Community engagement: A cornerstone of environmental justice

When developing a data-driven community outreach and engagement strategy, it’s important to start by identifying which communities may be impacted by your project – this includes underrepresented communities (or disadvantaged communities as defined by the US DOE), Tribal Nations, and Indigenous communities, among other types of community stakeholders. After identifying potential community stakeholders, it’s a great idea to start early in researching and gathering as much information about the potential stakeholders as possible. We recommend doing research to better understand the history, dynamics, demographics, surrounding industry, and burdens already faced by the community.

We recommend using the publicly available environmental justice (EJ) mapping tools offered by federal agencies such as USEPA’s EJScreen and the Council on Environmental Quality’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) to gather data. When applicable, it is advisable to use the screening tools offered by state agencies such as California’s CalEnviroScreen or New Jersey’s Environmental Justice Mapping, Assessment, and Protection (EJMAP). Each community is different, so the approach to gathering relevant information varies and may consist of going beyond a desktop review. While collecting data by desktop is a great way to start, it is encouraged to begin speaking directly with key members of the community. Community members not only offer unique insights, but these interactions give project planners the opportunity to get to know the community and start building relationships.

The information provided by desktop research and from conversations with the community is necessary to develop a data-driven, community centric outreach and engagement plan. The plan should be comprehensive and answer questions related to who, what, when, where, and how to conduct outreach and engagement. A well-prepared outreach and engagement plan acts as a guidebook that contains clearly defined goals and objectives, specific outreach and engagement methods to be used, frequency of outreach and planned engagement to support the goals, and establish metrics and milestones for measuring success. In best practice, the plan should be reviewed and updated periodically, as lessons are learned throughout the process.

If you’ve determined that your outreach was effective, and you’ve developed a solid plan for building authentic two-way engagement with community members, but you’re still running into issues, we encourage re-assessment of the engagement strategy to identify and mitigate potential barriers to participation.

We’ve found that there are three main challenges that can hinder meaningful engagement.

1. Assess inclusivity of engagement methods. Historically, only a small sub-set of community members have routinely attended community engagement events. Frequently, the sub-set of community members attending engagement events doesn’t represent the diverse groups that form the community. This can be especially true in underrepresented and marginalized communities. This is why it is especially important to identify barriers community members might face in participating in engagement activities. When considering how to encourage participation in engagement events, project planners may want to consider offering tailored incentives based on identified barriers such as refreshments, childcare, transportation, and compensation for time. It's also important to identify times and locations that are convenient for most participants and don’t interfere with other events or commitments. This helps to demonstrate to communities that you appreciate their time and understand the barriers they face to attending events.
2. Create meeting formats that foster two-way dialogue. Commonly public meeting formats entail delivering a message to the community, and project planning continues as usual after the meeting. Meetings may not leave room for two-way feedback or are delivering information after major decisions have been made. This is a prime example of where community outreach is mistaken for community engagement. Community engagement necessitates two-way communication methods, where communities discuss projects with planners before major decisions are made.
3. Close the loop. If you’ve allowed for early, meaningful, two-way engagement prior to major decision-making, it’s important to use that input in a way that’s consequential in the project planning and decision-making processes. As part of the community engagement process, we suggest tracking the decisions made from community input and periodically meet with community members to confirm that decisions are consistent with the community’s intended input. Afterwards, we recommend sharing comprehensive information on the decisions made as a result of community input. This demonstrates to community members that they were not only heard, but that they played a meaningful part in the conversation. It also gives them an opportunity to provide additional feedback and speaks to your respect for their time and efforts while closing the feedback loop.