EJ4Climate: Environmental Justice and Climate Resilience

“Even though there is no internationally accepted definition, environmental justice broadly covers fair and inclusive engagements of all in the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental legislation. It, therefore, refers directly to access to environment-related goods, such as clean water and energy or safe urban areas, or to protection from negative environmental pressures, like air and water pollution or deforestation (distributional justice). It also translates into equal access to the decision-making process of environmental policies (procedural justice). Finally, it has been argued that environmental justice should also achieve a healthy environment for all (substantive justice).”¹

Environmental Justice can also be understood as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”²

In Mexico, the concept of environmental justice is broader and entails, among other things, efforts to reach an equal distribution of environmental benefits and costs. Environmental justice also entails obtaining a timely legal solution to a given environmental conflict, considering that all people must start from the same conditions to access environmental justice.³ The Government has to promote greater social equity in the distribution of costs and benefits associated with environmental policy objectives.⁴

We understand “underserved communities” as “populations sharing a particular characteristic, as well as geographic communities, that have been systematically denied a full opportunity to participate in aspects of economic, social, and civic life…”and includes individuals “such as Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”⁵

See also California’s definition of “climate vulnerability” developed for its Integrated Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Program.⁶

“Overburdened communities” refers to minority, low-income, tribal, or Indigenous populations or geographic locations that potentially experience disproportionate environmental harms and risks.⁷

In Mexico, it refers to communities with a precarious structure of opportunities that obstructs the full development of human potential derived from the lack of access to education, residence in inadequate housing, low monetary income and those derived from residence in inadequate localities.

Urban areas are understood as cities, towns and suburban or peri-urban areas who have greater vulnerability to environmental hazards.

In the World Cities Report 2022⁸, the UN-Habitat refers to the Degree of Urbanization methodology that offers more nuance than the “urban” and “rural” binary that commonly categorizes the demographic classification of human settlements. Instead of those two categories, this approach proposes to analyze grid cells of one square kilometer (1 sq. km) as below:

1. Cities: settlements of at least 50,000 inhabitants in a high-density cluster of grid cells (greater than 1,500 inhabitants per sq. km).
2. Towns: settlements with between 5,000 and 50,000 that are either dense (with a density of at least 1,500 inhabitants per sq. km) or semi-dense (a density at least 300 inhabitants per sq. km).
3. Suburban or peri-urban areas: cells belonging to urban clusters but not part of a town.