Landscape Assessment of the US Environmental Justice Movement: Transformative Strategies for Climate Justice

Abstract

The environmental justice movement (EJM) in the United States has grown in size and in its cultural and political importance in climate and environmental policy circles. This growth has meant that the organizations and leaders that make up the EJM and their respective areas of focus are also evolving. The social movement capacities of the EJM are important predictors of the future success of the movement as the climate crisis bears down on vulnerable communities worldwide. As a part of designing a leadership program for environmental justice (EJ) activists based at The New School, this landscape assessment surveyed and interviewed more than 200 EJ movement activists across the country to explore the priorities, strategies, challenges, and social movement capacities of the EJM. The study reveals that EJM activists work across a diverse set of issues and rank climate justice among their highest priority issues. They overwhelmingly rely on base building, coalitions, and organizing strategies to do their work. In reflecting on the movement’s contemporary approaches, activists articulated the importance of shared frameworks such as climate justice to shift popular narratives and action on climate change. The climate justice frame reflects a critical, intersectional, and reconstructive conceptualization of the climate crisis that requires disrupting the status quo approaches to climate change. The study points to some of the challenges and opportunities ahead for realizing such a contentious and transformative climate justice vision led by EJM activists in a moment of expanding political opportunity and risk.