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environmental justice
Frontline Groups Have the Solutions to the Climate Crisis, Not Corporate Profiteers
As people throughout the globe prepare for the First International Conference for the Phase-Out of Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April, a frontline-led just transition must be given center stage.
Feb 17, 2026
On February 12, 2026, the US Environmental Protection Agency repealed the Endangerment Finding, a key determination for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. This decision follows the EPA’s January 2026 announcement that air quality protections will be determined based on corporations’ bottom lines, not people’s health. These harmful decisions join a dizzying number of other regulations essential for environmental justice that have been dismantled, deregulated, or destroyed.
In these times, it would be easy to despair about how the tireless movement organizing labor that made these strides possible over many years has now been eroded. However, we cannot accept defeat. My decades of frontline organizing with workers and environmental justice communities toward a just transition shows that transformations come from our collective power. No matter the obstacles, we have the real solutions needed for the crucial work ahead, including during the upcoming Santa Marta conference.
Last year marked a huge moment for just transition. This movement and the principles that inform it often took center stage in grassroots organizing and during the United Nations Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025. The popularity of this concept, practice, and process reveals both promising and harmful co-opted outcomes for Indigenous Peoples, frontline workers, and fenceline communities. The language can be amplified by those most impacted, used to communicate their demands and desires, and it can be used as a tool for trying to undermine the hard work of community organizations and frontline communities.
At COP30, while we welcomed progressive news media coverage and the labor of journalists to cover such an intense few weeks of climate justice and just transition advocacy, we also witnessed reporting by some Global North journalists and news outlets that worked to minimize the credibility of frontline groups and community-based organizations, while amplifying the voices and positions of false solutionists and disaster capitalists.
Unlike some researchers who argue that the negotiations can be improved by using generative artificial intelligence for creating treaty drafts, we know who has the real solutions and who must be centered in building pathways toward just transition.
Much mainstream coverage of COP30 has not adequately addressed the indispensable role of grassroots organizing in pushing toward the successful implementation of a Just Transition Mechanism within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Several days before the official start of COP30, the Movimiento de Afectados por Represas held the IV International Encuentro (Meeting) of People Affected by Dams and the Climate Crisis. This global gathering resulted in the launch of an international movement. Similarly, the Peoples’ Summit, including a just transition axis, was integral in building relationships and movement power. These mobilizations and knowledge sharing spaces worked synergistically with the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice, which occurred on November 15, with people of the world overflowing into the streets of Belém. It was these preceding and concurrent gatherings that energized Just Transition cross-constituencies and that shaped the direction of the Just Transition Work Programme negotiations and the resulting Just Transition Mechanism.
Many celebrate the institutionalization of just transition as one of the greatest successes at COP30. However, much work remains in the implementation process for the new mechanism to actually advance a just transition. Without a commitment to and practice of Indigenous Principles of Just Transition and Just Transition Principles, this mechanism will become another failed effort and abuse of the labor of frontline peoples and grassroots groups who have fought so hard for so long.
Unlike some researchers who argue that the negotiations can be improved by using generative artificial intelligence for creating treaty drafts, we know who has the real solutions and who must be centered in building pathways toward just transition. Groups practicing agroecology and Landback, as well as waste pickers and many other frontline workers, are creating collective power that brings together the most affected workers and environmental justice communities, rather than pitting them against each other.
Additionally, as knowledge holders, Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Indigenous Peoples hold inherent and collective rights; accordingly, they should not be conflated as part of “civil society.” We know that Indigenous Peoples and civil society members must be the ones consulted and centered in these key United Nations negotiations and texts, not the corporate profiteers and their political cronies who pollute just transition possibilities at every COP and at many other conferences.
This year marks 35 years since I served on the drafting committee of the Principles of Environmental Justice and 30 years since I contributed to the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing. These principles and the relationships and lived experiences that gave them life continue to inform and fortify our movements toward just transition and a livable world where we all can thrive. Let’s not forget these principles and the frontline peoples who made them possible.
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Plastic-Free Friday: Renewal After Mardi Gras in a Transcultural Diasporic Tradition
Rather than framing plastic reduction as individual sacrifice, the campaign presents it as a communal act of care, rooted in culture, seasonality, and public health.
Feb 17, 2026
Mardi Gras is a transnational, diasporic cultural tradition rooted in Christian liturgical calendars and continually reshaped through Afro-diasporic, colonial, and migrant histories. Across cultures and centuries, the passage from winter to spring has carried a shared meaning: renewal. It is a moment marked not only by seasonal change but by intentional pause, a time to reassess habits, responsibilities, and the ways individual actions shape collective life.
In New Orleans and across South Louisiana, that pause arrives right after Mardi Gras. Carnival season, with its music, artistry, and communal joy, gives way to Lent, a period traditionally devoted to reflection, restraint, and service. Similar practices appear across faiths and cultures, from Ramadan in Muslim communities to Passover in Jewish tradition and secular observances tied to the spring equinox. Each reflects a collective understanding that cycles of abundance must be balanced by intention.
Within Christian tradition, Lent centers on three practices: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These concepts readily translate into environmental responsibility. Fasting becomes a restraint from unnecessary consumption. Prayer becomes a reflection on the consequences of habitual behavior. Almsgiving becomes solidarity with communities bearing the costs of environmental harm.
Plastic-Free Friday, a weekly initiative launched by RISE St. James, draws directly from these shared values. Rather than framing plastic reduction as individual sacrifice, the campaign presents it as a communal act of care, rooted in culture, seasonality, and public health. That framing matters, particularly along the Gulf Coast, where plastic pollution is a lived and often encouraged reality.
Mardi Gras Was Never Meant to Be Disposable
Mardi Gras is among the world’s most recognized cultural celebrations and is central to New Orleans’ identity and economy. Yet when the parades end, and the streets are cleared, the environmental consequences of Carnival season remain.
In 2023, Mardi Gras celebrations generated approximately 1,162 tons of waste over 11 days, according to data from the City of New Orleans Department of Public Works. An estimated 25% of that waste consisted of plastic beads, according to local waste audits and bead recovery organizations. While recovery efforts have expanded, reclaiming more than 10,000 pounds of beads during the 2025 Carnival season, these initiatives capture only a fraction of the plastic distributed each year.
Plastic-Free Friday leverages cultural timing, community norms, and shared identity to reframe plastic reduction as a public health intervention rather than a personal moral test.
Much of the remainder enters landfills, clogs storm drains, or is carried into surrounding waterways. Over time, these plastics degrade into microplastics that are now detected in soil, seafood, drinking water, and human tissue. Peer-reviewed research increasingly links microplastic exposure and associated chemical additives to endocrine disruption, reproductive harm, immune dysfunction, and elevated cancer risk.
These risks extend far beyond festival cleanup. They intersect with a deeper public health and environmental justice crisis that has long shaped life along the Gulf Coast.
Plastic Is a Public Health Issue
Plastic pollution is often framed as a waste management issue. In communities along Louisiana’s industrial corridor, it is also a determinant of health.
Plastic production relies on fossil fuels and petrochemical infrastructure that is disproportionately concentrated in low-income and predominantly Black communities along the Mississippi River. Residents living near these facilities experience elevated exposure to air and water pollution, higher rates of respiratory illness, and increased cancer risks, trends documented by the Louisiana Tumor Registry and federal environmental justice screening tools. From extraction and production to disposal, plastic reinforces structural inequities that shape who bears the health costs of modern consumption.
Every single-use item, whether a bottle, a bag, or a Mardi Gras bead, participates in that system. The connection between consumption and harm is rarely visible in moments of celebration, but it becomes clear when examined through a public health lens.
Plastic-Free Friday situates that connection within everyday life. By encouraging individuals and communities to reduce plastic use one day a week, the campaign lowers barriers to participation while fostering habit formation and collective awareness. Behavioral science research shows that recurring, socially reinforced practices are more likely to produce sustained change than isolated actions. Plastic-Free Friday leverages cultural timing, community norms, and shared identity to reframe plastic reduction as a public health intervention rather than a personal moral test.
Legal Challenges Along the Gulf Coast
Along the Gulf Coast, particularly in Louisiana, residents and environmental organizations have turned to the courts to challenge permitting practices they argue ignore cumulative pollution and disproportionate health risks. Lawsuits supported by national groups, including Earthjustice, contest permit extensions for proposed petrochemical and plastics projects in St. James Parish, where residents already face elevated rates of respiratory illness and cancer.
Through small but consistent acts of restraint, reflection, and solidarity, communities across the Gulf Coast can reduce plastic exposure, protect public health, and support those most affected by the plastic economy.
Additional litigation seeks broader remedies. Residents of St. James Parish, represented by the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, have filed civil rights lawsuits alleging discriminatory land-use practices and calling for a moratorium on new petrochemical development. A federal judge’s decision to allow key claims to proceed reflects increasing judicial scrutiny of cumulative environmental harm linked to industrial siting.
These cases emphasize the limits of addressing plastic pollution solely through waste management. Plastic-Free Friday complements, rather than replaces, legal and regulatory accountability by addressing demand and public awareness.
Culture Endures
Mardi Gras is sustained by continuity, creativity, and collective participation. Plastic pollution imposes a lasting burden on the environment and health systems, persisting long after its causes are forgotten.
Plastic-Free Friday offers a culturally grounded and scalable response. Through small but consistent acts of restraint, reflection, and solidarity, communities across the Gulf Coast can reduce plastic exposure, protect public health, and support those most affected by the plastic economy.
As environmental challenges intensify, the path forward may not always begin with a sweeping transformation. Sometimes it begins more simply, with a pause at the end of a season, a shared intention, and a decision to choose differently, together.
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As Trump Turns His Back on Environmental Justice, States and Cities Must Step Up
Local and state cumulative impacts laws can provide needed protections for communities where the federal government is failing, and make fertile ground for future federal progress.
Feb 11, 2026
One year ago, the Trump administration launched an agenda putting polluting corporations over our health, lives, and future. This week marks the anniversary of the first-ever environmental justice executive order, and yet we are left in the wake of dozens of harmful orders from Trump rescinding that very order and more targeting environmental justice. Along with unprecedented health and environmental rollbacks, this administration is forcing our communities to bear the greatest costs. Now, local leadership is essential. Groundbreaking state and local laws are filling gaps, showing what is possible, and building momentum for what’s next.
While the federal government unlawfully claws back lifesaving investments such as billions of dollars of grants to clean up water, remove lead, and create clean energy jobs in disadvantaged communities, they’ve also attacked over 30 environmental protections, including undoing stronger soot pollution regulations, and gutted bedrock laws. These actions will cause environmental justice neighborhoods (communities of color and low income) to suffer major consequences, with even more toxic pollution and growing impacts of climate change—threatening jobs, families, and lives.
Seventy-eight million people of color live with dangerous air pollution, and, in 97% of US counties, Black people have the highest death rates from soot pollution. In 2025, 75% of the US population—255 million people—were exposed to “dangerous, life-threatening” heat. In NYC, Black people represent 50% of heat-related deaths, despite being only 25% of the population.
These outsize health harms are no accident. A history of redlining was followed by a disproportionate amount of pollution being dumped in communities of color's backyards. Cumulative impacts are the result. Put simply, cumulative impacts are the combination of many sources of pollution and pressures in an area creating a multiplying effect. Visit any community of color or low income overloaded with highways, industrial, or chemical facilities—like the South Bronx, Newark, or “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana—and you will experience the soot, smog, heat, toxic fumes, and smells that show what cumulative impacts really are. Cumulative impacts laws can be a solution by checking the amount of polluting facilities in an area before allowing more to be built, ending old loopholes for existing facilities, limiting new pollution, and more.
The time for reimagining and recommitting to our ambition to achieve environmental justice is now.
State laws can inform and complement the creation of federal laws like the Environmental Justice for All Act, introduced by the late Reps. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) and Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) in 2020. This act embodies input from communities from across the US, and has the promise of being reintroduced by a new generation of congressional champions, inspired by state progress.
We also need these laws to be backed by strong implementation. It is a key moment in New York as the Department of Environmental Conservation is developing rules to carry out the cumulative impacts law. In New Jersey, their Department of Environmental Protection is issuing its first permit decisions based on the cumulative impacts law. These decisions need to set a precedent to break with business as usual, while implementing the strongest conditions in accordance with the environmental justice law. In both cases, the process to put these laws into action must offer real protections and meaningfully include communities.
The time for reimagining and recommitting to our ambition to achieve environmental justice is now. State and local governments must step up in the face of federal attacks and maintain the momentum that environmental justice communities demand and deserve. In this moment, we need more state and local cumulative impact laws that hold the promise of a long-overdue vision of safe and healthy places to live, work, play, and pray.
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