Getting Beyond Green: A Baseline of Equity Approaches in Sustainable Building Standards (NAACP)

NAACP’s Initiative: Centering Equity in the Sustainable Building Sector

From NAACP - Communities of color and low-income communities bear the brunt of the impacts of unhealthy, energy inefficient, and disaster-vulnerable buildings. These effects include poor health and the financial burdens of high energy bills and medical conditions related to indoor contaminants, as well as the disproportionately negative effects of climate change, to which buildings contribute as a major consumer of fossil fuel-based energy.

Yet, as one looks around the work tables or worksites of the sustainable and regenerative building sector, there is little representation of the populations most impacted by our current proliferation of unsustainable, inefficient, sometimes unsafe, and often unhealthy building stock. Whether it is as policy makers, advocates, architects, project managers, contractors, or even in the construction workforce, the most impacted communities are underrepresented in the design, construction, and occupancy of sustainable, regenerative, healthy buildings.