Environmental Justice Requires High Quality Information, Now More Than Ever
Information about the distribution of climate impacts, pollutant concentrations, and other environmental risks is indispensable to communities, organizations, and policymakers who face these threats and work to address them. In the past, the federal government recognized this importance and elevated these issues, directing federal agencies to develop data tools to help inform work toward achieving environmental justice throughout the United States.
When these efforts came under threat in January 2025, Public Environmental Data Partners (PEDP) collaborated with environmental data, technology, and justice organizations to preserve at-risk federal datasets and tools. Within days of their removal, PEDP restored public access to key federal tools such as the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), EPA’s EJScreen, and FEMA’s Future Risk Index—resources essential for identifying overburdened communities and directing climate investments more equitably. In its first phase, PEDP’s focus was triage: saving and restoring access to what was erased.
Why this work, and why now?
With that foundational work now complete, we have reached an inflection point. That is why PEDP, led by the Open Environmental Data Project (OEDP) and the Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC), are undertaking a project to imagine the future for the EJ tools we’ve restored. In this next phase of work, PEDP is shifting from preservation to creation—building the environmental data infrastructure that’s always been needed: resilient, federated, and rooted in community priorities. PEDP’s goal is not just to replicate existing tools, but to build a more durable, interconnected and modular ecosystem where data from federal, state, and community sources can inform decisions and strengthen environmental justice work that is more important than ever.
Building Better EJ Tools: The Environmental Justice Tools Engagement Project
We want to work with you! Through the EJ Tools Engagement Project, PEDP’s objective is to determine not just how EJ tools can be more effective and useful, but to understand how we might better engage the broader EJ community in a collaborative and participatory design process to ensure these tools work for everyone.
Through this project, PEDP intends to demonstrate how open, justice-centered tools and infrastructure might be developed from the ground up. By resourcing community participation and treating tool design as an act of shared stewardship, this project will lay the groundwork for an environmental data infrastructure that is not only preserved, but reimagined: equitable, transparent, and built to last.
The substance of the participatory design process for the EJ Tools Engagement Project will be a discovery process and a series of virtual and in-person workshops that will take place throughout 2026. Through this process, PEDP will identify needs and challenges, and co-design improvements for key EJ tools like the CEJST, EJScreen, and the Future Risk Index. Across various groups, we seek to answer such questions as:
For tool makers:
What would you have done differently outside of the federal context?
What features or functions were always on your wishlists?
What feedback did you hear from people who used the tools?
How might the purpose of the tools shift depending on evolving needs or technical capabilities?
For community members:
How could a tool built with and for communities better meet current and emerging needs?
What’s missing or lacking in the current tools?
How might the tools better represent lived experiences?
How could the tools be more transparent and useful?
How have you used these tools in the past?
For policymakers:
How can the tools best represent cumulative burdens on communities?
How might you use these tools to prevent additional harms?
What would it take for your agency to develop the capacity to host these tools so that they are nationally accessible?
For academics and advocates:
How can the tools continue to support critical learning and education?
What research is needed to better answer critical EJ questions or fill data gaps?
How can we prepare to move from advocacy to action?
What kind of data or information has been most helpful for you in organizing and advocacy work?
How have you used these tools in the past?
PEDP will use the feedback from these sessions to inform future design and development, with the goal to demonstrate prototypes and ideas, and eventually identify pathways for sustainable stewardship.
An Invitation to Participate
To start, PEDP is hosting a kickoff call to share an overview of the work so far to steward federal environmental justice tools, share opportunities to participate in discovery research, and preview a series of participatory workshops planned for this year. The session will close with open discussion and Q&A.
When: Monday, February 2, 2026 | 3:00-4:00pm ET (12:00-1:00pm PT)
Where: Please register via zoom
Anyone connected to environmental justice work—community advocates, researchers, data practitioners, policy professionals, or others interested in ensuring these tools reflect the needs of the people who use them, should attend to learn more and share their perspective.
PEDP is excited to kick this project off, and to collaborate with you to advance environmental justice!
