The State of Equitable Stakeholder engagement today
We are in the throes of climate change, biodiversity loss and widespread pollution. These phenomena have the highest negative impacts on socially vulnerable and underserved populations including: the urban and rural poor, the young and old, the sick and disabled, the homeless and redlined, veterans, and minorities by race, religion, culture or gender. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the fragility of our societal and economic systems, and successive natural disasters will further weaken human systems. At the Federal level, trillions will be spent on infrastructure projects to “Build Back Better” - we as a country cannot build back better without effective engagement of the most vulnerable communities. If we fail, funding will again go to the most resourced communities, perpetuating the negative feedback loop where underserved communities become increasingly vulnerable.
The tide is turning as Environmental Justice (EJ) policies are increasingly being adopted by governments at the federal, state, county, and regional levels - to explicitly and meaningfully engage underserved communities early and often in all regulatory and planning phases. Examples include New Jersey’s EO 23 requiring EJ in all State policies; Washington’s Healthy Environment for All Act requiring state agencies to take into account disproportionately impacted communities ; California SB-1000 Land use: Safety and EJ , and San Francisco BCDC: EJ and Social Equity Bay Plan Amendment. POTUS Executive Order 13985: Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities tasks all federal agencies with identifying methods to assess whether their policies and actions serve everyone equitably. Supporting initiatives include EJ Mapping and Data Collection Act of 2021, FEMA’s Climate Adaptation Enterprise Steering Group and Justice40 Initiative . The need for engagement reaches beyond regulatory drivers, as advisory groups like TCFD, TNFD and TIFD drive voluntary business compliance to climate change and biodiversity targets in an equitable manner. Key investors such as Black Rock and The World Bank invest in human rights focused community engagement in places where they have assets and projects to avoid legal, regulatory, operational, and reputational risks .
At the local level, groups representing underserved communities vary from place to place, requiring local governments to understand their landscape to meet engagement goals. We interviewed local and regional governments and commissions to assess their stakeholder management processes. All responders revealed a need for improvement in two areas: technical infrastructure and relationship building. Their stakeholder discovery, mapping and engagement processes are largely ad-hoc and fragmented - performed via personal networks, one-off documents, one-on-one telephone calls, and hampered by language translation needs, trust-building curves, digital divides, cultural and political reticence, limited staff for outreach and continuity of engagement, and loss of institutional knowledge during staff turnover. Stakeholder activation was another area of concern - how to fund and train community members to become local EJ champions supporting grassroots advocacy and to provide technical and funding resources.
Today there is no lack of interest and momentum in implementing EJ regulations, but because of use of outdated technology, lack of deep knowledge of underserved communities, and lack of training in inclusive engagement, their efforts are slowed down.