Mapping Tool
Twin Cities Environmental Justice
This Mapping Tool provides information about sources of pollution in a community to compare environmental risks across neighborhoods based on race and income.
Community Planning
At CEED, we believe communities deserve to live, learn, work, play and pray in a safe and healthy environment with access to the resources and information they need to actively participate in decisions that affect their health and livelihoods, and their community. We know that historically land use planning has led to pollution and rising levels of economic and health inequality in neighborhoods of color across the country.
Overview
We have advocated for policies that can begin to repair the legacy of environmental harm in communities of color by investing in land use planning processes that: create sustainable healthy neighborhoods; target clean energy and energy efficiency investments in communities that are most affected by pollution; and prioritize leadership and meaningful participation from communities with unequal political access.
The opportunity to live a healthy life is a human right
At CEED, we believe communities deserve to live, learn, work, and play in a safe and healthy place with access to the resources and information they need to actively participate in decisions that affect their health and livelihoods, and their community. We are dedicated to building partnerships and supporting frontline and grassroots communities in their efforts to achieve environmental justice. CEED provides research, capacity building, and leadership development so that communities can make informed decisions about policies and programs affecting their health and environmental conditions.
The Minneapolis Green Zones is an innovative community-led policy approach to transforming neighborhoods that face the cumulative impacts of environmental, social, political and economic vulnerability into sustainable healthy neighborhoods. CEED, along with the Environmental Justice Working Group, successfully placed the Green Zones policy as a key strategy for achieving racial and economic justice into the 2013 Minneapolis Climate Action Plan. In collaboration with community partners, CEED compiled the report, Health Impact Assessment for the Phillips Community: Green Zones in the City of Minneapolis, and held a series of community workshops and training sessions on Green Zones.
CEED has engaged with Gardeners at CLUES’ (Comunidades Latinas Unidos En Servicio. Spanish for: Latino Communities United in Service) Jardin de Armonia on the East Side of St. Paul related to policy recommendations created and developed by them, for them. Their recommendations focused on healthy food and land access and were submitted to the City of St. Paul in January 2022. Since submission, gardeners have taken time to organize a community-led execution of their recommendations.
CEED is committed to honoring the goals and values of each community and to promoting strategies that create a healthy environment, wise use of natural resources, and leadership development in spaces that are most affected by pollution and unequal political access. Our work in food access supports in connecting people and families to the land, and fostering community leadership. In partnership with Gardeners at CLUES’ Jardin de Armonia on the East Side of St. Paul, we are working with community gardeners to advance their recommendations on healthy food and land access. We believe the communities ability to grow their own food has nutritional, cultural, environmental, economic, and historical significance. We support community knowledge and internal community strengths.
CEED encourages the free use of our educational resources and popular education curriculum for community learning and movement building. Please enjoy and share the tools published here. We ask you to acknowledge CEED for the creation of these materials in any reproduction of our images, documents, or activities. Commercial use is not permitted. Please contact CEED with any questions or comments about the use of these materials.