Image credit: Getty Images for UnsplashDuring Joe Biden’s presidency, environmental justice—that is, policy that directly counters environmental racism and benefits communities of color and the least well-off—has gained unprecedented prominence.But will low-income communities and communities of color actually benefit from federal investments?…The sense of funding uncertainty is palpable.
The Justice40 Initiative, for example, commits multiple agencies—especially the federal Departments of Agriculture and Energy, and the US Environmental Protection Agency—to the promise that 40 percent of federal spending should benefit disadvantaged communities. Then there is the “historic” new funding in the 2022 climate bill passed by Congress (confusingly labeled the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA).
The case for federal investment in environmental justice is overwhelming. EPA data show that Black and Indigenous communities disproportionately shoulder the worst outcomes of resource extraction and pollution, with Native Americans most likely to experience land loss due to flooding, and Black Americans most likely to suffer from childhood asthma due to high levels of air pollution in predominantly Black neighborhoods.
But will low-income communities and communities of color actually benefit from federal investments? As one NPQ article noted a couple of years ago, the devil is in the details. The sense of funding uncertainty is palpable.
Despite “historic” federal investments, many community members feel weary from bearing the disproportionate impact of the climate crisis, persistent discrimination within environmental nonprofits, and inadequate infrastructure to access federal resources. Whether the promises of Justice40 or the IRA are realized is not just about communities receiving grants but whether they can secure their futures by securing ownership over critical resources, such as renewable energy generation.
The Value of Cooperatives
Cooperatives in Black communities are—as B. Coleman succinctly put it in NPQ a year ago—a form of ancestral technology, meaning that cooperation has long resonated as a core value in African communities’ economic organization. That tradition is still seen in Black communities, particularly in the US South, where over 20,000 African American families participate in a network of 75 cooperatives known as the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund.
From 2021 until 2023, I worked at that federation. My role afforded me the opportunity to gain deeper working relationships and inspiration while collaborating with icons of the Black cooperative movement in the South, including Ben Burkett and Shirley Sherrod. As a co-convenor of the 2023 Pointing the Farm Bill toward Racial Justice Summit, over 50 federation members came to Washington, DC, where they expressed their demands for racial equity in every title of the Farm Bill as farmers, landowners, and cooperative business owners. For many Bla
