Nature as Resilience for Environmental Justice

Decades of discriminatory planning, disinvestment, and exclusion have led to Black, brown, indigenous, and low-income communities being disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards while being denied environmental benefits. In particular, environmental justice communities have experienced the disproportionate destruction, degradation, and denial of trees, wetlands, parks, and other types of nature. This ‘nature gap’ has resounding consequences that deepens risks to communities, since trees, wetlands, parks, and other types of nature can function as natural infrastructure that safeguards communities from environmental hazards, such as flooding, extreme heat, and pollution.

But environmental justice communities are not only experiencing these challenges; they are addressing them. Through advancing nature-based solutions projects, such as planting trees, restoring wetlands, and reclaiming green spaces, environmental justice communities are creating healthier, safer, and more resilient neighborhoods.

On June 10th, the Environmental Justice, Health, and Community Resilience and Revitalization (EJHCR2) program hosted a Clean Economy Coalition of Color (CECC) virtual roundtable event to bring together a panel of community leaders and experts to discuss their experiences working with nature to advance environmental justice. The conversation was moderated by Sam Zeno with Center for American Progress, and one of the lead authors of The Nature Gap: Communities of Color and Those With Low Incomes Are Bearing the Brunt of America’s Nature Loss. The roundtable’s panelists included:

• Gloria Tom, Senior Strategic and Special Tribal Policy Advisor, National Wildlife Federation
• Dr. Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, Co-Founder, West Atlanta Watershed Alliance
• Rashida Ferdinand, Founder and Executive Director, Sankofa Community Development Corporation
• Paulina López, Executive Director, Duwamish River Community Coalition

Throughout the discussion, three key themes emerged. First, panelists described how nature-based solutions projects can safeguard communities. Second, they emphasized how those most impacted by environmental harms are best positioned to identify solutions, such as nature-based projects. Finally, they underscored the beneficial power of authentic partnerships, based on trust and shared decision-making, when advancing nature-based solutions in environmental justice communities.

Nature Can Safeguard Communities

Throughout the discussion, panelists shared several examples and described how nature-based solutions create healthier, safer, and more resilient environmental justice communities.

Dr. Na’Taki Osborne Jelks explained that the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance (WAWA), a community-based organization, recognizes that caring for and stewarding natural resources is important for addressing the challenges their community faces, saying “we understood that a healthy environment, a healthy ecosystem, that those are things that contribute to healthy communities.” She gave an example of how residents of West Atlanta experience chronic stormwater and flooding challenges, including basement backups and poor local water quality linked to aging sewage infrastructure.

To reduce pressure on aging sewer systems and improve local water quality by filtering runoff, WAWA identifies and advances green infrastructure solutions in the community, such as rain gardens, trees, and green spaces, to absorb and slow stormwater.

The Sankofa Community Development Corporation, a community-led organization in the Lower 9^th Ward neighborhood of New Orleans, also utilizes nature-based solutions to build resilience to flooding while revitalizing the neighborhood. The Lower 9^th Ward still has damage from Hurricane Katrina and continues to experience flooding, a problem worsened by inadequate infrastructure. Rashida Ferdinand described how the Sankofa Community Development Corporation explored how nature-based solutions could reduce flooding while restoring healthier environmental conditions to the Lower 9^th Ward community.

As Ferdinand explained, “nature-based spaces become an asset to how we can retain water and use our natural resources in a way that supports healthy water drainage and healthy water cleaning.” Sankofa put that approach into practice by leading a wetland restoration and park project on a 40-acre site that had been degraded since Hurricane Katrina. The project created public green space with the capacity to store 8 million gallons of stormwater annually, supporting neighborhood revitalization while reducing flooding impacts.

Together, these examples show how nature-based solutions can have a meaningful positive impact on the health, safety, and resilience of environmental justice communities. When nature-based solutions are designed around community needs, they can improve local environmental conditions and support long-term resilience from environmental hazards, like flooding.

Communities Know Best

For decades, environmental justice communities have been left out of decision-making processes. To advance environmental justice, projects that impact communities must meaningfully involve those who are most affected in decision-making. The panelists emphasized that because these communities directly experience environmental harms, they are best positioned to identify local priorities, needs, and opportunities, including what and where nature-based solutions may be most effective.

Paulina Lopez, from the Duwamish River Community Coalition, established this clearly in the beginning of the discussion when she said, “community is always the way to make things happen, and they, as being the impacted ones, they will be the best ones to define how the future, should look like. You know, like we say, nothing about us, without us.”

She shared an example from South Seattle’s Duwamish River Valley community of how those most affected by environmental hazards know what is best for themselves.  In 2001, the US Environmental Protection Agency declared the Lower Duwamish Waterway a Superfund Site and the port authority proposed turning the contaminated shoreline site into a parking lot. But the community who lived nearby the Superfund Site recognized the lack of green space and tree canopy their neighborhood and saw the potential for the site to become restored habitat and public green space instead.

The community successfully advocated for a full clean-up of the contamination and for their vision of the shoreline. Because of the involvement of the community, the site is now a park and shoreline marsh that improves community access to the water, creates habitat, and reduces flooding.

The example of the Duwamish River Valley community illustrates how environmental justice communities are best poised to identify and shape solutions to the harm they experience.

The Power of Authentic Partners

Authentic partnerships, based on trust and shared decision-making are beneficial and powerful when advancing nature-based solutions in environmental justice communities.

During the roundtable, the panelists discussed how authentic partnerships are a key aspect of their nature-based solutions work. Dr. Na’Taki Osborne Jelks stated that “partnerships are the cornerstone” of WAWA’s work.  Panelists explained that nature-based solutions projects require collaboration across residents, community leaders, grassroots organizations, nonprofits, consultants, and government agencies.

By building genuine relationships and working toward a shared goal, these diverse groups combine their unique skills and strengths, achieving much more together than they could individually. Rashida Ferdinand highlighted “partnerships allow us to understand that we’re not in this alone… it just touches my heart and gives me joy, and that keeps me going and keeps me inspired to do this work.”

Panelists also emphasized that partnerships with environmental justice communities are only successful when they are based on trust and shared decision-making.

Gloria Tom summarized this by saying “the basic requirement in all of this is trust. Being able to trust each other, whether you’re native, whether you’re not, being able to ensure that you’re all on the same level in terms of that trust relationship that you have and not having to worry about negative impacts to the community, negative impacts to the resources…. just trusting each other.”

It was clear throughout the discussion that, when based on trust and shared decision-making power, authentic partnerships can strongly support the success of nature-based solutions in environmental justice communities.

In Conclusion

We are so grateful to these experts and leaders for joining the roundtable and generously sharing their perspectives and experiences. There was so much to take away from this conversation (like the importance of looking back on the past to inform the future, youth, bugs!, and more). I encourage everyone to listen to the full recording to hear more about the connections between environmental justice, community resilience, and nature-based solutions.

While each panelist spoke about different communities, cultures, geographies, and challenges, a unifying pattern stood out throughout the discussion: when those most affected by environmental hazards are meaningfully involved as project leaders or authentic partners, nature-based solutions can be a powerful tool to support healthier, safer, and more resilient environmental justice communities.