Northeastern University is developing a Climate Justice Action Plan (CJAP), a community-driven planning initiative, to recommend a roadmap to achieve carbon neutrality at its campuses. Focus areas include energy consumption and sourcing, transportation, climate resiliency, and the University’s ability to affect change through its strengths in academia and research. A long-time partner of Northeastern, VHB is working with the University to expand upon its sustainability and resiliency planning efforts.
Underlying the CJAP is a focus on social, environmental, and economic justice. The project team follows a Climate Justice and Equity Framework that defines the term climate justice in the context of the project and provides a number of guiding questions and evaluation criteria that allow the project team to assess how decision-making and identified strategies will affect or be affected by relevant social, environmental, and economic justice considerations. Engagement with external stakeholders is planned to understand the climate impacts facing the surrounding community, the University’s role in those impacts, and the identification of ways to avoid, minimize, or mitigate those impacts, as well as create new community benefit.
