Advocates fear billions in Inflation Reduction Act money won’t reach targeted communities.    With billions of dollars in tax credits and federal grants up for grabs in the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, community-led organizations and grassroots environmental advocacy groups in Louisiana could finally get money to help reduce electricity bills, fortify homes against natural disasters and reduce pollution in underserved communities.That’s if the money trickles down to where it’s supposed to go. Environmental justice advocates and community organizers are worried the money won’t be spent for the communities intended to receive the money. Andreanecia Morris, president and chairwoman of the Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance, is more blunt. She is concerned state policymakers will set impossible parameters meant to block certain segments of the population from getting too much money or none at all.  Morris says often an anti-Black, anti woman “welfare-queen” stereotype is used to block money to Black, minority and lower-income communities. ”They’ll say we’re trying to prevent fraud and abuse while paying disaster profiteers millions of dollars to administer these programs but not actually get the money out the door,” Morris said.  It’s happened before. In 2010, a federal judge criticized Louisiana’s Road Home Program for discriminating against Black homeowners seeking federal grants to rebuild their homes after Hurricane Katrina. An audit later found that nearly $800 million in federal dollars went unused in that program.  “We saw a significant amount of Katrina money get wrapped into disaster capitalism,” said Ashley Shelton, chief executive officer and founder of the voter engagement and community advocacy organization Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, which is helping community-based groups articulate what they want from the IRA money and is also holding “the people getting those dollars accountable to push them down into these communities.”  Of the approximately estimated $60 billion in available grants and loans in the Inflation Reduction Act intended for underserved, low-income communities, only $16 billion of that money may make it to its intended target, according to a recent report from the Indigenous Environmental Network. Environmental justice activists say the small community groups the funds are intended to help may not have enough staff or financial resources to pursue the grants and loans, which are spread over 100 separate programs, with different rules and under government agencies. https://lailluminator.com/2023/10/25/inflation-reduction-act/

Designers and architects must start prioritising human rights in their work. Upcoming human-rights due diligence laws mean that European companies will finally be held accountable for human-rights violations along the supply chain. This will directly link our design decisions to the dignity and welfare of workers along distribution channels worldwide and revolutionise how we design products and buildings. Germany's new act on corporate due diligence to prevent human-rights violations in the supply chain came into effect on 1 January 2023 and is closely followed by a similar EU directive expected to come into effect around 2025. European companies will finally be held accountable for human-rights violations along the supply chain. Intellectual-property laws that enable companies to withhold information about their supply chains in the interest of commercial competitiveness currently make it difficult to trace materials back to the source. The new supply chain law from Germany and soon the EU will require large companies to publish information about sustainability and human-rights due diligence – meaning that for the first time, the sources of the materials in products and buildings will become public knowledge. Monitoring mechanisms can help designers choose their source companies, but on their own are not enough. Internal monitoring usually serves to raise brand awareness, not to highlight a brand's lack of human-rights protection. Meanwhile, one of the independent Corporate Human Rights Benchmark's leading iron-ore mining companies recently committed human-rights violations by destroying an indigenous site tens of thousands of years old..The question is why human-rights violations occur in the supply chain in the first place. We can trace it back to the logic of extractivism, which is a continuation of the colonial logic of extraction and exploitation of resources – including labour and raw materials – for the benefit of specific economic goals. Examples of human-rights violations present in the extractivist logic of the supply chain include forced displacement, modern slavery, child labour, and death.  Today, more than half of the world's 100 largest economies are not states, but corporations. And because international human-rights laws, treaties and standards have so far been a contract to hold states accountable for their actions, corporations have so far been immune to international human-rights standards.  Today, more than half of the world's 100 largest economies are not states, but corporations. And because international human-rights laws, treaties and standards have so far been a contract to hold states accountable for their actions, corporations have so far been immune to international human-rights standards. It is thanks to extractivist logic that steel companies are among the largest corporations and economies in the world. Today's version of extractivist logic can be partly traced back to the 1990s, when a whole swarm of free-trade agreements emerged under the umbrella of the World Trade Organisation. The mechanisms created are still used today by corporations to legally and completely undermine and disregard all codified and substantive anti-discriminatory international human-rights treaties and laws. Of particular interest is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism (ISDS). The ISDS mechanism essentially gives corporations the ability to challenge through legal action any new national policies of host countries – including domestic labour laws mandating decent working conditions or environmental regulations limiting air and water pollution – if they could reduce the corporation's expected profits.         https://www.dezeen.com/2023/10/11/human-rights-talia-radford-opinion/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Dezeen&utm_content=Daily%20Dezeen+CID_

 'Heat islands': racist housing policies in US linked to deadly heatwave exposure. Deadly ‘heat islands’ which have fewer green spaces and tree canopy linked to racist policies in urban neighborhoods       Deadly urban heatwaves disproportionately affect underserved neighbourhoods because of the legacy of racist housing policies which have denied African Americans home ownership and basic public services, a landmark new study has found. Extreme heat kills hundreds of people in the US every year – more than any other hazardous weather event, including hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Heatwaves have been occurring more frequently since the mid-20th century, and are expected to become more common, more severe and longer-lasting due to the climate crisis. However, exposure to extreme heat is unequal: temperatures in different neighborhoods within the same city can vary by 20F. It is mostly lower-income households and communities of color who live in these urban “heat islands” which have historically had fewer green spaces and tree canopy, and more concrete and pavements and thus are less equipped to cope with the mounting effects of global heating. This new study reveals how current temperature disparities echo the legacy of past racially motivated town planning. Urban neighborhoods denied municipal services and support for home ownership during the mid-20th century are now the hottest areas in 94% of the 108 cities analysed by researchers at Portland State University and the Science Museum of Virginia.  “This systematic pattern suggests a woefully negligent planning system that hyper-privileges richer and whiter communities,” said Vivek Shandas, professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University who authors the paper. The study, published today in the journal Climate, is the first to examine the link between historical housing policies to disproportionate exposure to current deadly heatwaves. “As climate change brings hotter, more frequent and longer heatwaves, the same historically underserved neighborhoods – often where lower-income households and communities of color still live – will face the greatest impact,” Shandas added.

Globally, temperatures have been rising since the beginning of the 20th century, with 18 of the 19 warmest years on record occurring since 2001. Each year, more than 600 Americans die and 65,000 or so seek emergency medical care for excessive heat exposure. As heatwaves become increasingly frequent and severe, scientists expect to see anincrease in deaths and illnesses, particularly among vulnerable groups such as children, the elderly, economically disadvantaged communities, and those with pre-existing conditions like heart disease, asthma and diabetes This new study examined the difference between historic “redlining” and current heat islands. Beginning in the 1930s, some, mostly African American neighborhoods – designated with red lines – were categorized as too risky for investment, and denied home loans and insurance.           https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/13/racist-housing-policies-us-deadly-heatwaves-exposure-study      

 From curbing consumerism to caring for others, Ramadan has lessons for us all  Nadeine Asbali  Ramadan is here, and Muslims all around the world are starting a month-long spiritual bootcamp: days spent abstaining from food and drink, and nights passed in prayer and contemplation. Mosques brim with life as they open their doors to the young and the old, familiar faces and new ones standing side by side, reciting the same words as more than a billion others around the globe. As Ramadan is celebrated in a nation [United Kingdom]more fractured than ever, it’s not just Muslims who could do with a little of its spirit. It is a common misconception that Ramadan is all about food. In truth, it is about starving the body to feed the soul. By temporarily depriving our bodies of what they need, we forge room for spirituality and introspection, generosity and discipline, to blossom in its place. Maybe we could all do with more of that in our era, where the self is supreme. Self-care and selfies, self-made and self-sufficient – we live in an individualistic age where the I comes before the we. The pandemic gave us a brief respite from that, as we clapped on our doorsteps and made small talk with the people we had previously ignored. But it didn’t last long. We were soon back to avoiding eye contact on the street, and passing homeless people by as if they were invisible. Ramadan forces Muslims to uphold the importance of community. We share food with neighbours, and give charity within our means: whether a smile to a stranger or cash to those in need. With the cost-of-living crisis so extreme that people are having todecline produce at food banksbecause they cannot afford the energy to cook them, imagine if it was the social norm to embody the Ramadan spirit and give so freely that, as the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, even your left hand doesn’t know what your right has given. Imagine if a family forced to choose between heating and eating opened their door to find a tray of home-cooked food on the doorstep, delivered by an anonymous neighbour. When poverty is inflicted by the state, manufactured through budget cuts and shifting policy, it falls on us to enact change. A famous Hadith reminds us that nobody can call themselves a Muslim if their own stomach is full while their neighbour is hungry. What if we all lived by this sentiment? Wealth distribution is fundamental to the Muslim understanding of social justice. We are obliged todonate 2.5% of our wealthabove a certain threshold to charity. Can you imagine the potential for change if the world’s billionaires donated even 1% of their wealth each year?                https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/03/consumerism-caring-ramadan-muslims-holy-month