The climate justice movement has gained momentum at the local, state, and national levels. Frontline communities are leading by example, confronting the global climate change crisis at the neighborhood level with projects that increase community resiliency, such as cooperative solar projects, local green industrial waterfront plans, coastal protection priorities, and local resiliency hubs. NYC needs to accelerate and scale up solutions for a Just Transition, tackling emissions equitably, supporting climate adaptation for frontline communities, and creating good, green jobs. To respond to complex climate challenges adequately, NYC needs an intersectional approach to climate justice that centers leadership from the frontlines. Achieving true climate justice requires more than drawing down emissions and creating jobs – it also requires supporting the health and resilience of every community in our city and honoring the rights of communities to articulate their own climate solutions.
2024-2025 Climate Justice Agenda
In recognition of the 10th anniversary of the historic People's Climate March, in September 2024, NYC-EJA released the 2024-2025 NYC Climate Justice Agenda. While progress has been made in implementing New York State's Climate Act and other initiatives, the past four years have seen increased resistance from fossil fuel interests and State actors seeking to undermine our bold climate mandates. Our State and City have five years to meet their 40% emission reduction mandates set out by the Climate Act and Climate Mobilization Act. Our 2024-2025 Climate Justice Agenda provides strategic recommendations to address environmental burdens for frontline communities and tackle climate change with a focus on equity and health. From advancing clean energy to tackling land use issues, this new report provides a plan for equitable climate action through community-backed solutions that address environmental burdens on frontline communities.
The NYC Climate Justice Agenda is a research and advocacy campaign to address the need for comprehensive community-based approaches to climate action. Informed by the experiences of our member organizations, NYC-EJA monitors City and State government progress towards meaningfully and equitably addressing climate change, and provides strategic recommendations to dismantle historic environmental burdens for frontline NYC communities.
In April 2020, NYC-EJA released NYC Climate Justice Agenda 2020: A Critical Decade for Climate, Health, and Equity, which outlines urgent recommended strategies to enact a Just Transition, including specific timelines and concrete commitments to create healthy and resilient neighborhoods; tackle emissions in an equitable way; support climate adaptation for frontline communities; and generate good, green jobs in the process. The report focuses on three main themes aimed at achieving an intersectional set of environmental and climate justice goals: (1) Reduce Greenhouse Gases and Localized Emissions, (2) Advance a Just Transition Towards an Inclusive, Regenerative Economy and (3) Cultivate Healthy and Resilient Communities.
In April 2018, NYC-EJA released NYC Climate Justice Agenda 2018 – Midway to 2030: Building Resiliency and Equity for a Just Transition, detailing key strategies for climate change mitigation and adaptation that the City and State should adopt to ensure a Just Transition in NYC. The report focuses on four key areas of government action and policy: 1) Extreme Heat and Community Preparedness; 2) Air Quality; 3) Green Infrastructure Equity; and 4) Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency.
In April 2017, NYC-EJA released NYC Climate Justice Agenda – Climate Justice in a State of Emergency: What New York City Can Do. The report is a pragmatic roadmap with specific policy recommendations for how a progressive city can lead the way on environmental and climate issues in the absence of federal climate action. The report analyzed sustainability and resiliency efforts from City government, as laid out in OneNYC: The Plan for a Strong and Just City and New York City's Roadmap to 80×50, and proposed specific policy recommendations for the following items: (1) Urban heat island mitigation (2) Food system resiliency (3) Renewable energy and energy resiliency (4) Air quality and low-emission zones (5) Coastal resiliency (6) Community engagement. To read NYC-EJA's 2017 report, click here.
In 2016, NYC-EJA released The NYC Climate Justice Agenda – Strengthening the Mayor's OneNYC Plan. This pioneering report is a critical evaluation of OneNYC: The Plan for a Strong and Just City. The 2016 NYC Climate Justice Agenda reported on New York City's progress over the inaugural year of OneNYC while providing recommendations on how the City could bolster its commitment to equity through specific policy and programmatic recommendations. To read NYC-EJA's 2016 report, click here.
Green Infrastructure (GI) is a key climate adaptation strategy that can increase community resilience to climate change. NYC-EJA engages in multifaceted advocacy and research strategies to increase green infrastructure in low-income communities of color to mitigate historic environmental burdens, protect against growing climate vulnerabilities, and maximize the co-benefits of GI, including addressing air quality, extreme heat, stormwater flooding, and coastal protection. Below are two ongoing GI campaigns:
Just Nature NYC
Just Nature NYC is a partnership between NYC-EJA and The Nature Conservancy's NY Cities team. Our partnership advocates for more nature-based solutions, especially trees, across NYC to support climate justice and equity. We believe that these investments must be targeted strategically in frontline neighborhoods to help improve wellbeing and resilience, especially in the most heat-vulnerable communities of our city. We aim to provide analyses and resources to community-based organizations and propose remedies that are rooted in and elevate community leadership. To learn more about our work, visit our GAGE Blog.
Forest for All NYC
The Forest for All NYC (FFANYC) coalition is made up of over 100 member organizations that represent diverse perspectives and span sectors, industries, interests and geographies – all working together to advocate for the most valuable natural infrastructure in NYC. The vision of FFANYC is for a healthy, biodiverse, and resilient urban forest that equitably delivers its multiple benefits to all residents of NYC while helping the city adapt to and mitigate climate change. There are twelve key goals of the coalition, outlined in the NYC Urban Forest Agenda, including: achieving 30% tree canopy coverage equitably by 2035, establishing a citywide plan for the urban forest, cultivating urban forest careers, setting tree planting and management standards, and creating an urban forestry monitoring and research agenda.
NYS's transformational climate law – the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) – set a mandate for greenhouse gas emissions reductions of 40 percent by 2030 and 85 percent by 2050. The law directs the Department of Environmental Conservation to promulgate regulations to meet these mandates. NYC-EJA supported polluter fees and facility-specific caps to achieve these goals, but the State, through the Climate Action Council established by the climate law to produce an implementation plan, instead proposed an emissions "cap, trade and invest" scheme to meet the targets. If New York is to move forward with cap-trade-and-invest, it is critical that they get it right. NYC-EJA is advocating for a program that builds in protections for environmental justice communities to avoid pollution hotspots and harm in communities by limiting trading, offsets, and setting facility-specific caps.
In partnership with Resources for the Future (RFF), NYC-EJA produced research on the State's proposed cap-trade-and invest program (or what NYS now refers to as "New York's Clean Air Initiative"). Our research examined how different cap-trade and invest program designs could affect emission reductions, air quality, revenue, and affordability, particularly for disadvantaged communities and low-and-moderate income households. Our studies collectively demonstrated that a cap-trade and invest program, if designed right, could make corporate polluters pay, create savings for many New Yorkers and clean our air from pollution.
- Analyzing Affordability: Supporting Households under New York's Cap-Trade-and-Invest Policy (Jan 2025) – This recent paper finds that affordability concerns with the proposed program are misguided. In fact, our analysis finds that a system of targeted cash payments, as well as funds for electrification investments (e.g., heat pumps and electric vehicles), may create net financial benefits for many New York households, more so when allowance prices are higher. Read the report here and the press release here.
- Prioritizing Justice in New York's Cap-Trade-and-Invest: Obligating Electricity and Capping Generator Emissions (June 2024) – This issue brief examined obligating the electricity sector and adding facility-specific caps to electric power generating facilities in the cap-trade-and-invest program. The report provided evidence that facility- and sector-specific caps could be implemented to reduce emissions near disadvantaged communities (or DACs) at little to no cost to households. Statewide GHG emissions and average PM2.5 emissions at power sector facilities are lowest when the power sector is obligated to participate and power generators face facility-specific caps. Read the report here.
- Prioritizing Justice in New York State Cap-Trade-and-Invest (March 2024) – This report analyzes the emissions effects of different cap-trade-and-invest policy designs in New York State. The research showed that guardrails, such as facility-specific caps, restricted trading, and sector-specific caps led to air quality improvements with small to virtually no impacts on gasoline and residential electricity prices. Read the report here.
NYC-EJA, in partnership with NY Renews, was a driving force behind one of the most progressive and ambitious climate action laws in the nation, the NYS Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), passed in 2019. Unofficially known as NYS's "climate law", the CLCPA outlines a variety of key climate goals focusing on emissions reductions and protecting and investing in disadvantaged communities to ensure they receive at least 35-40% of the law's benefits. NYC-EJA has continued to work toward identifying and operationalizing implementation policies and mitigation strategies to meet the law's goals and mandates.
The NYS Climate Modeling Project is a partnership between NYC-EJA and a variety of research partners, including Resources for the Future and several academic teams across multiple universities. This research partnership seeks to model a variety of climate policies that could help reach the CLCPA goals to determine how different approaches will impact emissions and air quality.
After more than two years of work, our research teams released a major report: Prioritizing Justice in New York State Climate Policy: Cleaner Air for Disadvantaged Communities? Using extensive, cutting-edge climate and emissions modeling, this report compared climate policies favored by the Hochul Administration-dominated NYS Climate Action Council with policies championed by environmental justice advocates intended to implement the CLCPA. This comparative analysis showed that the more ambitious, targeted policies advanced by environmental justice advocates would lead to greater emissions reductions than the official Climate Action Plan recommendations, indicating that bolder action is needed to reach the goals outlined in the CLCPA.
Our modeling work continues with ongoing further research into key emissions mitigation policies. Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on our upcoming releases. Read the Prioritizing Justice in New York State Climate Policy: Cleaner Air for Disadvantaged Communities here and the press release here.
The negative health outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic closely mirror the racial and socioeconomic disparities that environmental justice communities have faced for decades. Similarly, to climate change, COVID-19 is a threat multiplier. When crises like pandemics and climate change intersect, the effects of poor air quality, extreme heat, and severe storms on environmental justice communities can become synergistically disastrous.
Download the COVID-19 and Environmental Justice Factsheet here.
Accomplishments
In 2023, Just Nature NYC published a blogpost: Looking at Cooling Benefits of Plants Through NYC Vegetation Data
In 2023, in collaboration with the Forest For All NYC coalition, NYC-EJA helped champion Intro 1065 – legislation requiring a citywide Urban Forest Master Plan to identify strategies and set goals to protect, care for, and expand the urban forest canopy with an overall goal of equitably expanding the urban forest canopy to 30% citywide, which will help curb the urban heat island effect.
The Just Nature NYC partnership released "Opportunities for Growth: Nature-Based Jobs in New York City," highlighting the complexity and variety of nature-based jobs across the city needed to build climate-resilient communities. You can read the full Spanish version here "Nuevo informe — Oportunidades de crecimiento: Empleos basados en la naturaleza en Nueva York."
Thanks to NYC-EJA's advocacy, the City passed the first two extreme heat laws in July 2020, Local Laws 84 and 85. The first law requires the NYC Department of Health to annually report on neighborhood heat vulnerability and the number of heat-related deaths, as well as an estimation of heat-exacerbated deaths. The second law requires the NYC Office of Emergency Management to develop and submit an annual comprehensive NYC cooling and communication plan.
- The Just Nature NYC partnership released "How a Healthy and Equitable Urban Forest Can Help Communities Thrive" highlighting why the urban forest is an environmental justice issue.
In anticipation of the OneNYC update, NYC-EJA released the first of an annual series, The NYC Climate Justice Agenda, to assess the extent to which the Mayor's sustainability and resiliency blueprints address environmental and climate justice issues, and the type of progress achieved to date. The Agendas also highlight community-based initiatives and recommendations to address these issues.
- The City committed to addressing the vulnerability of industrial facilities to climate change impacts through the Open Industrial Uses and Resilient Industry studies. These studies will help assess potential hazardous exposures from industrial sites in the event of severe weather, and create a detailed inventory of best management practices for pollution prevention and climate adaptation.
Mayor Bloomberg's SIRR report and the federal Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force's report included several Sandy Regional Assembly priorities, coordinated by NYC-EJA, and highlighted the problem of environmental justice and industrial waterfront vulnerability to storm surges.
- The Hunts Point Lifelines Proposal, submitted by the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and OLIN and supported by THE POINT CDC, received a combined $45 million from US-HUD's Rebuild by Design Competition and the City of New York. NYC-EJA facilitated discussions leading to the adoption of issues & opportunities prioritized in the Sandy Regional Assembly Recovery Agenda for Hunts Point.
Analyzing Affordability: Supporting Households under New York's Cap-Trade-and-Invest Program
Prioritizing Justice in New York State Cap-Trade-and-Invest
Opportunities for Growth: Nature-Based Jobs Report
Eddie Bautista presenting on Labor, Community, & the Climate Crisis
New York City Panel on Climate Change Report, Climate Change Adaptation in New York City: Building a Risk Management Response (Chapter 5, Public Health Impacts and Resiliency): This New York City Panel on Climate Change report references NYC-EJA's Waterfront Justice Project research on potential hazardous exposures in/around the Significant Maritime and Industrial Areas (SMIAs) in the event of severe weather.
Sandy Regional Assembly, Recovery Agenda: Recovery from the ground up: Strategies for community-based resiliency in New York and New Jersey.
Sandy Regional Assembly, SIRR Analysis & Recommendations to the federal Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force: An assessment of the Mayors' Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency (SIRR) Plan, and recommendations for the federal Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force.