COVID-19 Environmental Justice Roundtables Summary of Findings

Over the spring and summer of 2020, the National Wildlife Federation worked in collaboration with our national and local partners to hold a series of roundtable conversations. The roundtables gathered more than 124 frontline community leaders, elected officials, and other key experts and environmental justice stakeholders to discuss the impacts of the coronavirus on communities.

In addition to gaining valuable insights to help guide National Wildlife Federation involvement and policy advocacy, the roundtables served as a key platform for participants to build relationships and share resources.

Through these roundtables, we were able to gain a better understanding of the underlying issues that low-income communities and communities of color face and how the pandemic has made issues much more severe. Several intersectional themes arose through conversations, including recommendations on how to tackle issues, and policies to further consider. We attempted to highlight and summarize themes, which in no way encompasses the full breadth of issues raised and ideas.

National Wildlife Federation is committed to building upon this summary of learnings to work innovatively with partners to address several of the issues raised. In the coming months, our organization and national partners will be authoring a comprehensive report to dive deeper on the issues raised and to outline a plan of action for policy advocacy and programming to address the needs of frontline communities.