Environmental Justice in Forest Management Decision-Making: Challenges and Opportunities in California

In response to the wildfire crisis across the American West, governments are increasing investments in forest health. Guidelines for these investments often include environmental justice (EJ) provisions. However, current processes for addressing EJ aren’t consistently meeting the needs of communities in forested areas. We analyze one source of wildfire mitigation funds in California, Forest Health Grants, to assess its adherence to distributive, procedural, and Indigenous aspects of EJ. We find that this program is not necessarily serving “disadvantaged” communities according to the State’s definition. We argue that current metrics for identifying “disadvantaged” communities don’t fully capture rural complexity, including the praxis of procedural and Indigenous EJ, respectively. We propose a rubric to evaluate projects along socioecological criteria and address EJ holistically via partnership building, long-term commitment to place, local capacity building, and mobilization of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. This rubric may also benefit other funding processes across California and other states.