Hampton Roads Climate Change and Environmental Justice Challenges Part 1

April 22, 2024

DRAFT WORKSHOP SUMMARY REPORT

Edited by Hans-Peter Plag and Barry Clemson

Please send comments and corrections to the VCC Admin in the Administration Room

This workshop was organized by:

Scope and Goals of the Workshop

EPA has issued a call for proposals under the “Inflation Reduction Act Community Change Grants Program” managed by EPA (see the Announcement and download the Notice of Funding Opportunity, NOFO). Hampton Roads faces a range of complex challenges due to climate change and sea level rise, which are impacting the people in our society in rather different ways. The impacts are increasing inequality and impacting environmental justice. The workshop aimed to identify challenges in Hampton Roads related to climate change and environmental justice that could be addressed with specific projects.

The goal of this first part was to develop a shared understanding of the current situation and a shared understanding of what the problems and challenge related to environmental and climate justice are. The terms environmental and climate justice are understood very broadly to include both the harm done to marginalized communities (e.g. pollution, flooding) and the opportunities denied (e.g., access to energy efficient homes, to green spaces, and to nutritious food). It is noted that EPA's definition of environmental justice includes the opportunities to participate in decision making and in societal activities. For climate justice it is important that all groups can participate in an equal way in mitigating of impacts and adapting to the changing environment.

As an outcome of this first part of the workshop, the participants aimed to identify one or more particular problems that could be addressed in projects potentially funded through the Community Change Grant Program. The second part of the workshop to be held on May 28, 2024 will focus on developing the partnership for one or more proposals and to start drafting these proposals.

Participants

Participation in this event was by invitation only. The organizers made an effort to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders from all societal sectors. A mapping of “Stakeholders in Climate Change and Environmental Justice” (see mappings) helped to identify the groups to be invited. This mapping is open for the public to add stakeholders for future considerations.

The workshop had representation of the organizations listed in Table 1. A number of other NGOs and City governments had been invited, but they either had no time to participate or did not respond to the invitation.

Table 1: Organizations represented at the Workshop

Workshop Program

Workshop Proceedings

Session 1: In his opening remarks, Barry Clemson emphasized the challenge of bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders with a wide range of perceptions of environmental and climate justice issues in Hampton Roads. He underlined the need to respect the different views and to work together to a shared understanding of what issues should have priority for a potential proposal to EPA. The subsequent round of introduction provided to all participants the opportunity to introduce the organization they represented and to add comments on the personal history and background.

Session 2: Barry Clemson and Hans-Peter Plag provided a brief overview of the EPA call and the funding opportunity. Hans-Peter Plag showed a few slides highlighting the main goals and requirements of the call. The slides also include the links to the main web pages and documents.

Session 3: The goal of this Session was to check our reality as it relates to climate and environmental justice today and tomorrow in our area. One characteristics of wicked problems is that stakeholders do not have a shared understanding of the current situation and a shared understanding of what the problem or challenge actually is. That is why the first step in any Participatory Modeling (PM) is to check what the perception of the reality is between the different participants and to aim for a shared understanding.

In this Session, the participants worked in three small groups to sketch out their shared views on climate and environmental justice in Hampton Roads.

Session 4: Based on the group discussions in the previous session, the goal was to get a shared understanding of what our situation today is and tomorrow might be concerning climate and environmental justice. The three groups presented the main outcomes of their group discussions summarized in the three sheets in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Outcomes of the first round of group discussions. Left: Group 1; middle: Group 2; right: Group 3.

Context: Marginalized Communities vs Prosperous Communities. Perhaps the major difference between the residents of well-to do communities and those living in marginalized communities is the extent to which residents are able to think about and act for the long term. Residents of marginalized communities are typically consumed with securing their next meal, paying this month’s rent, buying this week’s medicines, etc. In addition, most of the residents of the marginalized communities have suffered significant traumas: they are victims of domestic abuse, street violence, and institutionalized racism. Many have addictions and significant numbers have engaged in prostitution. On top of all these traumas, few of them have had reasonable role models for managing their finances, effective parenting, conflict resolution, or nutritious meals. In short, residents of marginalized communities have been denied the advantages that residents of well-to do communities take for granted … experiences and training that are essential for leading a reasonable life.

Because the marginalized communities are broken, the residents are also broken. Piecemeal programs may be beneficial, but unless a whole range of issues are addressed, these communities will continue to be disadvantaged.

For systemic changes, it is important to engage the people in disadvantage communities and to enable them to improve their community. It is a fallacy to think that people from other areas can come in and "help them." The only help that can be provided is support that is asked for by the disadvantaged communities.

Systemic solutions Overview: Programs to help marginalized communities should operate on several different levels, for example (each of these points is elaborated below):

1. Individual and family level:
   • a) Healing wounded/traumatized individuals
   • b) Basic life skills for individuals and families
   • c) Assistance with basic necessities
2. Community Level
   • a) Community Education
   • b) Community Radio
   • c) Empowerment Center
   • d) Green Initiatives
   • e) Social Collaboration Media
3. Institutional/governmental level
   • a) Equitable School funding
   • b) Addiction Programs
   • c) Community Based policing and police reform
   • d) Fundamental Rights

Systemic Solutions Details: this section discusses the points outlined above in ‘Systemic Solutions Overview”.

1a. Individual and Family - Healing wounded/traumatized individuals: Traumatized individuals typically need healing of several different types, including mental (patterns of thinking and the stories that guide behavior), psychological (i.e., mental illness), and spiritual (e.g., the role of higher powers and the realm of spirits). Triumph Community Church has been healing wounde individuals over the last 20 years and a combination of psychiatry and healing prayer has proven very effective. We propose an intensive program of training peer healers. In short, these healers should be people from the marginalized communities, typically with life experiences as addicts, prostitutes, or gang members so they can fully relate to those they are trying to help

1b. Individual and family level - Basic life skills for individuals and families: Residents of marginalized communities are often characterized with the saying “babies raising babies”. This saying is pointing to the lack of good role models and the complete lack of preparation in basic life skills for many residents. Programs that provide in-depth mentoring have worked well. Peers trained as mentors provide assistance to individuals and families in basic skills such as managing finances, conflict resolution, parental discipline methods, nutritious meals. The key to these programs is that each mentor has only a small number of clients so that they can spend as much time as is needed with each individual or family. These mentors need to work closely with the healers discussed in 1a above.

1c. Individual and family level - Assistance with Basic Necessities: Members of marginalized communities are often lacking in basic necessities such as housing, nutritious food, health care, and access to good educational facilities. These communities are also disproportionally afflicted with problems such as flooding, mold in their homes, pollution, and frequent violence. Some of the the relevant programs in this area include:

• Housing for the homeless. A number of cities have discovered that simply paying for housing for the homeless saves them money in the long run. There are up-front costs for these programs, but overall they are cost-effective for the city and they provide decent housing for formerly homeless individuals and families.
• Home Maintenance and Retrofitting. We need a program to assist homeowners, especially the elderly, to both maintain their homes with routine maintenance such as painting or repairing leaks, Secondly, there should be subsidies to help marginalized communities to install solar panels and to make their homes energy efficient via, e.g., better insulation and sealing up cracks.
• Education. Schools in marginalized communities are underfunded compared to richer communities as a direct result of the governmental system used to fund schools in almost all of the United States because the funds available for schools are tied to property values. These schools are further disadvantaged because they lack the fund-raising potential of the parents in richer communities, they are typically assigned the least experienced teachers, and their students have many difficulties that the schools are ill-equipped to deal with. The federal “No child Left Behind” program has exacerbated these problems by forcing even gifted teacher to “Teach to the Tests” rather than dealing with the student’s individual needs. This entire system needs to be reformed. The exorbitant cost of higher education is another barrier that needs to be eliminated.
• Free Food. The United States wastes forty percent of the food we produce while families and children are going hungry. Food banks, soup kitchens, and church food ministries partially address this issue. Some cities have programs that ensure no one goes hungry and again this, in the long run, saves money.
• Health care in marginalized communities has become largely going to the emergency room when there is a health crisis. This is both terribly costly and is very poor health care because it fails to provide any preventative health care, lacks continuity, and typically fails to catch problems until very late in the game. What is needed is a single payer, comprehensive, free health care system for marginalized communities much like what medicare provides but without the deductibles.
• Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a controversial topic. However, as documented by Rutger Bregman (Utopia for Realists: How we can build the ideal world, 2016) the main arguments against this idea are based on a study that falsified all of its data. Further, the experiments with UBIs, and there have been several, have all been quite successful, i.e. the recipients of the UBI used the money well and the recipient communities flourished. One key aspsect of the successful UBIs is that they are bureaucratically very simple, i.e., give everyone who fits into some defined class the same amount of money without, e. g., any sort of means test or conditions on how they money it to be used.

2 a. Community Level: Community Education: A “community” is more than an aggregation of people living near each other. The term “community” implies some degree of a shared culture, stories, and a history; a sense among residents of belonging. A true community has a unique “personality” and a sense of potency, of agency. To develop and maintain a true community means there must be a rich interaction among the residents. It requires a certain degree of acculturation (i.e., education to the community history, norms, mores, and ethics). In established communities most of this goes on informally, in the homes, religious institutions, mom-and pop stores, the ethnic restaurants, the youth sports teams, etc. Marginalized communities often lack most of these informal mechanisms. And the mass media and social media are no help … the mass media play to their advertisers (and therefore a national audience). Social media is rife with disinformation, crazy conspiracy theories, and appeals to our most negative emotions. Developing a sense of community in marginalized communities requires that much of this needs to be changed.

One key strategy for developing “community’ involves celebrations, festivals, field trips, work days (preferably combined with a party of some sort). Food and music are usually effective in gaining participation.

All programs for building community must involve a lot of “boots on the ground” and seriously listening to the residents re their concerns and problems.

2b. Community Level – Community Radio: The mass media generally ignores many of the critical issues. Community radio has a critical role to play in at least two respects. First, commercial radio is always limited by the need to avoid offending advertisers which means they always avoid the most pressing, most controversial issues impacting the community. Community radio is supported by the community and therefore can provide an authentic voice for that community. Secondly, by fearlessly dealing with the most difficult topics, other stations are encouraged (i.e., perhaps shamed into) more adequately dealing with these issues. Community radio has a critical role to play in developing the sense of community, the sense of belonging discussed in 2a above.

2c. Community Level - Empowerment Center. The paragraphs above discussed a number of programs a marginalized community needs. The “Empowerment Center” is a building that is the focal point for many of these programs. This building will probably be a renovated, previously empty building, preferably near the center of the community. A host of programs/projects described above should be hosted in this building. In particular, individuals concerned about the stigma against seeking help must be able to access the Healing Center without it being obvious that they are doing so. Other potential programs hosted by the Empowerment Center include tutorial programs for K-12, a “Waste-not, Want-not thrift store, a library of things (especially tools), a time bank, possibly a local currency, a daycare center/pre-school, the community radio, a health clinic, and a large room for community meeting and celebrations.

2d. Community Level – Green initiatives: The Empowerment Center should also host the program to assist in making homes more energy efficient via solar panels, insulation, etc. The green job training should also be headquartered here.

2e. Community Level – Social Collaboration Media: A vibrant community needs effective means of communication and oganizing. Existing platforms are seriously deficient in supporting the necessary level of dialog, coordination, planning, and organizing. The Place4us platform (www.Place4Us.net) provides Virtual Community Centers that fulfill these requirements, are governed by their user community, and are free.

3. Institutional/governmental level: The initiatives at this level all require action by governments, ether at the local level or the state level and potentially at the federal level. Success at these levels requires either empowered communities or a mass movement of some sort, e.g., the work that Martin Luther King started with the Poor Peoples campaign and that Rev. William Barber II has recently rejuvenated (https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org). The following paragraphs discuss only a few of the potential programs we might support at this level. The final paragraph, Fundamental Rights, is a catch all for additional programs not already discussed.

3a. Institutional/governmental level - Equitable School funding: Most states fund schools with a combination of real estate taxes (the local contribution) plus a contribution from the state. This becomes highly inequitable because the state contribution is rarely if ever enough to make up for the differential in the funds generated from real estate. Fixing this will be politically difficult.

3b. Institutional/governmental level - Addiction Programs: There is a lot of research and practical experience with programs to help addicts. We know a lot about what works and need to develop the political muscle to put good programs, like the Drug Courts and rehab centers, in place. Some research strongly suggests that being part of a true community is often enough for addicts to simply stop using (e.g, many of the Vietnam vets who were heavily addicted while in Vietnam simply stopped on their own when they returned home), so this reinforces what was said above about the importance of community.

3c. Institutional/governmental level – Community Based policing and police reform: As they currently operate, the police are probably as much a problem as a help in marginalized communities. Two reforms that are badly needed are community-based policing and civilian oversight boards with real power to discipline/fire problem cops. Our efforts in this area should be carefully framed as helping both the police and the community rather than being “anti-police”. For instance, the slogan “Defund the Police” is used by the right wing to create a backlash among the general public.

3d. Institutional/governmental level – Fundamental rights: Our federal constitution enshrines certain rights, e.g., freedom of speech, freedom of worship, right to due process, and so on. Franklin Delano Roosevelt articulated four basic freedoms and others, notably the United Nations, have declarations of fundamental rights for all. We should work toward ensuring certain rights for all, e.g., decent housing, food security, health care, good education. One critical aspect of this is the notion of rights of nature and that we humans have a responsibility to ensure the health of the Earth’s life support system that all life depends upon. Perhaps the basic idea is that it is not acceptable to pillage an ecosystem simply because it is “profitable” to do so. Several South American countries have already enshrined the rights of nature in their constitutions (xxx???). Group 2: ... Group 3: ...

An attempt to distill core points out of the discussion resulted in the two statements shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Core Statements reflecting the shared understanding of priorities.

Session 5: The original purpose of this session was to look at the spectrum of possible futures and think about inter-generational justice related to climate and environment. An important question relates to the spectrum of plausible trajectories for Hampton Roads in the adaptation to the wide range of possible climate change, economic and social futures we might have to cope with. The intended focus of the session was on challenges to environmental and climate justice for future generations while not ignoring the present unequal distribution of justice in space.

Two groups got together and discussed some of these questions but the main focus was on the current situation. The summaries of the two group discussions capture the main results.

Figure 3: Summary of group discussions in Session 5. Left: Group 1; right: Group2.

Session 6: Based on the previous sessions, the plenary made an attempt to formulate a vision for our community in Hampton Roads where climate and environmental justice is no longer a nice concept but a reality. This vision was not fully formulated, but there was consensus that the future should be one where the current challenges in environmental and climate justice are mitigated and our community is one where all members have opportunities to participate in the evolution towards a more just, equal, and carrying society.

Session 7: This session was planned to summarize the challenges that were identified to climate and environmental justice in Hampton Roads, give an overview of the relevant stakeholders, express the vision we talked about, identify goals for the next years, and propose specific projects. While there was a general consensus on most of these points, the participants did not workout all points in detail. There was agreement that most of this work should be done in between the two workshops.

Session 8: Hans-Peter Plag gave a brief introduction to Place4Us and the Hampton Roads VCC. He utilized a few slides that focus on the organizational structure of Place4Us and the governance. Place4Us is a virtual collaboration platform that hosts Virtual Community Centers (VCCs). The Communities of Practice (CoPs) in these VCCs can work virtually in many ways and collaborate with other VCCs in groups or clusters. By sharing resources between the VCCs all benefit from being on Place4Us and are visible to others in a global ecosystem of VCCs. It is important to underline that the governance of Place4Us is by its users and the development of Place4Us is in response to user requirements.

He then demonstrated a few activities in the VCC. All floors of the VCC can be reached from the VCC Reception through the Elevator. During the previous sessions, he used the [Workspace] to make available in [Show Its] images of the sheets shown in Figures 1 to 3 above. He explained that all VCC members are able to provide comments on these images in the [Show Its]. He also introduced the Deliberations Floor and pointed out that the post-workshop work will utilize several Deliberation rooms to prepare for the second workshop on May 28, 2024.

Session 9: This session intended to discuss what potential projects we want to work on and to think about the partnerships for these projects. There was consensus that this discussion needed more time and the participants agreed to have a deliberation in a dedicated Deliberation room in the Hampton Road VCC.