Advocates often talk about social justice, political justice, environmental justice, climate justice and more as though they are separate issues. The fact is: inequalities overlap and amplify each other. Those bearing the brunt of climate change often have the fewest resources and the most constraints on their civil rights, and live in the most polluted places. The pollution and warming that degrades farmlands and parklands disproportionately harms people of colour in cities. The communities that most need resilient, sustainable infrastructure can’t afford it.
Recovery programmes launched after natural disasters rarely build resilience against a more dangerous climate, and they often further increase disparities. Research that tracked assistance from the US Federal Emergency Management Agency to people whose homes were damaged by hurricanes from 2005 to 2016 found that inspectors were less likely to visit areas with more Black residents, denying them a chance to apply for assistance. Even for damage inspections that were filed, those from Black homeowners were denied without reason almost three times as often as those from white homeowners. Separate work found that white residents of counties hit by a natural disaster saw their wealth grow, whereas that of Black residents in the same counties shrank.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02520-8