“After a period of populist nationalism…multilateralism is back, and climate is the multilateral challenge of the moment,” said David Lammy, a member of Parliament for Tottenham in the United Kingdom and Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, in a recent 21^st Century Diplomacy event, co-hosted by the Wilson Center and adelphi. The election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is not a “reset,” but rather a catalytic moment for the international community precisely because of the pandemic and consequences for the global economy, he said. When you look at who has been left behind in countries like the United States and United Kingdom, and globally, who is at risk climate impacts, it is “black and brown people suffering all over the planet, and that is a call to arms,” said Lammy.

While climate change poses threats to human security, climate responses can provide opportunities for human progress. “The reality is that as we face the COVID crisis, an economic crisis as a result of that, and a crisis around inequality and inclusion, we see that climate solutions, climate action, are perfectly poised right now to be drivers of job creation, growth, inclusion, sustainability, and resilience,” said Jennifer Austin, Director of Policy and Strategy for COP26 High Level Champions for Climate Action. It is a myth that society faces a binary choice between protecting the planet and growing the economy. “There is a real recognition amongst businesses, investors, cities, states, both in the risk of inaction and the opportunities of taking action,” said Austin.

For some U.S. states, equity is increasingly becoming the core of their climate policies, said Julie Cerqueira, Executive Director of the U.S. Climate Alliance. Specifically, we may look to state climate policy for examples of how to not only avoid introducing additional burdens for communities, but to also reverse past damages, said Cerqueira. California, for example, recently moved towards 100 percent zero-emissions vehicles by 2035, including heavy duty vehicles. “Vulnerable communities, communities of color, are the ones that are around ports, they’re the ones that around highways, they’re the ones that around sort of the transit corridors for these heavy duty vehicles,” said Cerqueira, “and by focusing on addressing pollution from heavy duty vehicles, you are alleviating a lot of the pollution that those communities are sustaining.”

Having robust, sustained dialogue with stakeholders is extremely important, said Cerqueira. “Likewise, it’s looking at job growth and making sure that it’s not just creating new jobs, but that there are real pathways to those jobs for vulnerable communities, which means the right training for jobs that exist in those areas.” Economic diversification must be a part of planning as well, Cerqueira said. “If you’re going to be closing a coal plant or going to be converting a plant that is focused on producing gas vehicles, what is the strategy for diversifying the local economy, because it is not easy to just replace what ends up being the core economic driver in those places.”

“We focus a lot on federal policy in the U.S., especially as federal policy relates to climate, but the truth is that most of these decisions are taking place at the hyper-local level,” said Elan Strait, Director of U.S. Climate Campaigns for the World Wildlife Fund. “And how this relates to what we’re talking about in terms of race and equity—the best predictor of where a coal plant is going to be in the United States is the race of the surrounding community, not the income level or the education level of the community,” said Strait. “If black and brown communities had as much political power at the local level in the United States as white communities do, I don’t know that we’d have coal plants in the United States—anywhere.” Giving communities much more authority to determine what goes on in their backyards could help solve a major emissions problem in the United States, said Strait.