Did you know that April is Earth Month because Earth Day falls on the 22nd?
On days like Earth Day, we often get asked: What’s the best way to get started with and support climate and environmental justice work? Where does one even start?
As a coalition of frontline communities, we have some thoughts about that:
Earth Day is every day.
In 2023 and 2021, Front and Centered put together Earth Deserves More Than a Day, a week-long program of events highlighting the day-to-day work of our coalition members and other leaders from frontline communities around the globe and right here in neighborhoods across Washington State. Our goal for #EarthDeservesMore was to highlight the stories of our statewide coalition: the very people and communities who advance environmental justice and confront climate change every day of the year, not just on a holiday.
That’s because while Earth Day is a single day dedicated to paying homage to our planet, frontline communities have no choice but to deal with and respond to climate change or environmental harm on the regular. And for Indigenous peoples, being in right relations with the Earth and stewarding the land isn’t about a one-day holiday or responding to climate and environmental injustices; it’s a part of your culture and integral to how you live.
So, how can you get started?
Every day, our communities are leading the charge on advancing climate and environmental justice so that all of us can live healthier lives on a healthier planet. So if you are one of the many people who want to know how to get started in the world of climate and environmental justice, we would argue that you can make the biggest difference by supporting the communities and peoples who are already doing this work, day in and day out:
Take time to learn more about the work that communities around you are already doing, donate your money and time in support of what they do, and share their efforts with your networks. There’s nothing wrong with starting your own initiatives, but you will probably make the greatest impact in the smallest period of time by amplifying and supporting the work of frontline communities.
What are community-centered climate solutions?
Frontline communities in Washington State are advancing community-centered solutions to climate change and environmental harm throughout a wide variety of sectors. Since transportation is the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, and since almost half of all emissions in Washington State come from the transportation, we focus on the transportation sector below to highlight some examples of the every day work of frontline communities.
Last year, a diverse group of grantee organizations in our Transportation Justice Grant Program teamed up with the Washington State Department of Transportation to design and implement community-centered initiatives that advance transportation justice. Besides reducing carbon emissions, the funded projects also offered Washingtonians opportunities and ideas we can take advantage of right now so that all of us can participate in Earth Day, every day.
Going Electric
Transitioning away from gas and toward electricity as a fuel source will not solve climate change on its own, but it would decrease our reliance on fossil fuels and therefore reduce carbon emissions. But while maintenance and fuel costs are minimal if you purchase an electric or hybrid vehicle, the upfront costs still present a barrier to entry, ranging from $40,000 all the way up to $100,000 on the luxury end.
So how do we make electrified vehicles, transit systems, bikes, and scooters more accessible to those who can’t afford these modes of transportation, even before electrification? Here are a few examples of what our Transportation Justice grantees from last year have done:
- In the Tri-Cities area, Women of Wisodom (WOW) Tri-Cities started an electric vehicle (EV) carshare program and a pop-up e-bike library. The program was tiered based on income so that so nearly anyone could afford to use the vehicles. WOW also established an e-bike library with two lending options: the bike either came straight to a person’s home or folks could visit the Washington State University Tri-cities campus to check out a bike there.
- In Seattle, Ensemble Washington gave away 100 bus passes and twenty e-bikes, and they implemented a shuttle system for students and community members to help connect them to those buses.
- In South Seattle’s Duwamish Valley, the Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association is using waste and turning it into biofuel that can be used to generate electricity for a door-to-door service shuttle van.
By making electrified transportation more accessible, these grantees organizations gave the communities they serve a freedom of movement that allowed them to get to medical appointments, job interviews, and grocery stores with ease while reducing carbon emissions.
Education As Empowerment
Education is often one of the first steps on the journey to creating change, because knowledge about a problem can give people the agency, direction, and drive needed to take effective action.
- Emissions from motor vehicles don’t just warm and harm the Earth—they also lead to worse health outcomes for those of us who live closest to highways and other areas with heavy road traffic. By educating themselves on what causes pollution in the air we breathe, frontline communities can then begin to harness their collective power to protect their health and their environment from pollution.
To address the air pollution that comes with carbon emissions, the Somali Independent Business Alliance (SIBA) ran a “Breath Easy, Live Better” campaign. SIBA’s workshops focused on educating participants about what causes air pollutants, how it affects their health, and what they can do to prevent air pollution:
“After the workshops, people were giving testimonials on how [air pollution] was something they didn’t care about. It’s something they didn’t think about. But now, after this education… they’re actually very grateful and very willing to provide those solutions and be part of the solutions.”
Frontline communities commonly name language barriers as an obstacle to public education: without translation, many communities simply can not learn, engage, or provide meaningful feedback on transportation policy or the transportation infrastructure they need to use every day.
- The Snohomish County Transportation Coalition (SnoTrac) recognized that this language barrier was preventing low-income families in Snohomish, many of whom are also immigrant families, from using public transit and accessing transportation infrastructure. To tackle this problem, SnoTrac did one-on-one and group training with translation services to help community members learn how to navigate their transit system.
While the immediate goal is for low-income and immigrant families to enjoy better access to public transportation options and to reduce carbon emissions through the increase in ridership, SnoTrac’s larger plan is for these workshops to serve as a launchpad into policy change—because by better understanding the options available to them, frontline communities can also champion services that better fit their needs in the transportation space.
Finally, a problem as big as climate change and carbon emission reduction cannot be solved equitably without Indigenous knowledge or youth education and empowerment. Tribes in Washington State are already well aware of the effects of transportation policy and gas-powered vehicles on their relations, whether it’s culverts under roadways that block the journeys of migrating salmon, or 6PPD-quinone from tire particles entering creeks and streams and killing off salmon even in very low concentrations.
- Pacific Education Institute (PEI) and This is Indian Country partnered up to serve as a bridge connecting the expertise of Indigenous communities with Native youth. They held two workshops—one with the Suquamish Tribe and one with the Quinault Indian Nation—to educate youth on natural resource management and wildlife restoration.
After our policy team analyzed the state’s 2025–2027 budget, we released A Disparity in Washington State’s Transportation Budget back in December. In this report, we argue that the state’s current approach to transportation and climate funding falls short of its equity and environmental justice commitments and that Washington must prioritize making transparent, explicit investments in frontline communities.
Download the full report or read the executive summary for a quick overview.
Stay tuned...
The Transportation Justice Grant Program ended last year, which means that, unfortunately, many of these crucial climate solutions that are meant to advance transportation justice and reduce carbon emissions have also had to end, or have been scaled back or put on hiatus. And yet these solutions originated from the very communities impacted first and worst by climate change impacts and environmental injustices, which means they are some of the most valuable solutions to be funding and supporting.
Funds for the grant program came from the Climate Commitment Act, and our past budget analyses (2023, 2024, and 2025) have consistently shown that frontline communities are not receiving the full amount of funding that is required to be allocated to them under the law. Yet even in just the span of one grant program focusing on one specific sector of society, our grantees prove that frontline communities can do so much with limited resources and time—just as they do every day, all year round.
Imagine how much more frontline communities could do, and the variety of climate solutions that would flourish and remain durable, if they received the full and promised extent of the resources they deserve.
Stay tuned for our next blog post, where we will discuss the Climate Commitment Act in greater depth and explain why, five years after the passage of the law, we continue to talk about it and track how it is being implemented.