In the News

Policy Integrity’s comments make two categories of recommendations: (1) improving public participation, and (2) improving analysis.

But what would serious distributional analysis look like? As we explained in our recent comments on EPA’s Draft Strategic Plan for 2022–2026, serious distributional analysis requires that an agency consider the distributional consequences of multiple regulatory alternatives.

In a report issued late last month, the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University urged agencies to prioritize equity consideration across federal regulations. The Sept. 30 report, “Making Regulations Fair: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Promote Equity and Advance [EJ],” recommends rigorous guidance on assessing and weighing the distributional impacts of regulations. “This insufficient analysis is an enormous obstacle in the effort to make policies, environmental and otherwise, fair for all communities,” IPI says in a release on the report.

EPA is urging Michigan regulators to consider asking an asphalt company to move its planned facility to a different location rather than building it in an already-overburdened community, a first-time request in an air permit review that underscores agency efforts to address civil rights and other environmental justice (EJ) concerns. Max Sarinsky of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University praises EPA for “wisely recommend[ing] consideration of alternatives that would avoid causing disparate impacts on environmental justice communities.”

The Institute for Policy Integrity, a regulatory think tank based at New York University, says in July 6 comments that OMB should “detail sustainable methodologies and procedures that agencies can implement,” and identifies four principles to guide such action.

The environmental law field has been slow to diversify and there is widespread agreement that diversity is critical to providing high quality work that has a deep and lasting impact. So this winter and spring, in partnership with Green 2.0 and the New York City Bar’s Environmental Law Committee, we set about to explore the best strategies for proactively addressing the disparity.

In 1994, environmental justice advocates finally won a victory at the federal level. 27 years later, Executive Order 12898 has fallen short. Because federal agencies have leeway in how they implement executive orders, it is virtually unenforceable. A report from New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity concluded that federal agencies have either outright ignored Clinton’s environmental justice order or failed to recognize whom it is intended to protect.

Environmental attorneys and activists around the country are increasingly holding industry and regulators accountable when environmental agencies fail to protect residents, becoming, in effect, “citizen regulators.” Regulatory apparatuses suffer “longstanding problems” like underfunding, understaffing and under-enforcement, said Richard Revesz, an environmental law professor and dean emeritus at New York University School of Law. But since 2016, the overall problem grew to be much more acute “when combined with the shocking disregard for environmental enforcement that we saw during the Trump administration.”

The Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University School of Law is out with a new report aimed at helping EPA and other federal agencies improve climate-related environmental justice (EJ) analyses, in line with a new executive order (EO) from President Joe Biden seeking to elevate both issues. The report also assesses the original Clinton-era EO issued in 1994 on EJ and provides detailed guidance for how agencies can conduct better EJ analysis going forward in line with Biden’s goals.

Sens. Ed Markey and Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Cori Bush, flanked by leading environmental justice advocates, unveiled legislation on Thursday that would create an interagency task force to map environmental justice communities "based on cumulative impacts." The Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law released its own report on improving environmental justice mapping.