A New Strategy for Equity and Environmental Justice at NOAA Fisheries

A New Strategy for Equity and Environmental Justice at NOAA Fisheries

00:00:00 (John Sheehan)
For the first time, NOAA Fisheries has drafted a national, comprehensive strategy around equity and environmental justice, which sounds great. But what exactly does that mean?

00:00:11 (Sam Rauch)
Equity is the consistent and systemic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals including those from underserved communities that have been denied such treatment.

00:00:20 (John Sheehan)
Right. And environmental justice is.

00:00:23 (Sam Rauch)
The fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people during the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.

00:00:32 (John Sheehan)
Mm hmm, okay.

00:00:34 (Sam Rauch)
Those are the official definitions. But even those I recognize are a little bit vague.

00:00:39 (Dr. Danika Kleiber)
At the very basic core, we’re talking about fairness.

00:00:42 (John Sheehan)
And while fairness and equity have always been a part of NOAA Fisheries mission, codified in legislation such as the Magnuson Stevens Act, recent executive orders have made equity and environmental justice, or EEJ, a priority.

00:00:56 (President of the United States Joseph R. Biden)
When I became president, one of the first things I did, I signed an executive order to advance equality and racial justice throughout our federal policies and all our institutions.

00:01:06 (John Sheehan)
This is Dive In with NOAA Fisheries. I’m John Sheehan. And today we’re going to unpack just what this draft strategy means, who it impacts, and how you can contribute and help refine it. Because after all, that’s sort of the whole point of its existence, giving everyone a seat at the table.

00:01:23 (Sam Rauch)
The strategy we’ve laid out here is both certain statements of principles, but also actions that we propose to take.

00:01:29 (John Sheehan)
This is my first guest, Sam Rauch, NOAA Fisheries Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, and the leadership lead for EEJ Strategy. Sam Rauch, welcome to Dive In with NOAA Fisheries. Thanks so much.
00:01:41 (Sam Rauch)
Thanks for having me.

00:01:42 (John Sheehan)
Let’s talk about a little of this stuff in the context of NOAA Fisheries. Who are some of the underserved and marginalized communities that we’re talking about? Who are going to be the subjects of the strategy?

00:01:55 (Sam Rauch)
Well the first part of the strategy is a recognition of ourselves, sometimes we don’t know the answer to that question. Many times, you create equity and environmental justice situations because you don’t know the communities you are impacting with your actions. In our strategy we talk about the various barriers. And the first one is not knowing who the actual underserved communities are. The President has given a long list of underserved communities which I’m not going to read here. Different racial groups, different economic groups, different other kinds of groups, anybody who has historically been underserved by the government could be a part of this. One of the things that we do in fisheries, is we look at the economic impact of what we’re doing with fishing regulations. We are closing an area. Who uses that area? There are economic stratifications that you can look at. And we actually do have a group of folks that look at the fishing community along the economic spectrum. And some of them are, you know, above the poverty line, and some are of them are below the poverty line.

00:02:53
Many times, indigenous groups are an example of an underserved community like territorial islanders both in the Caribbean and the Pacific. When we look at the way we make decisions in the Federal Government we’re also looking at the biggest bang for the buck that we can get. Which we tend to focus areas where there are a lot of people, and there’s a lot of economic development. The Territorial Islands is a very important area for us and for them. But in terms of the economic numbers, it pales in comparison to some of our other areas. And so historically we have not given as much resources. We have not done fishery surveys out there or had the same level of services out there as we have elsewhere. That’s an underserved community. There are reasons why it came to be but one of the things we want to look at is can we bring more of the NOAA goods and services to those areas where we traditionally have not?

00:03:45
Fishing is critically important to the people that live there even if in terms of the gross domestic product they are not as important commercially as say, Alaska or something like that.

00:03:56 (John Sheehan)
And why is now the time for this strategy? What was the urgency in making this the moment?

00:04:03 (Sam Rauch)
Well, we’ve always had a requirement to look at environmental justice. But equity has been a particular focus of this administration. And on the first day of this administration the President issued a number of Executive Orders that talk about equity and making sure that we incorporate equity. So, we not only had a long term need to do this, but we had an administration that is looking to this as something that we have traditionally not focused on enough and we need to start focusing on. This fits very well within the President’s Executive Orders on equity. Which is why this was a good time to do these kinds of things. If you look at the actions that are in here, many of these actions are actions that we’ve done in a non-strategic kind of way. We’ve just done them. So, I don’t want to leave the impression that we were ignoring environmental justice or equity issues. But we were not being very strategic about it. These are things that are part of our mission but not the highlight of our mission.

00:05:01
We wanted to bring them more to the fore with this strategy.

00:05:04 (John Sheehan)
Yeah. And in a document, there’s highlighting of current actions and a lot of discussion of expanding actions or identifying ways to improve upon certain programs.

00:05:14 (Sam Rauch)
That’s right. The issues of equity and environmental justice are things that we have been doing. They are part of our authorities. We haven’t brought them to the fore. And many of them have been things that we’ve just done. Like I mentioned the social indicative working group, which is how we address these economic factors of communities. We’ve been doing that without the context of equity. But now we can put it in the context of underserved communities, what are we actually trying to look at. But we do recognize that we ourselves lack expertise. So, one of the actions in there is to create training and expertise in equity and environmental justice so we can better do this. Language has been a big barrier for many of our things. And so, we do, in certain areas of the country translate our documents to match the fishing community’s needs. That’s been not strategic though. We’re looking at it now can we start doing this as a more regular process not as an ad hoc process as we are unable to do that.

00:06:10
We’ve been trying to get more resources to do science surveys in the territories for a number of years. This allows us to put those together in a strategic way and then nest it within our overall structure. One of the biggest issues with underserved communities is the ability to participate in the process themselves. The U.S. Fishery management process is built around the idea that you can come in and represent and argue in these Fishery Management Councils for the quota. It’s somewhat of a legislative body. But if you can’t go to the meeting or sit at the table, then your issues are not going to be highlighted for them. How would they know? But many of these underserved communities, they’re underserved because they don’t have a lot of luxury to be able to travel to these meetings. And one of the things we learned about COVID, and amidst of all the very difficult things about COVID, is we learned how to do virtual meetings.

00:07:09
So, we can get participation to a much broader suite of people than we used to be able to do. Still, that’s still a barrier to many people. But it is not nearly the barrier of having to go to an in-person public meeting. The expansion to participation that has come in the last few years, allowing access of these groups to the decision making process is something we don’t want to lose. But this is an example of things that we have been doing that we want to build on and expand on.

00:07:39 (John Sheehan)
Can we talk about the three big goals of the strategy? Identification, equitable delivery of services, and prioritizing equity, environmental justice, in the existing work. You mentioned earlier the identification of these communities. So, let’s talk about the equitable delivery of services. What is that?

00:07:57 (Sam Rauch)
We talked a little bit about that in terms of our science capability. We go out and we will do surveys. We work with other elements of NOAA to run fishery surveys, to look at what the fish are off the coast. That directly ties into how much fish you can catch. That ties into a lot of other metrics about ocean health. We have other services. We offer certain loans. We offer certain financial services. We engage in habitat restoration. And are we engaging in habitat restoration projects just where the affluents who are willing to partner with us, are we looking at various underserved communities and trying to partner with them? Are we spreading that out equitably? Or are we focusing unintentionally so in certain areas of the country? And then prioritizing E&J in our mandated mission and work, we have mandates under the Fisheries Act. We regulate fisheries off the coast. And we have to make sure that we allocate fishing privileges. And so, if we have to close an area are we disproportionately impacting an underserved community in closing that to the benefit of some higher community?

00:09:01
There’s a lot of things in our work that we do in terms of our mission that we want to highlight EEJ as a reason for doing them. So, say we have to do a fisheries closed area. We often have choices as to where we close those areas. And are you going to close them offshore where you have big, industrial fishing vessels that go offshore and you can have a great economic impact, or closer to shore where it may be the economic impact is less but what you get there is people who go out and fish and much smaller boats not to sell the fish, but to bring them home for, you know, their monthly food budget. You know, every Friday we’re going to have the fish that we caught. And so, if you close that area, economically it will look just fine. It will look like the best decision to make but it’s because we didn’t account for that kind of use of the area that was important and was being used by an underserved community.

00:10:02
So, that’s a negative consequence that could disproportionately impact unknowingly an underserved community. And so, first of all, identifying where that’s happening. Is that happening? Taking that into account in decision making, figuring out how to balance that out against some of the colder economic numbers. You want to make sure that you are not disproportionately or unintentionally disadvantaging an underserved community. Usually, it’s unintentional because we just don’t know.

00:10:29 (John Sheehan)
So, then what would success look like to you? What would you most like to see as the result of this?

00:10:37 (Sam Rauch)
So, that’s, it’s not a simple question because there are a lot of different things that we deal with. But I do look at some big picture things that I would like to see. One is I would like our science to be spread more equitably to some of the other areas which have traditionally been underserved. I mention the territories. That is for me, is a particular place that I would like to see us invest more. We’ve been trying to invest more. This gives us a reason to do that. I would like to see, through the fishery management process, underserved communities be better represented in terms of participation but also in terms of decision making. Fishery management process has council members which the governors appoint. So, there is an ability to not only have more participatory rights in terms of raising issues, but also deciding issues. I’d like to see a transition to a more representative body in a Fishery Management Council through this process.

00:11:32
I would like to be able to understand better historically what we have done in terms of fishing privileges. We’ve done remarkable in the last two decades in terms of environmental sustainability. Our fishery management back in the eighties and late seventies led to a lot of overfishing, unsustainable practices. And we brought the fisheries into a better footing where almost all of our fisheries are sustainable; they provide consistent input into the economics. But it probably has been at a cost to some of these underserved communities as we have tightened up on the environmental regime and better met our objectives, what have we done to the communities that are out there? And I’d like to better understand that at least. And then work to correct that into the future. So, some of, those are some of the things that I would like to see. Recognizing though, this policy touches a great many things.

00:12:30
If you’re looking at concrete outcomes there’s a number of different outcomes that you could come up with. The ones I listed that are important to me, but they’re not the only ones that are important to the fishery service. There are other ones out there and nested within the policy that we would like to make progress on.

00:12:44 (John Sheehan)
Sam Raugh, thanks so much for talking with me.

00:12:46 (Sam Rauch)
Thank you. Happy to do so.

00:12:49 (John Sheehan)
Sam Rauch is NOAA Fisheries Deputy Administrator for Regulatory Programs and the leadership lead in creating the Equity and Environmental Justice Strategy. As you probably got a sense from Sam, the strategy is a big document built from the feedback and experiences from all around the agency.

00:13:09 (Dr. Danika Kleiber)
We sent out a call to all the regional offices, all the regions, all those science centers and offices, and asked them okay, what are you already doing? And so, we made this beautiful spreadsheet. I like spreadsheets. And we categorized those programs. And that’s actually how we developed the objectives.

00:13:26 (John Sheehan)
That’s my next guest, Doctor Danika Kleiber, a social scientist with the Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center and the Co-Chair along with Abigail Harley of the EEJ Working Group. I wanted to learn a little more about the nuts and bolts of the draft strategy which, by the way, is open to public comment now. We’ll talk a little bit more about that later.

00:13:47 (Dr. Danika Kleiber)
A lot of people think about diversity equity inclusion when they’re thinking about this but that’s a little bit different and that’s a distinction I like to make. So, diversity equity inclusion is usually very focused inward on our institution making sure that our workplace is fair. Equity and Environmental Justice is very much more external making sure that the work we do with communities, the benefits we provide communities, the way we interact with communities is fair.

00:14:12 (John Sheehan)
The draft is broken down by goals, big, big buckets and then into smaller sort of sub-categories of objectives, sort of milestones. What is the difference between sort of how you see a goal and these objectives?

00:14:26 (Dr. Danika Kleiber)
For me, the goal is what’s out on the horizon. That’s our destination. That’s what we’re trying to get to. And the objectives are the roadmap for how we would get there. They give more specific and concrete ideas about how to reach those goals. You know instead of just telling everybody okay, do equity. We wanted to have more specific ways in which that could be done.

00:14:49 (John Sheehan)
And we’ll get into more of those specifics in a second. One of the objectives that sort of spans each of them is empowering environment. Wouldn’t that span all of the objectives? And what is an empowering environment?

00:15:01 (Dr. Danika Kleiber)
So, it spans all the objectives because it’s sort of the underpinning of everything. There has been research that shows that support by leadership is one of the most important components of making sure that DENI or EEJ gets enacted within our institutions. We’re really lucky that we’ve had an enormous amount of support from NOAA Fisheries leadership on this initiative. And then from that it’s also about the institutionalization of equity and environmental justice practices into everyday work we do. So, this could include things such as training, making sure that we have enough people trained in this, having staff time allocated to this type of work, having expertise. Equity and Environmental Justice isn’t just something that you can, you know, do without having some thought through it. And there are people who are experts in this. Also, for example, for having people embedded in the communities as liaisons to improve those relationships.

00:15:59
And my personal favorite is demographic data collection analysis and reporting, which is just basic data that we need to be able to have that cycle of monitoring and assessment.

00:16:11 (John Sheehan)
Yeah. And I’ll add to that language translation which, these were all part of this sort of like basic need. These are the things we need across all these categories to even sort of get the work done. And I appreciate that those were called out.

00:16:24 (Dr. Danika Kleiber)
Yes, thank you for bringing up translations. That’s one of the things that as we did this rollout some of the working group members mentioned like we’re working on equity and environmental justice, but the strategy draft is only in English. Can we do something about that? And so, we did something about that. So, it’s now translated. The Executive Summary is translated into over ten different languages. It’s available on the website. And the entire draft strategy is translated into Spanish. So, we’re trying to do the work as we roll this out.

00:16:53 (John Sheehan)
So, let’s give some examples of some real actions and solutions that speak to these objectives. An objective is creating equity in research and researching equity. What does that entail?

00:17:08 (Dr. Danika Kleiber)
A lot of what that entails is actually the process of how we do research. So, first and foremost we need to make sure that we’re asking the right questions. And what it means is actually working with fishing communities and collaborating with other organizations such as Tribal Councils and territorial fishing agencies to figure out what their priorities are, what their research needs are because even so my example: based in Honolulu I may not have all the information I need to be able to know what the best question is for American Samoa or for Guam. So, again it’s about meeting communities where they are and asking them what kind of data do you need? What kind of data should we work on together? That’s the first step. The other thing is making sure that underserved communities are included in the data we collect. So, before I came to NOAA I was hired as an expert on gender and small scale fisheries.

00:18:01
So, I’m always the first one to ask like did you talk to women too? But again, we should also be asking are we only talking to boat captains? Maybe we should talk to the crew. What about the processing plant workers? Because we know that fisheries are made up of more than just fishermen. And fisheries regulations impact more than just fishermen. And so, our research needs to really reflect that.

00:18:23 (John Sheehan)
And what I like a lot in the draft strategy is also that you list not just actions, but also ways of measuring those actions. So, could you give me an example of a way that you would measure research?

00:18:39 (Dr. Danika Kleiber)
So, one way to measure is what kind of research actually goes through that process is community consultation to begin with, making that a normal part of the process. So, public inclusion. But I think often times we tend as a metric of success we tend to measure how many meetings we’re having. And one of the things that was suggested through this process is maybe don’t measure just the meetings. Maybe ask people how satisfied they are with the research process and what we could do to improve it. So, I think having that feedback, that public feedback into our research as well would be an important part of measuring the success of our programs.

00:19:14 (John Sheehan)
Let’s talk about another objective which would be outreach, which I think is related to research but different. Outreach and engagement, what actions can be taken there?

00:19:25 (Dr. Danika Kleiber)
This is an area where NOAA Fisheries has actually made the most headway, or at least where equity and environmental justice needs have been best articulated. Again, meeting communities where they are. So, making sure materials are translated, making sure they’re 508 compliant, making sure there’s cultural literacy so that the process of community meetings meets the local needs, the cultural expectations. And one example we have is when people are awake just getting started in Washington D.C. it’s the middle of the night in Guam, right. So, be careful about your meeting times. I’ve been asked, I’m based in Honolulu, I’ve been asked more meetings than I can count I think you know at six a.m. So, just being conscious of when you hold your meetings. Often times it’s really important to hold meetings outside working hours because the people we want to be at the meetings, they work full time. They’re busy fishing. So, just being more flexible in those types of areas.

00:20:22 (John Sheehan)
Let’s talk about one more, which is inclusive governance. And that sounds to me like including these community members in the process.

00:20:31 (Dr. Danika Kleiber)
Absolutely. When EPA defines environmental justice, they really spelled out that it includes meaningful involvement. And what they mean by that is that people that would be impacted by the decisions that we make, the research that we do, that those people have an opportunity to participate in the decisions, in the activities that are affecting them. And that their public contribution actually informs the decisions that we make. And also, that we will actively seek out and facilitate the involvement of all of those potentially affected. So again, this goes back to identifying underserved communities and making sure they’re at the table.

00:21:10 (John Sheehan)
And so, during this process of discovery and research did you come across any stories or any examples of communities or issues that sort of exemplify that need of “I’m really glad we’re doing this.”

00:21:21 (Dr. Danika Kleiber)
Yeah. So, one of the things that we come across is that in the Magnuson Stevens Act there’s sort of this dichotomy of fisheries. It’s commercial or recreational. And this has been recognized in Pacific Island Region as an issue. So, fishers here will say like, we don’t play with our food. But we’re not selling our fish. So, we know that there’s lots of other reasons that people fish in federal waters. But they’re not necessarily being included or counted for in the fisheries management that we do. My colleague Doctor Kirsten Leong has been leading the effort to provide guidance on how to improve our policies to include more types of fishing. And this can include, again going back to what questions we asked. So, for an example in recent meetings with the American Samoa Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources they expressed the importance of the local fishery to local food security. This isn’t something that we currently track on. You know, this is suggested we might be missing a crucial understanding of the importance of these fisheries and how it’s valued.

00:22:20
And so, how do we include that in management decisions?

00:22:24 (John Sheehan)
Well, Doctor Danika Kleiber thanks so much for talking with me.

00:22:28 (Dr. Danika Kleiber)
Thank you.

00:22:29 (John Sheehan)
Doctor Danika Kleiber is a Social Scientist with the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center and the Co-Chair along with Abigail Harley of the EEJ Working Group. The Draft Equity and Environmental Justice Strategy is open now for public comment through August thirty first. You can learn more, read the draft, and leave comments at our website: fisheries.noaa.gov.
I’m John Sheehan. And this has been Dive In with NOAA Fisheries.

00:22:58 (Podcast Ends)