The impacts of the climate crisis in the Afro-descendant territories
Transcript
Many of our communities in the United States have already, were already food insecure before climate change even began to show its impacts. There are communities where children in particular don’t have enough to eat, where female-headed households are in particular less likely to have enough to eat in terms of black communities. And this is because of, I don’t know if people have heard of this concept called redlining, but where after emancipation from enslavement, we had communities where Black communities were forced to live in certain areas. And so whether it was the areas that were more likely to have pollution, or the areas that definitely didn’t have access to healthy and nutritious foods and other resources that people need to live. So this was already a challenge before climate change came on top of that and resulted in even more food insecurity for these communities.
Long before climate change intensified its impacts, many Black communities in the United States were already facing deep food insecurity and environmental neglect. Policies like redlining confined families to polluted, under-resourced neighborhoods with limited access to healthy food and basic services. Through her work with the Chisholm Legacy Project, Jacqueline Patterson highlights how the climate crisis compounds these historic injustices, turning structural racism into a growing public health and climate emergency.
As a Black-led climate justice initiative, the Chisholm Legacy Project advances community-driven solutions such as resilient food systems, renewable energy, healthy housing, and cooperative economies, while mobilizing frontline communities to demand policy change and center racial and gender justice in the climate movement.
How do we diversify climate voices?
Racialized, feminized voices have been silenced and to tackle oppression, we must put those voices at the center of climate action and diversify the channels and mechanisms through which we communicate solutions
