Report Includes Formal Responses to Recommendations from First-Ever White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, Details Actions Taken Across Federal Government to Implement Recommendations
Today, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) released a report submitted to Congress, outlining the historic steps the Biden-Harris Administration has taken to implement recommendations from the first-ever White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC). The report is a formal response to recommendations the WHEJAC provided on the Justice40 Initiative, the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool(CEJST), and revisions on Executive Order 12898 on Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations. The report fulfills a statutory obligation under the Federal Advisory Committee Act to provide a report to Congress within one year of receiving recommendations from a federal advisory committee.
The WHEJAC was established by President Biden’s Executive Order 14008 on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad to fulfill his and Vice President Harris’s commitment to confronting longstanding environmental injustices and to ensure that marginalized, underserved, and overburdened communities have greater input on Federal policies and decisions.
“WHEJAC members devoted countless hours—sacrificing nights and weekends—to provide us with these formal recommendations, and we are grateful for all of their time, effort, and expertise,” CEQ Chair Brenda Mallory wrote in the report. “As the updates in this report make clear, Federal agencies are undertaking fundamental reforms—many of which are consistent with and pursuant to the recommendations of the WHEJAC—to deliver real results for families and communities who have been denied clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment for far too long.”
Chair Mallory continued, “I am encouraged by the progress we have made over the past year, clear-eyed about the scale of the work that still lies ahead, and confident that if we continue to listen to the voices and perspectives of the WHEJAC and other environmental justice leaders and communities, we will deliver a cleaner, healthier future for all.”
WHEJAC Recommendations Inform Ongoing and Future Federal Work
The Biden-Harris Administration has made achieving environmental justice a top priority—launching much-needed initiatives to deliver change in communities, including by creating the WHEJAC, the White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council, the Justice40 Initiative, and the CEJST. As part of the response to recommendations from the WHEJAC, today’s report outlines the scale and scope of efforts to deliver on the President’s commitments, including steps taken to embed environmental justice into agency practices, processes, policies, and procedures. While today’s report provides an update on progress being made, it also makes clear there is much work yet to be done. The pursuit of environmental justice will require ongoing and sustained work from agencies, deep cultural change across the government, Congressional and budgetary support, and ongoing input from the WHEJAC and environmental justice leaders and communities. As part of its review of steps taken over the past year, today’s report describes how, based on the recommendations of the WHEJAC and ongoing communications with Federal agencies, CEQ has been working diligently to develop recommendations for a durable, impactful, and effective approach for updating Executive Order 12898. It is anticipated that a draft executive order updating Executive Order 12898 will be ready for the President’s consideration and review in the summer of 2022.
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