Facilitating a just recovery

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About just recovery 

The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) in the Our Power Puerto Rico report demonstrates how the "just recovery" model helped Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Maria. CJA describes a just recovery as:  

Response, recovery, and rebuild efforts centering systematically oppressed communities during climate accelerated disasters. When there is a climate disruption or disaster, the Just Recovery model supports climate-vulnerable communities to rebuild around the dreams, visions, and needs of the most severely impacted while increasing our power, agency, and self-determination so that we are better off than we were before the disaster. When the needs of those most impacted are resolved, everyone benefits.

This description highlights how each community’s version of a just recovery may be different. Further, what it will take to achieve a just recovery will be different in each community. But the measure of success is similar: making sure frontline communities are better off than before the disaster.  

Given that each community’s just recovery is different, frontline communities create and share their own needs and vision. To achieve that, government and philanthropy must listen, support, and ensure frontline communities have agency, resources, and decision-making in determining their recovery. Here are some examples of just recovery requests:  

• A Common Agenda for a Just, Equitable, and Sustainable Recovery for the City of Santa Rosa and the County of Sonoma The Alliance for a Just Recovery 

• A Just Recovery from Disasters from the North Bay Organizing Project 

• Towards a Just Recovery: The response in the face of disasters and the Puerto Rico that is possible 

• The Just Recovery Network (The Greenlining Institute, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), and California ReLeaf)’s Just Recovery Network Budget Requests. 

Impact on frontline communities 

Typical recovery from disasters is a long, challenging process that is especially difficult for frontline communities. It doesn’t have to be this way, and just recovery is an alternative model for what is possible. The just recovery model relies heavily on meeting people’s basic needs before and after a disaster, building on community assets, and ensuring that the community will be safe for years to come.  

Actions to take 

For community-based organizations and affordable housing providers 

• Envision what a just recovery looks like for your community.  

• Create a Just Recovery Plan that highlights what you know your community needs now and will need in the wake of a disaster.  

• Bring up your ideas of just recovery in meetings with local government when discussing the Pre-Disaster Recovery Plan, General Plan, Hazard Mitigation Plan, and Emergency Operations Plan. 

For local government 

• Partner with community-based organizations and affordable housing providers to learn how to work together to achieve a just recovery.  

• Incorporate just recovery into all disaster and climate action plans. 

• Investigate just recovery asks coming from community members and see how to incorporate them into practice now.  

• Hold other organizations accountable for achieving a just recovery in the wake of a disaster. For example, ensure that any contracts for recovery efforts incorporate the just recovery model into their scope of work.  

For philanthropy  

• Support community-based organizations and affordable housing providers in creating and sharing their just recovery ideas.  

• Ensure that your disaster-related grantmaking is supporting organizations and groups that have a just recovery philosophy. 

• Share about just recovery with your networks.  

• Fund ideas in just recovery proposals from community-based organizations.