IV 
117TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. RES. 460 
Recognizing the significant impact and legacy of Cecil Corbin-Mark in the 
environmental justice community and further recognizing that climate 
change most severely impacts vulnerable and disadvantaged communities 
in the United States and around the world, and that it is the responsi-
bility of the United States Government to work with its global partners 
to promote environmental justice and climate. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JUNE 4, 2021 
Mr. ESPAILLAT (for himself and Ms. CLARKE of New York) submitted the 
following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs 
RESOLUTION 
Recognizing the significant impact and legacy of Cecil 
Corbin-Mark in the environmental justice community and 
further recognizing that climate change most severely 
impacts vulnerable and disadvantaged communities in the 
United States and around the world, and that it is 
the responsibility of the United States Government to 
work with its global partners to promote environmental 
justice and climate. 
Whereas climate change poses an existential threat for this 
generation and generations to come; 
Whereas the world is already experiencing the omnipresent 
danger of climate change; 
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Whereas the recent, current, and future impacts of changes 
in the Earth’s climate present real and immediate dan-
gers to the United States and countries around the 
world; 
Whereas there needs to be a global approach to addressing 
issues of climate change and emergency preparedness; 
Whereas climate change is a threat multiplier to global con-
flicts, leading to droughts, floods, hurricanes, heat waves, 
fires, natural disasters, and food shortages, in turn exac-
erbating competition and conflict over resources, dis-
placing large populations, and creating migration and ref-
ugee crises; 
Whereas the Fourth National Climate Assessment is in 
agreement with the scientific community that ‘‘the evi-
dence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming 
and continues to strengthen’’; 
Whereas the Paris Agreement acknowledges that all ‘‘Parties 
should, when taking action to address climate change, re-
spect, promote and consider their respective obligations 
on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indige-
nous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, per-
sons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations 
and the right to development, as well as gender equality, 
empowerment of women and intergenerational equity’’; 
Whereas the Paris Agreement notes the importance of ‘‘cli-
mate justice’’ when mitigating and adapting to climate 
change and recognizes ‘‘the need for an effective and pro-
gressive response to the urgent threat of climate change’’; 
Whereas the Fourth National Climate Assessment states that 
‘‘people who are already vulnerable, including lower-in-
come communities and other marginalized communities, 
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have lower capacity to prepare for and cope with extreme 
weather and climate-related events and are expected to 
experience greater impacts’’; 
Whereas the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 
Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C acknowl-
edges that already vulnerable and marginalized commu-
nities include communities of color, indigenous peoples, 
and agrarian communities, among others, and that these 
communities experience disproportionate impacts of cli-
mate change; 
Whereas the World Health Organization finds that 7,000,000 
people die prematurely every year from diseases exacer-
bated by air pollution, a major contributor to climate 
change, around 90 percent of which are in low- and mid-
dle-income countries; 
Whereas the World Health Organization considers air pollu-
tion as the greatest environmental risk to health, and es-
timates that ‘‘between 2030 and 2050, climate change is 
expected to cause 250,000 additional deaths per year, 
from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress’’; 
Whereas a recent study published in the Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of 
America, Black and Hispanic individuals in the United 
States face 56 percent and 63 percent more exposure to 
air pollution, respectively, that is caused by their con-
sumption of goods and services that generate fine partic-
ulate matter; 
Whereas disparities in poverty and health will only increase 
as climate change becomes more extreme; 
Whereas heat islands, urban areas with little green space 
leading to constantly higher temperatures, disproportion-
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ately harm the health and well-being of people of color 
and the elderly; 
Whereas access to clean water, in the United States and 
around the globe, is severely impacted by climate change, 
adversely affecting communities of color that already 
struggle with clean water access; 
Whereas studies demonstrate that catastrophic hurricanes 
impacting the United States and Caribbean nations in re-
cent years have been magnified by the effects of climate 
change; 
Whereas families in the ‘‘dry corridor’’ of Honduras, Guate-
mala, and El Salvador lost up to 80 percent of their corn 
and bean crops in both the first and second harvest sea-
sons of 2018 due to drought; 
Whereas 300,000 subsistence farmers in Guatemala reported 
crop loss because of low rainfall at the end of the year; 
Whereas rising temperatures, more extreme weather events, 
and increasingly unpredictable rainfall patterns disrupt 
agricultural cycles, endangering the livelihood of Central 
American farmers and driving migration; 
Whereas in southern Africa, crop yield losses compounded by 
climate change would increase food prices by an average 
of 12 percent by 2030, placing a drastic strain on poor 
households, who spend as much as 60 percent of their in-
come on food, the resulting malnutrition could lead to a 
23 percent increase in severe stunting of normal growth 
and development; 
Whereas 800,000,000 people in South Asia depend on water 
from the Himalayas, and as temperatures warm and the 
ice recedes, the combination of droughts and the reduced 
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flow threaten Nepal’s tourism industry as well as the 
lives of rural farmers; 
Whereas Small Island Developing States acutely face health 
risks resulting from climate change, which increases 
flooding due to sea-level rise and raises exposure to infec-
tious diseases due to the contamination of freshwater 
supplies; 
Whereas the Climate Change and the Cost of Capital in De-
veloping Countries report of the United Nations Environ-
ment Programme finds that in the last ten years, climate 
vulnerability has cost the twenty nations most affected by 
catastrophes rooted in climate change an additional 
$62,000,000,000 in interest payments alone; 
Whereas the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review for the De-
partment of Defense highlights that climate change influ-
ences ‘‘resource competition while placing additional bur-
dens on economies, societies, and government institutions 
around the world,’’ serving as ‘‘threat multipliers that 
will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environ-
mental degradation, political instability, and social ten-
sions—conditions that can enable terrorist activity and 
other forms of violence’’; and 
Whereas Cecil Corbin-Mark, Deputy Director of WE ACT for 
Environmental Justice, dedicated his career to uplifting 
environmental justice communities, from his native Har-
lem to around the globe, fighting to combat systemic in-
equities faced by communities of color: Now, therefore, be 
it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 
(1) recognizes the significant impact and legacy 
of Cecil Corbin-Mark in the environmental justice 
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community and further recognizes that climate 
change most severely impacts vulnerable and dis-
advantaged communities in the United States and 
around the world, and that it is the responsibility of 
the United States Government to work with its glob-
al partners to promote environmental justice and cli-
mate justice; 
(2) recognizes that all efforts to adapt to and 
mitigate climate change must include specific protec-
tions for and acknowledgment of the harm to com-
munities of color, indigenous peoples, and other 
frontline communities around the world; 
(3) recognizes that mitigating climate change 
must be a global endeavor, in which the United 
States should act as a leader among the inter-
national community; 
(4) urges the United States Government to ex-
pand collaboration and cooperation among its global 
partners to pursue policies that prioritize climate ad-
aptation among vulnerable and disadvantaged com-
munities, given the disproportionate impact climate 
change has on minority communities, who are least 
responsible for the causes of climate change yet bear 
the greatest burden of its effects; 
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(5) expresses the need for all countries to pro-
mote vulnerable community-focused adaptation to 
occur across all sectors, including in agriculture, in-
frastructure, and health; 
(6) recognizes and encourages all countries to 
undertake inclusive stakeholder engagement when 
developing policies to address environmental justice 
and climate justice; and 
(7) expresses that immediate, multilateral ac-
tion is needed to drastically reduce global green-
house gas emissions in order to mitigate the effects 
of climate change. 
Æ 
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