{"id":1497455,"date":"2024-02-13T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-13T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=629732"},"modified":"2024-02-13T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T14:00:00","slug":"climate-vulnerability-index-illuminates-inequities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/02\/13\/climate-vulnerability-index-illuminates-inequities\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Vulnerability Index illuminates inequities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
When Cleophus Sharp was four years old, his parents rushed him to the hospital in Houston because he couldn\u2019t catch his breath, no matter how much he tried. Sharp, who grew up in the historically Black neighborhood of Pleasantville in Houston, Texas, says he almost died because the air in his community was toxic. Sharp spent two weeks in an oxygen tent before returning home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through his organizing work, Sharp later learned air pollution in his neighborhood likely led to him developing asthma. Pleasantville is bisected by several large freeways, and near an international shipping nexus adjacent with frequent truck traffic. \u201cThose industries that were polluting [were] only three miles from us,\u201d Sharp said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cordoned off by two major highways, saddled with industrial chemical manufacturing plants and recycling centers, and situated next to two major trade terminals, Pleasantville ranks in the 99th percentile for national climate vulnerability, according to the U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index, a tool<\/a> developed by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund in partnership with Texas A&M University and a range of community groups like Achieving Community Tasks Successfully, the nonprofit where Sharp serves as a board member. The Climate Vulnerability Index is a first-of-its kind mapping tool that allows users to explore social, environmental, economic, and health conditions of every census tract in the U.S. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sharp\u2019s health concerns are shared by many. For decades, residents of Pleasantville have been forced to contend with polluted air and soil, disinvestment in public programs and services, and a lack of empirical data to demonstrate what residents know to be true: Pleasantville\u2019s environmental conditions were making far too many of them sick. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPart of the issue is a nonprofit organization has never had access to these types of resources before to prove that point,\u201d Sharp said. \u201cWe only can tell you, \u2018so many people died from this, and so many people have this issue.\u2019\u201d He says the mapping index will make a \u201chuge difference\u201d for communities like Pleasantville across the country, helping them point to the source of pollutants and help demonstrate to zoning boards and permitting bodies why additional pollution should not be approved in already-overburdened places. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Grace Tee Lewis, a senior health scientist at Environmental Defense Fund who championed the idea of the mapping tool, said that the index may help community advocates like Sharp illustrate for elected officials and public agencies the connections between innate threats, like weather, and vulnerabilities through social and economic policies over time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think that some of these intersections \u2014 where climate, environment, and existing inequities have been systematically disenfranchising communities \u2014 really have to be at the forefront of the policies that we prioritize to try to break the cycle of disadvantage,\u201d Tee Lewis said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The inspiration for the index came from other tools that compile environmental and climate data by neighborhood, like the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool<\/a> or CalEnviroScreen<\/a>, California Communities Environmental Health Screening Tool, Tee Lewis says. But few tools take as comprehensive an approach as the new index, which accounts for elements of public funding and policy that impact both how much a community might be impacted by a disaster \u2014 and how difficult it will be for them to recover. For instance, no other tool incorporates environmental data with data of the legacies of racist policies, like the intentional segregation of redlining. Without this kind of data, Tee Lewis worried that people were missing out on funding or interventions that actually matched their needs. Because one of the project\u2019s central goals was to support the work of community organizations, Tee Lewis and her team thought it imperative that they partner with under-resourced places to learn which environmental or social factors should be included. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tee Lewis reached out to community leaders like Sharp, who sits on the board of a Pleasantville-based community empowerment organization called Achieving Community Tasks Successfully (ACTS). Feedback from ACTS and other grassroots organizations helped Tee Lewis and the other researchers understand that it was critical to include not only existing sources of pollution, but also what daily factors might be contributing to environmental vulnerability, Tee Lewis said. For instance, the index tracks the percentage of people living with chronic diseases, who can be particularly susceptible to climate and pollution impacts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These conversations broadened what the index would later define as \u2018vulnerability\u2019 to include metrics of public transit availability and access, the percentage of children taking medication to treat cognitive behavioral differences, rates of homelessness, or even the number of religious and civic organizations within a community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After including these factors into their scoring methodology, researchers found that communities with the highest scores are those with \u201clong-standing environmental justice concerns and health disparities, [and] communities that have had a history of inequity,\u201d Tee Lewis said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n By toggling or layering different vulnerability factors on the map, like chronic disease and housing vulnerability, users may be able to tell a story through the data that can help illustrate how this historic harm has systemic present-day impacts. For instance, redlining, the practice of discriminatory mortgage lending policies enacted throughout the mid-20th century, is closely related to the climate impacts communities face today, Tee Lewis says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sharp\u2019s childhood home in Pleasantville, for example, was one of the only neighborhoods<\/a> where Black Houstonians were able to purchase homes in the 1940s with cement foundations. His family moved there in part because they could live safely. \u201cThey were able to live a comfortable life, and the people came together to build a close knit neighborhood [where] people looked out for each other,\u201d Sharp said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n