disasters like this widen and exacerbate inequality. And so, the communities that are most at risk from not having, you know, the kinds of infrastructure in those areas, in terms of flood protection, in terms of trying to get out, in terms of transportation, etc., I mean, it played out

Houston is very segregated along racial and economic lines. And this flood has really shown that. If you look at ZIP codes, you can map where that vulnerability is. You can also map how resources have been allocated and distributed over the last 50 years.

The research for a long time had showed how Latinos and in general communities of color are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of pollution. But at the time we weren't talking about how those same communities are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

We need to break the cycle where marginalized communities are hit the hardest by disasters and have the fewest resources to recover from crises and prepare for the next one.

When we’re dealing with a crisis like COVID, which is disproportionately affecting people of color — and it’s a respiratory disease! — and then you consider that Black and Latino people overwhelmingly live in polluted communities, the disparities just become really clear.

Every economic mobilization in American history has exploited marginalized people. The Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC)-created during the New Deal to provide loans to homeowners facing foreclosure-often labeled predominantly black neighborhoods as "high risk," which discouraged lending and encouraged redlining. Today, 74 percent of the neighborhoods labeled "high risk" are low- to middle-income neighborhoods, and 64 percent are predominantly minority-meaning that these areas are still racially and economically segregated to this day.

People of color disproportionately bear climate impacts, from storms to heat waves to pollution. Fossil-fueled power plants and refineries are disproportionately located in black neighborhoods, leading to poor air quality and putting people at higher risk for coronavirus. Such issues are finally being covered in the news media more fully.

we have environmental segregation, we have what I call “outdoor apartheid.” This is basically that those areas, those geographic and spacial neighborhoods, that somehow are considered compatible with these types of facilities. And we know that the impacts of living close to, with these emissions or with explosion or accidents or releases that may come from flooding, like Harvey—I mean, we know which communities are impacted. And that’s the justice question.

Communities have not been able to recover, to go back home. And gentrification is happening at warp speed in areas where climate change and flooding have caused the displacement of communities. This is a huge problem. Race is at the center of it in terms of fairness. And we have to find a way to make certain that we make up for the harm that’s been done and put things in place so that harm does not continue for racial minorities in this country.

The list of places that have the largest and/or the fastest growing Latino populations are also the places that are most vulnerable to sea level rise. And practically speaking there’s a large portion of the Latino population that works outdoors in the environment whether it's agriculture or construction, and so we are more sensitive to environmental changes.

Pandemics don’t always trigger , but they can do, by throwing into relief the very inequalities that caused them. That’s because they hit the poor hardest – those in low-paid or unstable employment, who live in crowded accommodation, have underlying health issues, and for whom healthcare is less affordable or less accessible. This was true in the past and remains so today. During the the death rate was three times higher in the poorest fifth of England’s population than in the richest. Covid-19 is showing no signs of departing from the pattern, which, because of the way the socioeconomic dice fall, also has a racial dimension. But there is something brand new about this pandemic, which has never been seen before in the history of humanity – and that is our unprecedented global experiment in . These lockdown measures are designed to slow the spread of the disease, relieve the burden on s and ultimately save lives – and it looks as if they may be doing that. But they may also be exacerbating social inequalities themselves.

Look at what happened in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast when Katrina hit. People ask me whether they thought race was the reason the response was so slow. I say, "well, no, this administration was colorblind in its incompetence." But, everyone here knows that the disaster and the poverty happened long before the hurricane hit.

As a global WMO community, trusted to monitor, research, understand and predict the state of the Earth system and deliver much needed data, information and services, we know that people are impacted in many ways by weather, water and climate events. We know that the extent of the impact varies depending on many factors, especially their location and their circumstances, and that the people who suffer the worst impacts are, as a rule, the most vulnerable and exposed,

The communities that have been suffering for all of these years really don’t have a voice. They are still invisible, and they are still underprotected. And as I said before, the most vulnerable population that we’re talking about is children. And if people don’t get angry or somehow concerned about children going to school or playing on playgrounds that’s on the fenceline with companies that’s pumping out dangerous chemicals and creating lots of environmental hazards—you know, you have to understand what kind of person would somehow just turn the other way, or governmental entity that would turn the other way, and say, “Oh, it’s about regulation. We need fewer regulations. And because the companies have to be competitive globally, and therefore the community that’s on the fenceline basically is a sacrifice zone.” And what we say in the environmental justice community, we say no to our communities being sacrifice zones.