Blog post by Martin Edwini-Bonsu

This blog won an award in the TBCG Environmental Advocates writing contest. All content, including any opinions expressed, belong to the author.

When it comes to equitable environmental decision-making, decision-makers should uphold equity to uplift the communities affected by the decision-making.

As governments and organizations roll out climate action frameworks, there is limited input from marginalized communities that are the most adversely impacted by climate change. From the demolished town of Africville to Indigenous communities in British Columbia protesting new pipeline projects, these groups’ environmental concerns are overlooked in favour of approving construction for manufacturing plants and pipelines that are harmful to the environment and exacerbate their health outcomes. 

This inequitable community engagement is due to the lack of information and awareness provided for communities affected by environmental decision-making, underrepresentation in policy and government positions, and the massive influence of corporate and politically-active donors who oppose efforts to address the climate crisis. While these barriers seem difficult to overcome, there are a few effective strategies that governments and organizations can implement to ensure more equitable community engagement in environmental decision-making.

Forming a community advisory committee (CAC) can promote equitable community engagement in environmental decision-making.

A CAC keeps a community well-informed about the environmental impact of projects. Moreover, the committee provides a platform for community members to share their perspectives on the environmental impact of projects. These perspectives can bring attention to blindspots of a project that are overlooked. Countries such as New Zealand have passed legislation to establish community-based natural resource management frameworks, leading to more effective and equitable community development. This can result from the consultation of such committees. Overall, a community advisory committee promotes transparency, accountability, and trust between community members and governing entities.

Oftentimes, environmentally harmful projects deplete marginalized communities of resources, hinder their socioeconomic development, and make them more vulnerable to health problems. To promote equitable community engagement in environmental decision-making, governments and corporations need to equitably distribute resources and opportunities that benefit marginalized communities.

Therefore, corporations, governments, and organizations that have constructed environmentally-harmful projects and systems or are planning to continue doing so should be required to compensate those communities for alleviating the adverse environmental and health impacts of these projects and systems. This compensation can be used to empower marginalized communities in the form of investments in small businesses led by marginalized community members, scholarships, and job opportunities for communities disproportionately affected by the climate crisis.

TC Energy, a natural gas company, outlined a Reconciliation Action Plan that includes offering Indigenous peoples employment and workplace training for the projects they work on. They also offered Indigenous students scholarships to continue their education. Providing these types of opportunities to marginalized communities most impacted by the climate crisis can help build trust between entities and affected communities by demonstrating a commitment to addressing long-term environmental and socioeconomic despair. Moreover, it shifts the burdens that marginalized communities face as a result of inequitable community engagement in environmental decision-making.

Another method of promoting equitable community engagement is community-based participatory research (CBPR), a collaborative approach to research that involves community members as equal partners in the research process.

This process involves collecting knowledge and perspectives from marginalized community members to inform policymakers, usually with the assistance of grassroots groups and local non-governmental organizations. The knowledge and perspectives can be collected by inviting community members to discussion panels, hosting events to raise awareness, and mapping out simulations of a project.

CBPR encourages equitable community engagement since the research recognizes the importance of the community’s capacity for informed decision-making. This research has inspired the formation of groups such as the Southeast CARE Coalition, a CBPR partnership between community members and researchers in the Southeast Community of Newport News, Virginia, to identify environmental issues and inform ideas and concerns for sustainable urban planning. This approach builds trust between researchers and community members and ensures that research is relevant to the needs of the affected community.

Ensuring equitable community engagement in environmental decision-making requires resilience, empathy, and active listening. It also requires significant reflection on the environmental hardships that marginalized communities have witnessed because of the climate crisis and how they can be best engaged and supported through environmental decisions.

Equitable community engagement improves transparency, inclusion, and a just distribution of resources for marginalized groups most impacted by the climate crisis, thus ensuring that environmental decision-making upholds climate justice.