An Environmental Justice Mapping Tools Guide to Understand Available Resources to Increase Access

INTRODUCTION

This article describes how the environmental justice (EJ) mapping tools for New York State Communities Guide, referred to going forward as “The Guide,” was developed to assist communities, educators, students, and environmental practitioners to help investigate and identify environmental issues by bringing awareness to racial, economic, and health disparities in New York State (https://bit.ly/EJMappingGuide). ¹ The Guide compiles a series of free publicly available mapping tools that centers people and their connection to the environment as a more holistic way to problem solve the interconnection of topics that are usually dealt with separately. ²

For example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s EJSCREEN, a national EJ screening tool that combines socioeconomic and environmental information, is included. As we explored and considered what tools to include in The Guide, we were led by EJ concepts and how mapping can be a resource for communities to approach environmental issues that matter to them.

The Guide was developed through collaboration between two environmental educators at New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a coastal extension program that provides education and outreach to coastal communities, who were living on opposite sides of the state during the COVID-19 lockdown. Professional and educational activities shifted online and the nation reckoned with health disparities and police brutality, symptoms of long-standing historical unjust treatment of people of color. ³

During this time, Author (K-12 outreach educator) began asking Author (Geographic Information Systems and resilience specialist) questions on various tools and their uses for her K-12 environmental teacher education training. After several exchanges we realized the potential of EJ mapping tools to assist with EJ education more broadly and the value of developing a resource to share with audiences ranging from students and educators to community leaders and NGOs.

EJ mapping tools are free publicly available online resources that display some combination of socioeconomic, demographic, human health, and environmental indicators to help illustrate the unequal distribution of environmental hazards and risks within a community. ⁴ When these disproportionate effects are characterized by data at the local level more fair and equitable outcomes are possible by integrating EJ into policy and programming. ⁵

For example, the Federal government and several states have created EJ mapping tools to implement policies that prioritize resource allocation to historically underserved communities. ⁶ At the local level, NGOs and community members can use the tools to access data that can support or focus their organizing efforts, use the data in grant applications, and incorporate it into local planning. The EJ mapping tools included in The Guide are a powerful teaching tool for environmental and data literacy for a range of audiences in that they are place-based, connect people to their immediate environment, and incorporate social causes and concerns. ⁷

Although there are a range of EJ resources available, we found that the web-based mapping tools' ability to visualize disparities at the neighborhood scale allowed people to understand their communities differently using data and often inspired reflection on how the data related to their personal experience and observations. This became even more important during the COVID-19 lockdown when there was a need to engage communities virtually.

Throughout this study we have found that most of the communities we serve, ranging from K-12 educators and students to state agencies and NGOs involved in environmental work, were unaware that EJ mapping tools exist or were unaware of how to utilize them. During one outreach training session for K-12 educators, a community activist shared “We (communities of color) are often reported on and have to read about our community from others but we never have access to pull our own reports, this is a game changer” (Workshop evaluation 2020).

EJ MAPPING TOOLS GUIDE

The Guide is an 11-page PDF document that begins with a cover page that defines the term EJ, describes why EJ is important to consider with environmental work or education, and how to build context at the local level by combining different types of data. The Guide continues with a description of the limitations of using demographic information and other questions for users to consider about the quality of the data sets within the tools. Within The Guide, there are 23 mapping tools. For each tool we included a link to the website, organization/author, what kind of data are included in the tool, and a brief overview.

To further help people on how to use each tool, we included “Tips for Use” and a “Guiding Question.” Information in the “Tips for Use” section was informed by the process of researching, comparing, and testing the various tools in the context of EJ. The “Guiding Question” was informed by the recognized need to ground the tool in real-world scenarios for inexperienced users who may not know where to begin. Finally, we noted that we cannot vouch for the accuracy of data within each tool, but we did use sources that were reputable (e, g. state and federal agencies).

Within The Guide there is a data category table that was developed to further delineate the data type contained in each tool based on eight categories: EJ, Environmental, Facilities Monitoring, Demographic, Native American Territories, Health, Housing, Climate Change and Resilience, and Local/Regional Tools in New York State. Some of the mapping tools included in The Guide were more advanced displayed data from multiple categories, such as EPA's EnviroAtlas, which included EJ-specific data sets alongside a wide range of environmental, facilities monitoring, demographic data, and climate projections. ⁸

Others were simpler, such as the Racial Dot Map that included only one variable of demographic data. ⁹ The table provides another way for users to decide what tools from The Guide they want to explore for their specific needs. The Guide was reviewed by an expert panel that provided revisions and suggestions of language and what tools to include.

OUTREACH AND EVALUATION

The first edition of The Guide was posted to the NYSG website on October 12, 2020, and an introductory webinar was held on November 17, 2020. ¹⁰ The public was notified of the release of The Guide and the introductory webinar through an e-mail that was shared widely and passed on through existing networks of environmental practitioners throughout the state and region. Two hundred forty-nine (249) participants from across New York State representing 81 organizations participated in the live introductory webinar.

Organizations included local, state, and federal government, community-based organizations, consulting firms, educators, and representatives from the health and transportation sectors. During the webinar, we provided background about how the project came to be, gave a brief history of EJ and its implications for environmental and human health today and under climate change, walked through The Guide, and then briefly demonstrated four tools within The Guide. The tools were EPA's EJSCREEN, Headwaters Economics' Neighborhoods at Risk, EPA's How's my Waterway, and DECinfoLocator.

A follow-up online survey to evaluate the webinar and gauge interest in future training was sent by e-mail to all attendees. Of the 105 completed evaluations (response rate of 42%), 97% of participants found the webinar about The Guide and EJ mapping tools content helpful, and 93% of those participants indicated they were interested in future webinars to explore the tools listed in The Guide in more depth. Feedback received through the survey identified a need to provide more training on individual tools. Although The Guide itself was evaluated favorably by participants, the most common feedback was that more time was needed to learn about and explore tools in depth. One participant shared:

The content was great, and the guide is fantastic. Thank you for putting it all together! There's so much to go through with this topic that I do think you could extend this beyond the traditional one-hour webinar format. Maybe a series of one-hour sessions over multiple days or a multi-hour workshop to dive deep into some of these resources and how you use them would better cover this information.

In response to the feedback, we facilitated a webinar series that featured presentations, demonstrations, and a question-and-answer portion with the creators of three of the EJ mapping tools from within The Guide in Fall 2021. ¹¹ The three tools selected for attention came from agency, private, and academic sources. Representatives from EPA Region 2 gave an overview of EJ and the EJSCREEN tool. Headwaters Economics gave an overview of how climate indicators can inform community planning using the Neighborhoods at Risk tool.

Researchers from Columbia University presented an overview of social vulnerability, and how it is used and applied in the Hudson River Flood Impact Decision Support System, which displays regional sea level rise projections alongside other useful data. All the webinars in the series provided an opportunity for attendees to ask questions and were recorded and posted to the NYSG YouTube page in a playlist called EJ. ¹²

Throughout our outreach and educational efforts with The Guide, we encourage audiences to think creatively and to apply the data and knowledge gained from the tools to their own contexts and concerns. The Guide has since been used in several contexts to inform policy and education.

Examples include informing the development of a regional climate action strategy for the Hudson Valley region, identifying locations on the Eastside of Buffalo to plant trees, informing public comment for more equitable policies related to greenhouse gas emissions reduction in New York under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, and developing museum exhibits on climate justice (Hudson River Maritime Museum) and water resources (Rochester Museum and Science Center). These examples illustrate how the power of presenting a collection of EJ mapping tools through The Guide can improve EJ literacy across diverse audiences.

LIMITATIONS

We did encounter limitations throughout this process to The Guide, the EJ mapping tools, and the webinar format. A main limitation is that a certain amount of data literacy is required to be able to explore the tools on one's own, connect the map of interest to an actual space, and then be able to interpret the information. For example, participants struggled with understanding percentiles, indicators, census tracts, and concepts related to data quality. In addition, The Guide could be further developed to bridge data access to application by including examples of how the tools have been used in governance, planning, or organizing.

Another limitation to The Guide is that EJ Mapping is a rapidly evolving space, and The Guide will need to be updated regularly. Since the publication of The Guide, New York State has released a new Disadvantaged Communities mapping tool to support the allocation of resources under the Climate Act and at least one tool from the Guide, The Racial Dot Map, has been retired. It is always important to emphasize that the tools within The Guide should be considered screening tools that provide initial insight into EJ issues and not for assigning EJ status to a community.

More data and community input would be needed to fully understand and contextualize EJ-related issues. It is also worth noting that data reported by census tracts or block groups do not always align with perceived community boundaries or neighborhoods and how people think of their own communities. Finally, although the webinar format helped raise awareness of the tools to a broad audience, it was difficult to go into detail on how the tools can be applied in specific contexts. More targeted training with specific user groups is a better format for encouraging application in local planning, research, or organizing.

CONCLUSION

The EJ Mapping Tools for New York State Communities Guide has improved access to EJ mapping tools that visualize long-standing systemic health, social, and environmental inequities at the local level. EJ mapping is a powerful teaching tool for environmental and data literacy in that it is place-based, connects people to their immediate environment, and incorporates social causes and concerns. The Guide brings together these tools to make them accessible for a range of audiences that includes communities, educators, students, and environmental practitioners.

Our hope is to strengthen EJ literacy in general and eventually the knowledge gained from EJ tools can inform more equitable outcomes in environmental planning. Future updates to The Guide should add new tools and remove ones that are no longer in use, expand data literacy components, and provide more examples of application in real-world scenarios. Future research should explore the potential role of EJ mapping as a teaching tool for EJ and data literacy.