Abstract |
With the multiple challenges and frustrations confronting disadvantaged, underserved, and environmentally-overburdened communities and tribes in mind, the NEJAC has developed the following report containing advice and recommendations for both short-term and long-term actions. The NEJAC's proposed recommendations are structured around eight overarching themes. These proposed recommendations are preceded by a discussion of the need to adopt a community-based collaborative problem-solving model to operationalize the important concepts of the Agency's Framework for Cumulative Risk Assessment in the real life context of communities and tribes suffering environmental injustice. In addition, the report discusses some concepts critical to understanding and addressing cumulative risks and impacts within an environmental justice context, i.e., stressors; vulnerability; community-based participatory research; proportional response; qualitative analysis; efficient screening, targeting, and prioritization methods/tools; unifying public health and environmental protection; and social capital. As always, the NEJAC stresses the importance of ensuring that the special concerns of tribes are understood and addressed. In the view of the NEJAC, the approaches recommended here will help EPA and other involved parties to systematically focus on the multiplicity of exposures, risks, impacts, and stressors facing communities-including a complex web of environmental, health, social, economic, and cultural factors-and to set priorities for action. But we recognize that before solutions can be implemented effectively, problems must first be defined clearly. Thus, to institutionalize a bias for action within EPA, this report underscores the need to fully utilize existing statutory authorities to address environmental justice and cumulative risks and impacts. |