Founded in 1991, the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA) is a non-profit citywide membership network linking grassroots organizations of color in their struggle for environmental justice. NYC-EJA empowers its member organizations to advocate for improved environmental conditions and against inequitable environmental burdens by the coordination of campaigns designed to inform Cit
y and State policies. NYC-EJA is led by the community-based organizations that it serves, with its board elected by its member groups, who set policy and guide program development. What distinguishes NYC-EJA is our ability to:
- Create, nurture, and organize a collective voice to mobilize citywide support to resolve environmental justice issues.
- Highlight key environmental justice issues and policies that arise in multiple communities, or impact citywide conditions, requiring innovative and creative problem solving.
- Involve people of color and other stakeholders directly affected by environmental justice issues in leadership roles to resolve them. NYC-EJA, our members and allies have defined environmental/climate justice advocacy in New York, including: the Waterfront Justice Project, (NYC’s first citywide community resiliency campaign) the Sandy Regional Assembly (the only regional grassroots coalition which prepared the Sandy Regional Recovery Plan), the historic 2014 People’s Climate March (the largest climate mobilization in history), NYC’s first “waste equity” law (reduced permitted capacity for waste transfer stations in NYC’s most overburdened communities), Transform Don’t Trash NY (the most significant proposal to overhaul NYC’s commercial waste system in decades), Power NYS Act (the most protective power plant siting law in the U.S., which prevents environmentally over-burdened communities from any net increases in local air pollution from new power plants); Climate Works for All (advocated for the 2019 NYC Climate Mobilization Act, the most ambitious climate action plan by any U.S. city), NY Renews (advocated for the NYS Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act, the most aggressive climate action legislation among the states), congestion pricing for NYC’s central business district (the first by any North American city) and the NYC Climate Justice Agenda.
