Defending and Leveraging Public Climate & Environmental Justice Data

What Is The Issue?

Authors:

Kelsie Fowler, Philip bell & Deb L. Morrison | NOVEMBER 2025

Thank you to: Public Environmental Data Project, Data Rescue Project, End of Term Archive, Silencing Science Tracker, Climate Deregulation Tracker, STAT, ESRI, ClimateLiteracy.earth, and Climate.us

Things To Consider

There are many republished databases, tools, and guides that climate and environmental educators should know about and use to pull real data into lessons for students to explore. Here are some reshared through the coalition Public Environmental Data Partners and other groups:

• National Climate Assessments (NCAs) offer guidance and insight into the impacts of climate change in the U.S. (e.g., projected sea level rise, responses to wildfire smoke exposure). There is a searchable atlas and other resources on effects of climate change in specific places.
• County Level CDC Environmental Justice Index Map Series allows you to run a report to get statistics on the environmental, social, and climate burdens and health vulnerabilities and indicators by county census tracts.
• Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool is an interactive map that identifies communities across the U.S. that have experienced underinvestment and are overburdened by pollution. It includes racial and socioeconomic demographic data as well as data on issues and services related to climate change, energy, health, housing, legacy pollution, transportation, water and waste, and workforce development.
• FEMA’s Future Risk Index is a tool that shows the economic impact of natural hazards and climate change on U.S. communities. It includes low- and high-emissions scenarios and demonstrates the real impact of anthropogenic climate change on counties across the nation.
• Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool is an interactive map that compares environmental data and projections between specific census tracts and the state or nation to identify areas of concern. It makes it easy to identify areas at higher risk for health disparities, critical service gaps, exposure to different environmental pollutants, and impacts of the changing climate. Some states have localized tools for EJ.

Attending to Equity

• Limiting access to climate and environmental data and knowledge is impacting how we can equitably plan for, mitigate, and respond to socio-ecological disasters and slow violence (details)—and will have long-lasting ramifications.
• The attempted erasure of climate and environmental knowledge undermines the justification for initiatives and projects aimed at helping low-income and minority-majority communities that are already disproportionately impacted by slow violence from ecological destruction and pollution, weather emergencies, or other natural disasters.
• Scientific data play an important role in learning about and responding to the world around us. We need to leverage equity and justice frames that call for Sustainable Futures Through STEM. Explore other frames in the NASEM STEM Ed Equity report; see STT #101 for details.

Recommended Actions You Can Take

• Create K-12 learning opportunities that leverage public data that integrate with school curricula and educational standards. Promoting data literacy today requires digital tools—such as storymaps and data visualizations (e.g., Keeling Curve Data, NOAA Sea Level Rise Viewer, Billion Dollar Disaster and Climate Disaster Maps & Drawdown Explorer).
• Learn about ongoing data erasure and disinformation efforts happening in the United States and how this will affect mitigation and adaptation efforts by changing or defunding historic data sets (e.g., efforts trying to defund Mauna Loa Observatory). Celebrate the scientists and organizations protecting the datasets (e.g., Keeling Curve Foundation).
• Explore pedagogical approaches and research protocols for using, collecting, and making sense of public/community data with your students—participatory data analysis, citizen science, street data, etc.

ALSO SEE STEM TEACHING TOOLS

• #56 Computational Thinking
• #87 Environmental Justice Phenomena
• #97 Climate Justice Education
• #102 Climate Literacy