Community leaders at Boulder roundtable: Climate approach must put equity first - Boulder Daily Camera
Community leaders at Boulder roundtable: Climate approach must put equity first - Boulder Daily Camera
Numerous local community officials, climate activists and organizers spoke at a high-profile roundtable discussion Monday morning that touched on environmental justice and the crucial importance of equity in climate-change discussions.
The roundtable event, held in the Boulder County Commissioners’ Hearing Room at the Boulder County Courthouse, 1325 Pearl St., and facilitated by U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine, drew a myriad of community leaders, local dignitaries and regional government representatives.
The environmental justice movement seeks to give all people access to a safe, livable environment. It recognizes that marginalized groups often bear the brunt of exposure to hazardous waste, pollution and other environmental threats, leading to health disparities between different communities.
The activists and organizers present, some of whom identified themselves as Indigenous, emphasized the need to include equity in any discussion of climate change, and said any effort to heal the environment must also aim to heal long-standing systemic inequities.
Commerce City Councilmember Renée Millard-Chacon said her city, which encompasses a largely industrial area northeast of Denver, regularly deals with pollution from benzene, hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen sulfide, and her son suffers from nosebleeds. The community lacks access to health care, she said, and for more than three decades has needed to have water filters installed.
“When we’re asking for environmental justice, this is a form of our civil rights at this point,” said Millard-Chacon.
Commerce City has a relatively high percentage of Hispanic residents. They make up about 48.6% of Commerce City residents, compared to 29.4% of residents in nearby Denver.
Some speakers at the event pointed out the irony that communities within Colorado lack access to clean air and water despite the state’s health-conscious image.
“In the state of Colorado, we’ve had this issue — there’s this idea in everybody’s head that this is the healthy, beautiful, vibrant, outdoorsy place to live, and that’s not true for a lot of our communities,” said Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish, co-founder of environmental justice consulting group One and Future Green.
According to Gabrieloff-Parish, this dynamic is even at play in affluent Boulder County. “The lack of urgency for our communities is astounding, and it’s noticeable,” she said.
Multiple speakers stressed the importance of including Indigenous community members in conversations about climate change and taking their traditional ancestral knowledge of the land into account.
Gabriela Galindo, program coordinator for Foundation for Leaders Organizing for Water and Sustainability, said the climate crisis is following a “very familiar pattern of racism, discrimination and genocide” echoing back to the decimation of tribal nations in the U.S.
“Let’s be honest about why we’re in this climate crisis: the invalidation of traditional ecological knowledge, (and) the invalidation of Native worldviews, cultures and tradition,” said Galindo. “We are the experts of our own communities.”
Other speakers urged officials to “let community lead” and allow community organizations to be involved in doing the work of climate restoration instead of government agencies creating policies that are enforced from the top down.
Levine said the roundtable had provided “valuable and illuminating information” about the environmental challenges Colorado communities are experiencing. She said she’s attended similar meetings across the country, but at Monday’s meeting in Boulder, the emphasis on Indigenous cultural heritage and traditional ecological knowledge stood out.
“(I also heard them say that) this cannot be a top-down process,” Levine said. “This can’t be the federal government saying, or really any level of government saying, ‘You have this problem, this is the solution, we’re going to implement it or impose it, and thank you very much.’ … It really needs to be us listening to them about the challenges that they face and the solutions and to work to facilitate those.”
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”