One of the FinWx initiatives for 2021-2022 spearheaded by Sheila, Adam, and Mark has the working title of the Financial Weather/Climate Justice Initiative. The subteam is proposing a “call to action” that can serve as a catalyst to engage other AMS committees and propose content for AMS venues such as the AMS Annual Meeting and others.
Proposed Call to Action:
The FinWx Committee is interested in assisting with sessions at the AMS Annual Meeting, AMS Washington Forum, and AMS Summer Community Meeting (as well as other AMS venues) that link the broad communities of financial interests and the weather, water, and climate enterprise, to those focusing on the moral and justice issues that overlay both of these communities.
Financial risk, in many cases precipitated due to racial injustice rather than an actual financial threat, is having implications on the weather and climate. These impacts create a disproportionate climate risk to those living in underserved communities, and perpetuates a lack of financial investment, creating a feedback system linking these topics.
We propose this topic to link the AMS to other professional societies, and to community-based groups working on justice issues on the frontlines.
Housing Policies and the Urban Heat Island
Author Richard Rothstein, in the book The Color of Law, examines the local, state, and federal housing policies that mandated segregation through a process known as redlining as well as through explicitly excluding minorities from certain neighborhoods. These color codes, first used by the Home Owners Loan Corp, were later adopted by the Federal Housing Administration as well as the Veterans Administration. Housing wealth is one of the main ways to accumulate financial stability and certain groups were explicitly removed from this possibility.
The financial decisions of the past are affecting current weather and climate patterns. In a study published in Nature Communications, Disproportionate exposure to urban heat island intensity across major US cities, Angel Hsu, Glenn Sheriff, Tirthankar Chakraborty & Diego Manya show how weather and climate impacts are disproportionately affecting certain communities through a high-resolution analysis of the surface urban heat island.
Air Pollution
Past financial decisions do not only affect temperature but many environmental factors that hold dire consequences. In a study published in Science Advances, PM2.5 polluters disproportionately and systemically affect people of color in the United States, Christopher W. Tessum, David A. Paolella, Sarah E. Chambliss, Joshua S. Apte, Jason D. Hill, and Julian D. Marshall found that “racial-ethnic minorities in the United States are exposed to disproportionately high levels of ambient fine particulate air pollution, the largest environmental cause of human mortality.” Further, “because of a legacy of racist housing policy and other factors, racial-ethnic exposure disparities have persisted even as overall exposure has decreased.”
EPA Call to Action
The EPA, in a public memorandum from June 21, 2021, is on the record stating the importance and enforcement potential of Environmental Justice In a message to employees on Wednesday, April 7, 2021, the Administrator directed all EPA offices to “strengthen enforcement of violations of cornerstone environmental statutes” in communities overburdened by pollution. This memorandum sets out steps to advance these environmental justice goals via the criminal enforcement work performed by the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance’s (OECA’s) Office of Criminal Enforcement, Forensics and Training (OCEFT) and the Regional Criminal Enforcement Counsels (RCECs), with technical assistance from their colleagues in other EPA offices.
National Advisory Council Call to Action
In the National Advisory Council Report to the FEMA Administrator from November 2020, it is clear that there must be a focus on equity within FEMA disaster response going forward, including lofty equity goals to be reached by 2045. “Emergency management is part of the social safety net across all phases from response to recovery. As such, first responders do not rescue people who can evacuate themselves, they only rescue people who need help. Recovery programs, however, seem to do just that. They provide an additional boost to wealthy homeowners and others with less need, while lower-income individuals and others sink further into poverty after disasters. In 2045, emergency management is equitable across the full spectrum, including preparedness, recovery, and mitigation, with resources going to those who need them.”
Linkages
It is also clear that wealth inequality and rising natural hazard damages – are dynamically linked, requiring new lines of research and policymaking in the future. In a study from Social Problems, Damages Done: The Longitudinal Impacts of Natural Hazards on Wealth Inequality in the United States, Junia Howell, and James R Elliot show that as local hazard damages increase, so does wealth inequality, especially along lines of race, education, and homeownership. At any given level of local damage, the more aid an area receives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the more this inequality grows.
Because of this, the ongoing “Billion Dollar Disaster” cataloging by NCEI, NCDC, and NOAA are adding financial and economic information to the weather/climate data. To better reflect socioeconomic spatial disparities, there will be an integration of indexed county-level weather and climate extreme risk potential, and socioeconomic vulnerability data into the Billion-dollar disaster mapping tools. County-level spatial distributions of projected damages for select hazards and socioeconomic metrics using median values for average RCP8.5 impacts 50+ years in the future are also being added including: Percent change in yields / area-weighted average for maize, wheat, soybeans, and cotton, changes in electricity demand, change in all-cause mortality rates across all age groups, change in labor supply of full-time-equivalent workers for high-risk jobs where workers are heavily exposed to outdoor temperatures, change in damages from coastal storms, and median total direct economic damage across all sectors.
Regional Impacts
While we don't know how policy or technology will change over the coming decades, it is striking to note that the U.S. south-central and southeastern states - that have had the highest frequency and cost of billion-dollar disasters over the last 41-years - are also projected to have the worst future effects for the variables noted above, all forced from climate change. In addition, these regions & states also have large populations with socioeconomic disparities in disaster risk, vulnerability, and recovery potential.
Connections beyond AMS
Community organizations, such as Groundwork USA, have graphically aligned the historical race-based housing segregation decisions and the current and predicted impacts of climate change including tree canopy, urban heat, flooding, and financial resilience. The experience of volunteer and community-based organizations fighting on the front lines is essential to understanding and remediating these justice concerns.
We believe this topic is an essential component of the AMS Diversity and Inclusion efforts. “The advancement of the AMS mission is dependent on its ability to have a professional membership that is fully representative of societal demographics.”
Call to action for the AMS
The AMS is uniquely situated to bring together a diverse community of scientists, economists, and moral/justice leaders who are all focused on the links between financials, weather/climate, and justice. This topic could include invited panels, keynote speakers, and small group meetings.
For some more understanding of this topic...... here is a (language warning) summary of housing segregation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5FBJyqfoLM
Then, here is a brief look at how that segregation leads to environmental impacts to this very day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uibxHzqZn-A
And here is just one example of a city where you can overlay the old housing lines with current environmental concerns: https://gwmke.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=9b784d9e79324d1f97210b2