A recently released New York Times article, titled Why Does Disaster Aid Often Favor White People?, sheds light on federal funding inequities in natural disaster recovery. While researchers don’t think FEMA is intentionally discriminatory, systemic inequities are built into their process – for example, challenges associated with navigating federal bureaucracy, municipal finance, and a reliance on an already imbalanced real estate market.
This inequity comes as climate change fuels more frequent and destructive disasters that have a disproportionate impact on marginalized communities, making it even more vital that inequity is addressed. This story reveals how essential it is for the conservation sector to ferret out the inequities embedded in government rules, regulations, and funding in order to build more equitable funding systems.
[Photo credit: New York Times]
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