Photo by whitehouse.gov
This week, President Joe Biden demonstrated what it means to put country first as he withdrew his candidacy from the 2024 presidential election and passed the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.
When he assumed office, Biden was faced with multiple competing crises – including climate change, racial injustice and a pandemic – and he didn’t waste any time getting to work for the American people. The Biden administration has done far more to address the climate crisis and environmental injustice than any previous administration. Substantial contributions to improving access to the healing power of nature are among those accomplishments.
In his first one-hundred days alone, President Biden moved to reinstate a highly impactful, if little known, park equity program that had been eliminated by the Trump administration. The Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) program is the primary federal funding source for parks and recreation projects in communities who have been historically disinvested in, like the City of Mobile, Alabama which used ORLP funds to transform Three Mile Creek into a greenway in a low-income community of color with limited recreation opportunities. Supplementing that was the $1.5 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) investment in the U.S. Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forestry Program (UCFP), funding tree-planting projects to combat extreme heat and improve air quality in historically underserved communities lacking nature access.
Building on these achievements, the Biden-Harris administration also brought together multiple committees and groups to address key equity issues like historical disinvestment and derogatory names. A first of its kind, the interagency Nature in Communities Committee has been working to build off the historic investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the IRA to bring more of nature’s benefits to communities. Under the Biden administration, a Task Force to address gaps in outdoor access for the veteran community was established and is currently developing a plan to improve the health and wellness of our veterans through deeper connections with the lands they served to defend. President Biden also reinstated the Federal Interagency Council on Outdoor Recreation (FICOR) which had been disbanded during the Trump administration and will support expanded access and recreation opportunities on our public lands. Recognizing that racist names have no place on America’s public lands, the Biden administration assembled a Task Force and an Advisory Committee to support the removal and replacement of derogatory names across our federal lands. The administration’s work is underway. For example, the word “sq..w,” which has been used to demean Native American women, has been declared a derogatory term and begun the process of removing it from 660 places on federally managed public lands.
The Biden administration has also made great strides in protecting public lands and waters, including establishing the America the Beautiful initiative to restore, connect and conserve at least 30% of our lands and waters by 2030. Biden is well ahead of recent presidents in restoring 3, expanding 2, and establishing 5 new national monuments during his first term, including Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley, and the expansion of San Gabriel Mountains. Together these designations honor Indigenous connections to the land and longstanding stewardship, help tell the stories of America as part of our public lands system, and recognize the importance of equitable access to protected natural areas for nearby communities. And after 40 years of prioritizing resource extraction, Biden’s Bureau of Land Management made a commitment to conservation, putting the protection of our public lands on equal footing with other land uses.
Investment in youth has been another priority of the Biden administration, including reviving an important program to connect children with our national parks and federally managed lands, waters and shores, after near elimination during the Trump administration. Now the Every Kid Outdoors program is on the rebound, helping to introduce a new generation of children to our parks and public lands, providing critical education opportunities. The Biden administration can make sure more fourth graders can enjoy our parks and public lands by directing resources to the Every Kid Outdoors program and shining a spotlight on the program to let families, teachers and other care-givers know about this incredible opportunity for their kids. Biden also created the American Climate Corps which is putting more than 20,000 young people on a pathway to jobs that will address our climate crisis, protect our planet and strengthen our communities. With resources made available through the IRA, young people can learn more about the environment while working on a variety of projects from coastal resilience to urban tree planting to clean energy.
The Biden administration also dedicated resources to connecting more communities with resources, public lands, and their own neighborhoods. With investments from the IRA, the Biden administration piloted a program to reconnect communities and neighborhoods that have been racially segregated and cut off from services by previous road and infrastructure projects. The Reconnecting Communities program is repairing harm caused by roadways built through lower-income and Black communities during the 1950s as part of the establishment of our interstate highway system. Solutions are many and include parks and greenways to bridge these historic divides. Biden’s administration also took important action to increase access to national parks and improve options to get there in a pollution-free ride, including the electrification of public transit fleets, building more electric vehicle charging stations, and increasing the number of shared bikes and scooters.
Underscoring all of these efforts, President Biden, for the first time in history, set a goal to ensure 40% of the overall benefits made available through the BIL and the IRA go to communities that have been marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution and environmental injustice. The Justice40 Initiative is at the center of all of these outdoor equity commitments and is critical to ensure that communities suffering first and worst from climate change are at the front of the line to receive funds for their community-based solutions.
President Biden’s legacy demonstrates that he did more to protect our planet than any president in history, leaving an undeniable mark on our nation and cementing his legacy for decades to come. With six months to go, it’s clear that the full story of his legacy has room to grow.