The Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP) and the University of Connecticut’s Connecticut Institute for Resilience & Climate Adaptation (CIRCA) are partnering in the development of an Environmental Justice (EJ) Mapping Tool to identify vulnerable populations that may be disproportionately impacted by programs, policies, or projects and to inform initiatives for creating healthy communities.
This EJ Mapping Tool is an important step toward addressing disparities, implementing a recommendation made by the Equity and Environmental Justice Working Group of the Governor’s Council on Climate Change (GC3) in its January 2021 Report to create a visual representation of the distribution of environmental and climate health vulnerabilities across Connecticut. The effort will include input from known EJ communities that can later be utilized in existing state programs, including in the distribution of grant and bond funding.
Over the next two years, CIRCA will seek to build a community-state partnership through a combination of statistical spatial analysis and engagement with vulnerable communities across the state. “I’m thrilled to be launching this critical project with our partners at CIRCA,” says DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes. “Equity and environmental justice have been a major focus of the Lamont Administration, the GC3, and our work at DEEP, and this tool will provide indispensable information, informed by the very communities most disproportionately impacted by pollution and the changing climate, to better inform decisions and policy-making to address those disparities.”
Go here to learn more about DEEP’s EJ program.
