Citing Climate Change, Providence City Council Commits to Becoming Anti-Racist

Michael Denning via UNSPLASH

Two Councilmembers introduced a Resolution last week that prioritizes Providence city funds in public support structures in accordance with the “Just Providence Framework and the city’s “Climate Justice Plan.” Recognizing that climate change impacts marginalized communities disproportionately, the Office of Sustainability in partnership with the Racial and Environmental Justice Committee have pledged to create a plan to address the interconnectedness of public health, racism, climate and environmental sustainability. The two offices will work with communities to make sure that plans measure the intersection of race and class as an indicator in environmental justice assessments. 

Based on what we see here, we at Climate Refugees think this is exactly the necessary bold, accountable and out-of-the-box thinking that underscores a movement.

““We cannot build a just and equitable society without addressing the impacts of climate change on our most vulnerable community members…“”

— Councilmember Nirva LaFortune

The Resolution went even further to call out the many ways throughout history that the city had failed its residents, including slavery. One Councilmember called the resolution a “movement seeking to rectify policies and structures that failed to acknowledge Black, indigenous and communities of color in climate and other environmental-related initiatives. It is up to all of us to work together to make sustainability and environmental justice a guiding principle in addressing climate change.”

The resolution listed specific times when the city had failed residents of color:

• The institution of slavery being Providence’s principal source of income;

• The displacement of indigenous peoples through violence and lies;

• The race riots of Hardscrabble and Snow Town leading to the formation of the Providence Police Department;

• The displacement of Black and Indigenous communities to build industrial sites, highways, and roads;

• The defunding of schools whose students are majority Black, Latinx, and Southeast Asian;

• The over-policing of Black, Indigenous, and People of color neighborhoods;

• The tradition of placing toxic sites in and near Black, Indigenous, people of color neighborhoods;

The resolution commits the City to three ideas:

• Transforming the City into an anti-racist institution by following the “Continuum on Becoming an Anti-Racist Multicultural Organization” by continuing to support and invest in structures, programs, policies that align with the Just Providence Framework and Climate Justice Plan;

• Supporting the Office of Sustainability in the FY21 budget to improve the lives of Providence’s BIPOC communities in order to mitigate long-term climate threats and reduce the loss of life with solutions that result in clean air and water, climate-resilient low-income housing, community health, environmental justice, youth programs, and economic justice; and

• Following the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership outlined in the Climate Justice plan and moving towards collaborative governance decision-making processes that center those who are most impacted by the current health, environment, and economic crises.

We’d like to applaud Providence on its courageous and visionary leadership and hope other cities, in the US and globally, will be inspired to follow suit to recognize and respond to the many interconnected ways in which climate change will cut deeply across sectors and marginalized people. (Uprise RI)

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Climate Change and Race — Connections are Being Drawn

Vlad Tchompalov/UNSPLASH

In the wake of the current global uprising on racism, connections are being drawn between climate change and race. As is well-understood by some working in this space, climate change is an everyday reality for many developing countries, marginalized and disenfranchised people, many of whom are people of color. However, that link between climate change and race is now amplified to emphasize how little that is part of the story. 

For example, this writer points out that Australia’s wildfires that began last June and continued well into March this year, while generating tons of global outrage, contained very little media coverage of its impacts on Indigenous Australians, some of whom lost their homes and all possessions in the fires, which also put their cultural and sacred sites at risk. 

The fact that the US, UK and Australia dump their waste on developing countries like Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia, paying scant attention to the hazards they create in the process for the populations that live there. 

Similarly, she rightly calls out extractive industries killing of Indigenous leaders in the Amazon under Brazil’s Bolsonaro Administration. While the US and Canada authorize more extractive industries to build oil pipelines, such as Dakota and Keystone XL, through indigenous lands, while posing threats to the health and food sovereignty of Indigenous communities. 

She highlights the EPA report in March, which revealed Black communities in the US are three times more likely to die from exposure to pollution than white communities, something supported again this week, by another writer who makes the link between the EPA report and the heightened pregnancy risks for Black women, which makes climate change especially worrisome then for women of color. 

As both writers correctly posit, there are elements of race that cannot continue to be overlooked in the climate change discussion. Chief among them that the continued reliance on fossil fuels not only accelerates climate change and worsens air quality, but we now also know, adversely and disproportionately impacts communities of color. (Vogue & Reuters)

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