Environmental & Climate Justice

Environmental and climate justice is a civil rights issue. We all depend on the physical environment and its bounty. We work to dismantle misinformation and disinformation by reclaiming environmental and climate storytelling and public education through the voices, leadership, and lived experiences of Black communities. We address this challenge in four components:

• Black Communities and the legacy of entrenched pollution and climate injustice 

  • For generations, discriminatory zoning, toxic industrial siting, and pollution from air, water, and soil have placed disproportionate burdens on Black neighborhoods.

• The True Cost of Creating Intentional Sacrifice Zones  

  • False "climate solutions" have been concentrated in frontline communities while fundamental needs and best practices for a sustainable future have been delayed or denied.

• Emerging Threats Are A Reminder of Our Continued Fights 

  • From plastics and synthetic textiles to new energy-intensive AI data centers, Black and frontline communities face a dangerous resurgence of environmental risk.

• The Need For Renewable Energy and a Just Transition 

  • Black families continue to face higher utility costs, limited access to clean energy resources, and exclusion from key energy policy decisions. Deregulated fossil fuel expansion and uneven clean energy development deepen inequality, creating another generation of harm.

Abre' Conner, Esq. is the Director of the Center for Environmental and Climate Justice and oversees the strategy and collaboration across the NAACP to dismantle environmental racism. A native of Lakeland, FL, Abre' served as the Directing Attorney of Health at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley where she led the litigation, direct legal services work, and advocacy regarding health equity and the social determinants of health that impact historically excluded communities across the Silicon Valley.