Buildings are one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States contributing to climate change. Frontline communities, often communities of color, are disproportionately experiencing the first and worst impacts of pollution and climate change. 

Some communities are addressing current and future climate change impacts by reducing these greenhouse gas emissions through building performance standards, or BPS, a set of standards to reduce carbon emissions in buildings by improving energy, gas and water use, and peak demand. These standards become stricter over time, driving continuous, long-term improvement in the building stock. 

In addressing climate change and knowing the disproportionate impacts on frontline communities, some cities are moving toward equitable, community-based decision-making in implementing BPS and similar policies. One equity-based approach is a community accountability board (CAB), a community-led, local governmental board that has decision-making authority over specific policies and actions that impact the communities the CAB represents. For example, a CAB may have the authority over disbursement of funds regarding pollution mitigation in and around highly impacted neighborhoods, or authority over the extent a property owner can deviate from emission reduction plans because in part, of the emission impact on the same neighborhoods. This decision-making authority addresses political and social power dynamics by moving toward transparent, inclusive, and responsive policies and practices that directly serve community needs.   

Institute for Market Transformation (“IMT”) recently released a CAB toolkit, Transforming Climate Governance with Community Accountability Boards, which lays the groundwork for considering the legal and political steps to create community driven and led municipal boards that have direct influence over decisions and resources impacting frontline communities. When local governments elevate lived experience as expertise, they advance community voices and decisions, ensuring more responsive governance. CABs embrace lived expertise on the same level as technical acumen, holding space and respect for both. 

Included in the toolkit is the Boston-based example of a CAB, called the Review Board under the City’s Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (“BERDO”). Establishing the Review Board under BERDO was a five-year journey with diverse leadership and critical collaboration among community, local government, and private partners. Centered in frontline community decision-making authority, two-thirds of the Review Board are community members that “have expertise in environmental justice, affordable housing, labor, and worker’s rights, workforce development, building engineering and energy, real estate development and management, public health and hospitals, architecture and historic preservation, or any combination thereof.” One of the key tasks for the Review Board is to review, accept, or deny applications for flexibility measures in achieving emission targets. The Board also makes funding decisions for the community-based fund called the Equitable Investment Fund. Recently the Review Board announced a call for project proposals to address community building emission reductions, awarding up to $750,000 from the Fund.  

CABs are an opportunity to not only recognize, but also elevate and empower community voices in decisions that directly impact where they live and work. This power shift requires commitment from the city and community and partnership from the private sector. With political will and community dedication to address existing power structures, a CAB is transformative in mitigating the disproportionate impacts of climate change on frontline communities, creating new commitments in environmental justice within our built environments.

Joey Vossen, Senior Staff Attorney
7/24/2024