Environmental Justice

Background

The environmental justice (EJ) movement has been around since the late 1970s but emerged in the 1980s as a movement to address patterns of inequality in environmental decision making. One aspect of addressing environmental justice involves ensuring that communities that have been historically excluded from environmental decision-making have equal access to decision-makers, processes, and the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to decisions that affect their lives.

To address this need, community engagement initiatives prioritize strategies aimed at including historically excluded communities by providing them with access to opportunities to participate meaningfully.

RP 1185 and EJ

RP 1185 defines environmental justice (EJ) as “the fair treatment, representation, and meaningful involvement of stakeholders with the goals of equal enjoyment of the environment, safe and healthy lives for present and future generations, and reducing and preventing disproportionate harm to vulnerable populations” and provides guidance for the purposes of meaningfully considering pipeline public engagement practices in EJ communities.

Effective engagement requires purposeful efforts to connect with stakeholders who face ongoing barriers to participation in pipeline safety. These communities may face challenges to engagement, such as linguistic differences, lack of transportation or remoteness, lack of access to technology and other barriers. Because of these barriers, effective engagement may require proactive efforts that bring tailored resources to achieve participation, communication, and interaction with and between all participants.

The RP requires operators to provide training and resources to solicit and understand environmental justice concerns and have a process for considering tools to identify EJ communities. RP 1185 also mandates that operators comply with federal, state, local, and, if applicable, tribal laws, executive orders, and regulations surrounding environmental justice.

Amid varying government guidance at the federal and state levels, the oil and gas industry has affirmed its commitment to addressing the tenants of EJ. API’s Industry in Action: Focus on Environmental Justice report explores industry’s commitment to EJ efforts in four categories of action that supports a strong performance in addressing EJ:

  1. Respecting human rights through overarching company-wide commitments that underpin environmental justice pillars.
  2. Engaging stakeholders enables ongoing, meaningful dialogue that informs and equips companies to be responsive to community needs and concerns.
  3. Improving performance in addressing environmental, social and health issues through company management systems and tools to increase transparency in business practices and processes.
  4. Creating local economic opportunities that generate more equitable outcomes for those who live near oil and natural gas facilities.

EJ resources and implementation tools are available in the Resource Center. Interested parties can also view Annex C (tables 1 and 2) of RP 1185. These tables contain examples of various connecting/engagement methods and tools that an operator can consider when engaging stakeholders, with a description, considerations, benefits, challenges, and additional information for each tool provided.