Start Date
2-5-2022 11:20 AM
Description
Climate change is one of the biggest threats we’re currently facing as a society. Everyone will eventually see the impacts of it in their day-to-day lives, but there’s an obvious racial and socioeconomic disparity in the extent to which people will face the detriments of it. Omaha, Nebraska is one of the most segregated metropolitan cities in the country. The ethnic and racial lines drawn in between neighborhoods reflect the redlines made by the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s. People living in historically black and brown neighborhoods are burdened with environmental racism. Their communities were targets of systemic disinvestment and now contend with detrimental life and health outcomes. Many of the existing efforts to combat climate change direct disparate amounts of resources to wealthy and white areas despite the fact that low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods are hardest hit by environmental harms. There’s an obvious need for an intersectional approach in the work of building a more resilient world that can equitably address the impacts of climate change without displacing an existing community. The purpose of this research is to review existing literature on environmental racism and Omaha’s history with minority communities in order to determine how environmental racism impacts those communities and the existing approaches to combating environmental threats. It also aims to identify community based responses to alleviate some of the impacts of environmental racism in Omaha that are culturally competent and prioritize the needs of existing residents.
Identifying Community Based Responses to Environmental Racism in Omaha, Nebraska
Climate change is one of the biggest threats we’re currently facing as a society. Everyone will eventually see the impacts of it in their day-to-day lives, but there’s an obvious racial and socioeconomic disparity in the extent to which people will face the detriments of it. Omaha, Nebraska is one of the most segregated metropolitan cities in the country. The ethnic and racial lines drawn in between neighborhoods reflect the redlines made by the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s. People living in historically black and brown neighborhoods are burdened with environmental racism. Their communities were targets of systemic disinvestment and now contend with detrimental life and health outcomes. Many of the existing efforts to combat climate change direct disparate amounts of resources to wealthy and white areas despite the fact that low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods are hardest hit by environmental harms. There’s an obvious need for an intersectional approach in the work of building a more resilient world that can equitably address the impacts of climate change without displacing an existing community. The purpose of this research is to review existing literature on environmental racism and Omaha’s history with minority communities in order to determine how environmental racism impacts those communities and the existing approaches to combating environmental threats. It also aims to identify community based responses to alleviate some of the impacts of environmental racism in Omaha that are culturally competent and prioritize the needs of existing residents.
Comments
Mentor: Sandibel Borges