Environmental Justice Screening Tools: Current Practices and Future Directions

In this study, we explore the use of environmental justice screening tools (such as EPA EJScreen and the Washington Tracking Network Environmental Health Disparities Map) by expert practitioners in the US Pacific Northwest. Through hour-long semi-structured interviews with individuals who utilize these tools in their work, we examine their current uses and the features practitioners desire in future iterations of these tools. We find that these environmental justice screening tools support a wide variety of uses, such as communication, policy development, prioritization, and bespoke analysis. We also address the impact of political pressures on tool accessibility and usage, as well as the values practitioners associate with these tools, including trust, equity, empowerment, and accountability. Our findings underscore the necessity for incorporating plural representations of climate knowledge and climate justice in the design of environmental justice screening tools. We highlight specific policy actions needed for the future development of government data tools, as well as ways in which communities might develop their own tools.