Clean Water Current

(February 4, 2021) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is launching a new environmental justice speaker series by featuring The Mapping Inequality Project on March 4, 2021 at 12:00 – 1:00 pm EST.

This unique project and collaboration created a foundational resource for unprecedented research, education, organizing, and policy advocacy on redlining and current environmental challenges. It provides publicly accessible digitized versions of redlining maps for about 200 cities.

Project co-founders Robert Nelson, University of Richmond, and LaDale Winling, Virginia Tech, will discuss the genesis, philosophy, methodology, and impact of this game changing project. REGISTER NOW!

EPA’s objectives for this speaker series are:

• Provide information on groundbreaking, cutting-edge work in science, policy and practice to strengthen the evidentiary link between historical inequities and current environmental conditions;
• Inspire leaders and staff in communities, academia, business and industry, and civil society to think about how historical inequalities relate to their own work by hearing from leading national policy experts, researchers and practitioners;
• Align government leaders and staff with the leading work taking place in this area and create a cohesive environment for fruitful partnerships; and
• Create intellectual ferment about these issues in a rigorous manner so that EPA and other environmental agencies can overcome their historical aversion to talking about race and racism.

EPA will begin this series with a set of five sessions that thoroughly examines the relationship of redlining and current environmental challenges, particularly the climate crisis. A recent National Center for Civil and Human Rights webinar on EJ, redlining and the climate crisis provides a good overview of this subject. Future topics will include: Title VI and civil rights program, EJ research and analysis, rural inequities, and others.

Suggestions are welcomed and for more information, contact Charles Lee or Sabrina Johnson at EPA.