Community Engagement

A Successful Just Transition Involves the Community Creating Change Together

A truly just transition needs to start with local community engagement. Prioritizing a just transition means navigating a complex web of interests and needs, aligning diverging views and ensuring that there is an inclusive dialogue with all stakeholders – especially affected workers and communities.

An effective community engagement strategy should work to identify community concerns and establish collective goals, to build strong coalitions among necessary partners, and to develop a long-term transition plan that all stakeholders can support.

Best practices for engagement:

• Make it known: Get the word out. Maximize participation to get a broad and representative sample of community ideas, concerns, and desires.
• Make it inclusive: Make sure everyone who wants to participate can. Provide accommodations for language, audio/visual, and mobility differences.
• Make it respectful: The just transition process can be a sensitive topic. Acknowledge dissenting opinions while working towards building consensus on collective community goals.

When to Engage

Community engagement should be an ongoing effort throughout the just transition process. Several key touch-points – where engagement is critical to educating the community and making informed, community-based decisions – are listed below: 

In the beginning: inform the public about the just transition process and potential plant closure

In communities where a plant closure has yet to be announced, a thoughtful and sensitive informational messaging campaign can help announce the possibility of potential closure and lay out the following transition process. At this point in the engagement process, community leaders should be prepared to answer questions from community members, plant workers, and other stakeholders who will likely be concerned. 

As a visioning process: identify community goals and preferred reuse options for the site 

Community members and stakeholders should be actively involved in identifying goals for and envisioning the future of the site. Feedback from this process, along with site and market analyses, should guide the selection of preferred reuse options. Engagement at this stage can take many forms, including public workshops or design charrettes, small focus group meetings, and/or surveys.

Once a preferred reuse option is identified: market the site to developers 

Once a preferred reuse option for the site has been identified, work should begin to advertise the site to potential developers and to communicate its preferred end use. Engagement here could include publishing a Request for Proposals (RFPs), directly contacting local developers, creating a website, using social media, or developing “sell sheets” to market the site. 

Throughout: keep community members updated

Open, transparent lines of communication can build community trust in the just transition process. Regular updates can be provided via a project website, community forums, newsletters, or other outreach methods to keep community members in the loop. It is also important to be clear with community members about how their input will be incorporated.

How to Engage

Community engagement can take many forms, from informational presentations to interactive events, to social media posts. Any approach can be personalized to reflect what works best for each community.

• Host a public workshop: Public workshops are often best facilitated in-person and typically involve an informational presentation at the beginning with time at the end for interactive activities. Workshops are ideal for visioning, identifying community goals, and allowing community members to provide direct input on preferred reuse alternatives and draft site plans.
• Conduct a community survey: Community surveys are most beneficial earlier in the planning process to collect input from a wide group of stakeholders. Surveys can be made available on the project website or through community social media channels.
• Hold a public hearing: Public hearings can be facilitated in-person or virtually and are best used to disseminate information and provide an opportunity to hear the community’s questions and input.
• Meet with stakeholders: Site owners, plant workers, nearby property owners, community groups, and others – can bring to light important opportunities and constraints from those closest to the project. These meetings can be over the phone, in-person, or as part of small focus groups.
• Create a website or use social media: Online engagement can get the word out fast to large groups of people. It’s ideal for providing readily accessible information (such as FAQs) or posting regular updates about a project. It can also be a key tool in marketing sites to developers.
• Form an advisory committee: Advisory committees oversee and guide the direction of a project. They can include technical experts, like representatives from economic development agencies or state agencies, as well as community members and stakeholders.
• Publish an RFP: Once a preferred reuse option has been identified for the site, a Request for Proposals (RFP) can be issued to solicit developers.

Who to Involve

Transition plans that are supported by a diverse coalition and represent different interests are stronger and more likely to identify and address the needs of workers and communities. Though reuse projects vary in scope, there are several key stakeholder groups to engage throughout the just transition process.

• Community Members: This group should include and prioritize residents who have borne the impact of the plant. They bring deep knowledge of community assets and needs based on their lived experience.
• Workers: Plant workers who may lose jobs as a result of a potential closure will be able to describe how they will be impacted and provide valuable information about what they would like to see as future reuse.
• Community Leaders: Leaders from local nonprofit organizations, religious organizations, clubs, and informal community groups can deliver valuable grassroots insights into the concerns and hopes of residents.
• Economic Development Agencies: Local organizations and agencies working on economic and workforce development can help address the immediate economic impacts of a closure as well as identify ways to diversify local economics and support the workforce in the long-term.
• Municipal Leaders: Government officials and staff bring a deep knowledge of tax and public funding issues, and long-term facility needs of the community.
• Public Agencies: Various agencies may offer funding, technical assistance, and research. They may also have the authority to pass transition legislation.
• Local Businesses: The private sector plays an important role in economic transitions and can provide the resources and expertise necessary to bring new economies to scale. 

What to Say (And Not to Say)

Work with trusted messengers: Identify, nurture, and support trusted communicators. These may be union leaders or prominent leaders in the worker community.

Be respectful: Offer gratitude and respect for plant workers, who work difficult jobs for the benefit of the public. Avoid messaging that blames or minimizes the fossil fuel industry.

Be realistic: Simplistic, utopian statements about a shift to a world of green jobs should be avoided. Honesty about the nature of the challenge is likely to resonate more.

Be careful: For some audiences, words like “justice” and “transition” can trigger negative reactions. Try words like “fairness” and “change” instead.

Environmental Justice

Environmental Justice is the meaningful involvement and fair treatment of all people in the development and/or implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, policies, and regulations, regardless of race, national origin, income, etc. Environmental Justice areas are U.S. Census Block Groups that met or exceed at least one of the following statistical thresholds:

• At least 52.42% of the population in an urban area reported themselves to be members of minority groups; or
• At least 26.28% of the population in a rural area reported themselves to be members of minority groups; or
• At least 22.82% of the population in an urban or rural area had household incomes below the federal poverty level.

New York’s Climate Act recognizes that climate change doesn’t affect all communities equally. The Climate Act charged the Climate Justice Working Group with the development of criteria to identify disadvantaged communities to ensure that frontline and otherwise underserved communities benefit from the state’s historic transition to cleaner, greener sources of energy, reduced pollution and cleaner air, and economic opportunities.

Disadvantaged communities were identified using multiple indicators that represent the environmental burdens or climate change risks within a community, or population characteristics and health vulnerabilities that can contribute to more severe adverse effects of climate change.