People Places Planet

Welcome to People Places Planet, ELI's leading environmental podcast. We talk to leading experts across sectors who share their solutions to the world's most pressing environmental problems. Tune in for the latest environmental law, policy, and governance developments.

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More than 30 years ago, roughly 1,100 people attended the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., to discuss the environmental injustices they were experiencing in their communities. Considered by many as the birth of the environmental justice movement, the four-day summit concluded with the adoption of the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice, still relevant today. In this episode, ELI’s Arielle King meets with key organizers and leaders of the historical summit: Vernice Miller-Travis and Charles Lee. The episode is part of the Groundtruth series created in partnership with Beveridge & Diamond, one of the nation’s leading environmental law firms. 

ELI’s Climate Judiciary Project bridges the gap between the climate science community and the judiciary, providing judges with neutral, objective information about the science of climate change. In this episode, ELI Research Associate Heather Luedke talks to Sandy Nichols Thiam, ELI’s Director of Judicial Education, and Dr. Paul Hanle, the Project Founder, to learn more. 

As the Agency responsible for protecting human health and the environment across the entirety of the United States, EPA has developed EJSCREEN, a mapping and screening tool that combines environmental and demographic data to highlight areas with potential environmental justice concerns. In February, EPA released EJSCREEN 2.0, adding new indicators and datasets to the tool. In this episode, Nicole Noelliste, a managing associate in the environmental practice at Sidley Austin LLP, talks to Matthew Tejada, Director of EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, and Tai Lung, also with EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, to learn about EJSCREEN 2.0.

Linda Breggin, a Senior Attorney at ELI and Director of ELI’s Center for State, Tribal and Local Environmental Programs, talks to Professors Monte Mills and Martin Nie about their article, Bridges to a New Era: A Report on the Past, Present, and Potential Future of Tribal Co-Management on Federal Public Lands. In it, they posit that the United States can meaningfully connect public land law to the federal government’s long-standing trust-based and treaty-based responsibility to promote the sovereign and cultural interests of Native Nations and enhance and engage in a new era of tribal co-management across the federal public land system. The article received honorable mention in this year’s Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review (ELPAR), a 15-year collaboration between ELI and Vanderbilt University Law School. Vanderbilt Law students Connor Kridle and Thomas Boynton join in on the conversation.

As climate change impacts become more visible and the urgency for climate action continues, it is important to remember that we need to address emissions from all sectors, not just from fossil fuels. In this episode, we dig into the policies, legal reforms, and actions the United States should undertake to make the agricultural industry carbon neutral. 

Interest and urgency in advancing environmental justice (EJ) has gained new momentum. As such, it is becoming increasingly important for companies to proactively address EJ issues. How might companies’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) commitments strengthen and work in tandem with EJ initiatives?  In this episode, Stacey Sublett Halliday and Julius Redd of Beveridge & Diamond recap recent EJ policy developments and then talk with Matthew Tejada, Director of EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, and Samantha Phillips Beers, Director of the EPA Region III Office of Communities, Tribes, and Environmental Assessment, about the intersection of EJ and ESG. The episode is part of the Groundtruth series created in partnership with Beveridge & Diamond, one of the nation’s leading environmental law firms.

This past spring, the Environmental Law Institute released A Toolkit for Incorporating Food Waste in Municipal Climate Action Plans, which provides municipalities and stakeholders with model provisions that will make it easier to incorporate food waste measures into municipal climate action plans. In this episode, ELI’s Linda Breggin and Akielly Hu speak to contributors to the report, Kendra Abromowitz, Chief Sustainability and Resilience Officer at Metro Nashville/Davidson County, and Darby Hoover, a Senior Resource Specialist at the NRDC. 

On February 14, ELI launched the Pro Bono Clearinghouse to ensure that communities with viable environmental legal matters get the representation they need, whether that be in a courtroom, in front of an agency, or in a more facilitative or consultative fashion. In this episode, Kristine Perry, a staff attorney at ELI, is joined by Scott Wilson Badenoch Jr., a Visiting Attorney at ELI, and Arielle King, ELI’s Environmental Justice Staff Attorney, to talk about ELI’s newest environmental justice initiative and how it works. 

Environmental Justice (EJ) has gained new momentum in recent years, amplified by a global focus on social justice, climate, and equity. Yet this new-found energy and focus on environmental is best understood through the lens of those who have been working toward EJ for decades. In this episode, John Cruden, a Principal at Beveridge & Diamond, talks to renowned EJ leader and advocate Benjamin F. Wilson. Ben, who recently retired after serving years as Chairman of Beveridge & Diamond, has deep experience with EJ representations and is a recognized leader on diversity, equity and inclusion issues in the legal profession.