Climate Justice Plan Series: Xitlali Torres on Environmental Wealth and Investing in Community Well-Being

This is the last in a series about Multnomah County’s Climate Justice Plan. The Multnomah County Office of Sustainability is holding the final opportunities for feedback before the plan is presented to the Board for adoption on Tuesday, May 19, 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. and Thursday, May 21, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. If you’d like to attend and provide feedback, register here.

Multnomah County’s Climate Justice Plan is an unconventional policy designed by an unconventional steering committee. The County’s Office of Sustainability gathered a committee of organizations and leaders from across the county, representing communities that don’t often get a seat at the table for policymaking. One of those committee members was Xitlali Torres, formerly the Air Quality and Climate Program Coordinator at Verde – an organization on Portland’s east side dedicated to investing in environmental resources for low-income communities and communities of color in the city. 

Environmental wealth as a climate justice factor

What sets Verde apart from other environmental justice organizations, and the important lens that Xitlali brought to the steering committee, is the concept of environmental wealth. Verde describes environmental wealth as “the collective value of natural resources, ecosystem services, and biodiversity that sustain life on Earth. It encompasses not only the economic value of these resources but also their intrinsic and cultural value.” 

Xitlali explains that environmental wealth describes what communities have access to, but that it encompasses the converse as well. When communities lack environmental wealth, they are faced with compounding disadvantages. Without clean air or clean water, communities face greater health issues. Without green spaces, communities face more intense heat during heatwaves, and community members have to drive or take transit to access nature, which adds a drain on time and financial resources.

Verde notes that environmental wealth “is often undervalued or overlooked in economic decision-making, leading to unsustainable practices and environmental degradation” – a pattern that Multnomah County wanted to avoid in the drafting of their Climate Justice Plan, and which made Xitlali and Verde’s representation on the steering committee so crucial. 

Taking the lead from communities on the ground

That perspectives not often consulted in policymaking were centered in the design of the Climate Justice Plan was a core intention of the County from the start. This meant going farther than relying on existing relationships or inviting token communities or community members into the room. Xitlali makes clear that the Office of Sustainability did its due diligence by approaching a broad range of groups and community members, as well as taking the lead from those groups and community members about where else to go to engage the right people.

This process helped the Office of Sustainability build trust and relationships with the communities they were gathering for this important drafting process. It helped lay a solid foundation and network for collaborative work between nontraditional partners, government agencies, and other experts in the field. 

As Xitlali points out, ensuring that the needs of communities most vulnerable to the climate crisis are incorporated into the plan meant that the plan would truly serve the people it is meant to serve. An important component of ensuring the plan could meet the needs of the most vulnerable was to bake in the ability for the plan to continue to adjust and evolve over time. 

Youth as a frontline community

An especially important constituency that was engaged in the drafting of the Climate Justice Plan was young people. Youth are often touted as the generation with the most to lose from climate change because their future will be so heavily impacted. This perspective neglects the reality that climate change is something that youth are already living with right now. The climate crisis exists in their physical reality, such as in wildfire smoke, extreme heat, and drought. It also exists for them psychologically, in climate anxiety – something that young people bring up when discussing climate justice, as Xitlali explains.

What Xitlali describes is what it looks like when we meet a community where they are. It’s the Office of Sustainability putting their values into practice. Youth were not consulted via testimony, public comment, or survey. With coordination from Xitlali on the steering committee, county officials were able to go into a high school classroom, to sit down with high school students, and have an authentic conversation where young people could feel seen and heard. 

Innovative climate goals

That conversation with youth led to what many may consider an atypical goal for a government policy, but a goal that became nonnegotiable based on the needs of Multnomah County’s youth: one that addresses mental health. The plan’s goal that “every community member has access to the resources and underlying conditions that promote health and well-being,” specifically addresses mental health through its targeted strategy to “promote mental well-being and resilience in the face of climate change by destigmatizing mental health care, fostering community support, and providing culturally relevant and trauma-informed approaches to healing.”

The plan identifies other goals that might not look like traditional climate policy on the surface, but that reflect how communities actually relate to their environment in daily life: goals around food systems, housing, and wealth. A standalone goal on water was identified, because, Xitlali describes, water isn’t only what you drink.

Another of the plan’s goals is that every community member “is surrounded by and connected to nature, parks, and green infrastructure.” For Xitlali, this is where the plan’s vision and Verde’s mission converge: climate justice isn’t just about mitigating harm, it’s about investing in the built environment for everyone’s benefit.  

Xitlali’s personal vision is centered around the kind of world she hopes to leave for future generations – one that prioritizes people over profit, one with clean air to breathe and clean water to drink, one that values community knowledge and agency. Planning for the future, one or several generations ahead, requires agility. The world is constantly changing, often at very rapid speeds, and so policies like the Climate Justice Plan need to be able to evolve too. 

In the climate justice movement – or really any movement for change under the Trump administration –  it often feels like the odds are stacked against us. In many ways we are, indeed, fighting an uphill battle. But while there is a small, wealthy, ruling class trying to oppress and poison us with their power and extractive industries, there are so many people on the ground fighting for justice – in Multnomah County, and beyond.