Title: 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 justice.
Policy area: Environmental Protection

Summary:
This resolution recognizes that climate change most severely impacts vulnerable and disadvantaged communities and urges the U.S. government to work with its global partners to pursue policies that prioritize climate adaptation among vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.

[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 367 Introduced in House (IH)]

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116th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. RES. 367

 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 justice.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                              May 9, 2019

   Mr. Espaillat (for himself, Ms. Moore, Ms. Jayapal, and Ms. Omar) 
submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee 
                           on Foreign Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
 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 justice.

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;
Whereas the recent, current, and future impacts of changes in the Earth's 
        climate present real and immediate dangers 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 conflicts, leading to 
        droughts, floods, hurricanes, heat waves, fires, natural disasters, and 
        food shortages, in turn exacerbating competition and conflict over 
        resources, displacing large populations, and creating migration and 
        refugee crises;
Whereas the Fourth National Climate Assessment is in agreement with the 
        scientific community that ``the evidence 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, respect, promote and consider their 
        respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights 
        of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons 
        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 ``climate justice'' when 
        mitigating and adapting to climate change and recognizes ``the need for 
        an effective and progressive response to the urgent threat of climate 
        change'';
Whereas the Fourth National Climate Assessment states that ``people who are 
        already vulnerable, including lower-income communities and other 
        marginalized communities, 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 acknowledges that already vulnerable and marginalized 
        communities include communities of color, indigenous peoples, and 
        agrarian communities, among others, and that these communities 
        experience disproportionate impacts of climate change;
Whereas the World Health Organization finds that 7,000,000 people die 
        prematurely every year from diseases exacerbated by air pollution, a 
        major contributor to climate change, around 90 percent of which are in 
        low- and middle-income countries;
Whereas the World Health Organization considers air pollution as the greatest 
        environmental risk to health, and estimates 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 consumption of goods 
        and services that generate fine particulate 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, disproportionately 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 recent years have been magnified by the 
        effects of climate change;
Whereas families in the ``dry corridor'' of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador 
        lost up to 80 percent of their corn and bean crops in both the first and 
        second harvest seasons 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 income 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 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 infectious diseases due to the contamination of 
        freshwater supplies;
Whereas the Climate Change and the Cost of Capital in Developing Countries 
        report of the United Nations Environment 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; and
Whereas the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review for the Department of Defense 
        highlights that climate change influences ``resource competition while 
        placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and government 
        institutions around the world,'' serving as ``threat multipliers that 
        will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental 
        degradation, political instability, and social tensions--conditions that 
        can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence'': Now, 
        therefore, be it
    Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
            (1) recognizes 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 justice;
            (2) recognizes that all efforts to adapt to and mitigate 
        climate change must include specific protections for and 
        acknowledgment of the harm to communities 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 international community;
            (4) urges the United States Government to expand 
        collaboration and cooperation among its global partners to 
        pursue policies that prioritize climate adaptation among 
        vulnerable and disadvantaged communities, 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;
            (5) expresses the need for all countries to promote 
        vulnerable community-focused adaptation to occur across all 
        sectors, including in agriculture, infrastructure, 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 action is needed 
        to drastically reduce global greenhouse gas emissions in order 
        to mitigate the effects of climate change.
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