environmental justice movement, with land, water, and air protectors at the forefront of many contemporary environmental justice movements and actions. Many American Indian values and traditional ecological knowledge serve as the basis of environmental justice values and principles.
American Indian communities have and continue to face environmental injustices. American Indian communities and Tribal lands have been burdened by industrial developments such as nuclear energy and waste facilities and destruction of native ecosystems. Anti-American Indian sentiment compounded with lack of transparency and meaningful engagement has resulted in the desecration of American Indian and Dakota sacred sites in the region.
American Indian Tribes, communities, and people continue to lead environmental justice movements in response to ongoing harm and grounded in longstanding kinship with the land. Their land stewardship practices and relationship with land are important to honor, but not co-opt, in environmental justice practices.
Environmental racism from racial covenants, redlining, and zoning
Black, American Indian, and people of color communities are historically disinvested and have less access to green spaces, parks, and other environmental amenities. Today, historically white and affluent areas still have more access to green spaces and are likely less impacted by urban heat island effects.
Redlining depressed property values, and this now-cheaper land was desirable for industries. Some redlined areas had previously existed near heavily polluting land uses, but with the advent of these distinct low-land-value areas, more industrial land uses moved in.139 Redlining also influenced zoning laws. Racist zoning laws disproportionately targeted Black neighborhoods and placed hazardous waste facilities near predominantly Black communities and neighborhoods in the Twin Cities.140
Environmental racism141 takes the form of the cumulative and lasting impacts of redlining, racial covenants, and zoning. Redlining has made it difficult for Black, American Indian, and people of color households, especially Black households, to build generational wealth.142 Formerly redlined areas exhibit inequities in education, and residents often have less access to nutritious, affordable food because of food deserts. Redlining impacted access to green space and cool places based on race and income. This lack of green space exacerbates the impact of the urban heat island. The systemic barring of access compounded with lower quality social determinants of health creates environmental injustices.
Environmental injustices today: health, green space, and homes
All residents in our region will be affected by climate change, but we are not all affected in the same way. Those who are particularly vulnerable due to a range of historical, social, environmental, and economic factors have less ability to be resilient to climate change impacts.143 The effects of environmental racism, compounded with climate change and pollutants, affect access to affordable, dignified housing. Proximity to pollution creates a negative feedback loop in the housing market. These ongoing issues related to land and air quality create a complex interplay in which areas with high levels of pollution and lack of green space also have lower land value. These areas are more affordable for both industrial users and residential communities, creating a feedback loop in which people seeking affordable places to live are continuously exposed to land uses that bear significant health burdens.
The United States has a history of ongoing environmental racism, with our seven-county region being no exception. The Minnesota Department of Health cites “institutional systems including city planning, infrastructure, and policies that have led to disparities in local source pollution” as systemic inequities.144 To measure the disparities, the health department identifies five community characteristics that correspond with these social determinants of health: health care access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, social and community context, economic stability, and education access and quality.145
Areas with lower access to health care, higher pollution, and higher percentages of the identified social determinants of health “have a substantially higher rate of negative health impacts, approximately three to four times greater for all outcomes.”146 In addition to health issues related to air quality, low-income communities and communities of color in the Twin Cities are also more likely to be exposed to traffic noise levels. The health department states that in the Twin Cities, “zip codes with the largest percentage of [residents of color] had more than five times the rate of asthma emergency room visits related to air pollution compared to areas with more white residents.”147
Inequitable access to green space
Green spaces provide benefits for people that improve mental well-being and physical health and foster a community.148 Valuable environmental services such as flood management and air pollution control are also provided depending on the type of green spaces that are present. These benefits and services improve the lives of people that live nearby and manage the physical environment. Ingrained and persisting environmental injustices have led to unequal access to green spaces for everyone. This has resulted in low-income and communities of color having a lack of green space access.
Wealth is directly correlated with green space access and people who have low incomes are located farther away from parks than those with more income.149 Another study revealed that even when physical green space access is present, communities of color tend to have smaller green spaces compared to white neighborhoods.150 These disparities have led to inequitable access to benefits of green spaces. Negative health implications and risks are worsened because of historic disinvestment of green spaces in these overburdened communities.
Green spaces that provide ecosystem services often yield higher quality positive outcomes for residents.151 For example, a regional park with diverse wildlife can improve mental health better than a field of turfgrass. Green space access should not be just limited to quantity but also quality. Increasing physical access to a green space is important, but so is the quality of the green space so that people can enjoy it to their utmost and preference. By centering the benefits of these green spaces and park projects on overburdened communities, the Met Council can work to rectify past policies and practices to improve the well-being and health of all residents, and especially the most overburdened ones.
Homes that are less resilient to climate change
As Minnesota experiences a warmer and wetter climate,152 disinvested and aging homes face challenges in mitigating climate hazards and enabling resilient neighborhood recoveries. Homes within historically redlined neighborhoods are already more likely to be close to polluters153 and within urban heat islands.154 With increased heat and precipitation, energy inefficient homes or homes that are in areas of older stormwater systems155 face greater risks from unhealthy temperatures and inland flood damage. Low-income households are more likely to live in older homes with lead, making children in poverty more likely to be exposed to lead.156 Appropriate building modifications to ensure safe and efficient homes may pose upfront economic burdens for low-income households and homeowners.
Social cohesion and social networks are important to neighborhood resiliency after extreme weather events. Weak and fractured social connections within unsafe, unwalkable, unconnected, and underinvested neighborhood spaces make it difficult to form systems of community support and aid. Historical and ongoing housing disinvestment threatens the connections and relationships vital to neighborhood resiliency.
Environmental justice terms in other planning and community contexts
Black and American Indian communities organized the environmental justice movement to address environmental racism from both government action and neglect starting in the 1960s. The 17 principles of environmental justice157 adopted at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., guide the holistic environmental justice movement, including the movement’s leaders, languages, philosophies, actions, and solutions. The environmental justice framework is rooted in the guiding values of this grassroots movement.
There are many terms for communities centered in environmental justice, ranging from “environmental justice communities” used in grassroots spaces, “environmental justice areas.”158 used by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), to “Low-Income Disadvantaged Communities” (LIDAC),159 used by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program. State legislation currently defines “environmental justice areas” as areas with the following census tract conditions:
- At least 40% people of color
- At least 35% households with income at or below 200% of the federal poverty level
- At least 40% population with limited English proficiency
- Located in federally recognized reservations and other Indigenous lands.
Imagine 2050 uses “overburdened communities” to center people along with a geographical component of environmental justice. Implementation of various environmental justice-related grants, policies, and actions requires incorporating other agencies’ people- and place-based considerations. Definitions are subject to being refined and adapted.
Structure of the environmental justice framework
The Met Council’s environmental justice framework is rooted in its equity framework. The components of the equity framework are overarching principles of environmental justice. Environmental justice frames these principles in the context of people and their relationship to their environment, including land, air, soil, water, plants, and animals. Components of the framework may overlap and occur concurrently.
Figure 14: Grounding concepts of the environmental justice framework
Contextualized data: people-centered, data-driven decision making
The first component is using data to inform decision-making. Quantitative and qualitative data provide important geographical and community-based context. Just and fair decision-making processes include understanding the environmental history and present experiences relevant to overburdened communities and integrating such history with data. Quantitative data such as pollution exposure, respiratory disease rates, and cumulative impacts must be monitored and reported. Qualitative data should be shared broadly across and within the region to lessen the impact of repeated requests for engagement with overburdened communities.
Community-centered relationships: prioritized engagement with overburdened communities
This component means transforming community engagement processes towards reparative, respectful relationships with communities. A shift to co-creating solutions – particularly with the most overburdened and vulnerable communities – requires identifying and addressing the internal barriers that prevent government agencies from systemic change. This involves fostering relationships that support and build community capacity and autonomy as an empowered partner with government agencies. Engagement must begin early in project processes, be iterative, and allow time for communities to give informed input. This relationship-building also requires sustained staff capacity. Furthermore, engagement processes must continue after projects, with respect to community capacity and their preferences as to how to remain engaged. Overburdened community members must be respected and valued as subject matter experts on their experiences and compensated for their time and effort as they deem appropriate.
The Met Council must also continue to collaborate with other government partner agencies. This means using Met Council influence to ensure partner agencies are working together to demonstrate environmental justice values, explicitly looking for environmental justice connections in partner agencies’ work and convening partner agencies to develop a shared understanding of environmental justice and related work throughout the region.
Reparative outcomes: community benefits beyond harm mitigation
Current environmental regulations focus solely on harm mitigation; this framework component involves prioritizing and maximizing environmental benefits to the most overburdened communities, especially where legal requirements insufficiently address regional and community concerns. Maximizing benefits and addressing community concerns are a form of reparative justice. It involves establishing practices that maximize environmental benefits by involving communities in the selection and/or prioritization of benefits rather than solely mitigating harms. Benefits and investments from the Met Council work, and regional policies and actions resulting from Imagine 2050, must meet a community’s self-identified needs, appropriately address community concerns, and provide community benefits in co-creation alongside community.
Conditions for success
Environmental justice is as much a process as an outcome. To better understand the impact of environmental justice implementation, there are three conditions for success the region and its policies must fulfill to successfully apply the environmental justice framework. The conditions for success are:
- Expand the scope of measuring the efficacy of projects in region through a broad environmental justice lens.
- Build upon current structures and processes to define environmental justice as a necessary and explicit component of the region’s work.
- Add overburdened community values to reconcile regional government systems and plans with environmental justice outcomes.
Environmental justice at the Met Council
The Met Council follows federal requirements that integrate environmental justice principles, such as Title VI requirements,160 Justice40 initiatives161 and EPA requirements. Two executive orders that support environmental justice: Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority and Low-Income Populations, and Executive Order 14096, Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All. The Met Council largely conducts place-based work, and Title VI and environmental justice requirements set a baseline for defining geographies of communities most overburdened by climate change and EJ issues. The Met Council will use a people-based approach to our place-based work by recognizing affected populations and geographies.
The Met Council’s environmental justice framework is built upon existing work. The Met Council’s Climate Action Work Plan sets a direction for environmental justice in our operations and planning. We received a federal Climate Pollution Reduction Grant in 2023. Staff have compiled and analyzed regional data for the grant‘s required Preliminary and Comprehensive Climate Action Plans with climate disparities data.
