Environmental Justice

• Goal
• Background
• Strategies

Goal

To facilitate the active involvement of all federal agencies in implementing Executive Order 12898 (PDF) (6 pp, 122K, About PDF) by minimizing and mitigating disproportionate negative impacts while fostering environmental, public health, and economic benefits for overburdened communities.

Read the implementation plan on administration-wide action (PDF) (21 pp, 850K).

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Background

Everyone in America deserves to live, learn, and work in a healthy and sustainable community.

EPA seeks to facilitate the active involvement of all federal agencies in ensuring healthy, sustainable and green communities, as well as equitable development, for all people. To better achieve this goal, EPA is leading the Administration’s effort to fully implement Executive Order 12898 (PDF) (6 pp, 122K).

Executive Order 12898 calls for the establishment of an Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (EJ IWG). The IWG is chaired by the EPA Administrator. EPA worked with the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to reconvene the EJ IWG in September 2010.

EPA is working with other federal agencies to advance environmental justice through coordinated efforts. A coordinated and holistic approach is essential to addressing the full scope of adverse human health and environmental effects in overburdened communities, legacy pollution problems, and cumulative impacts. A coordinated approach can ensure that all communities participate and benefit in the transition to a clean energy economy.

Coordinated efforts include:

• Partnership for Sustainable Communities - This is an unprecedented agreement by EPA, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. The agreement coordinates federal housing, transportation, and environmental investments; protects public health and the environment; promotes equitable development; and helps address the challenges of climate change.
• National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) - All federal agencies must consider environmental justice issues in their environmental impact assessments
• Title VI of the Civil Rights Act - This act prohibits recipients of federal financial assistance from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin in their programs or activities.

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Strategies

• Assist other federal agencies with integrating environmental justice into their missions, programs, policies, and activities.
  
  
• Work with other federal agencies to strengthen use of interagency legal tools, i.e., NEPA and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  
  
• Foster healthy and sustainable communities, with an emphasis on equitable development and place-based initiatives.
  
  
• Strengthen community access to federal agencies.

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