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Climate
change affects everyone, but
not equally. Communities
facing the most exposure to
climate impacts are often
called frontline
communities. These
communities are often said to
be hit “first and worst” by
climate change impacts, since
they face greater risk of both
experiencing climate impacts
(such as extreme heat and
floods) and facing neglect
during recovery from those
impacts. Moreover, these
climate risks exacerbate
existing environmental hazards
such as pollution from nearby
industrial facilities, lack of
green spaces, and neglected
infrastructure – all of which
have been linked to historical
patterns of class and
racial discrimination in the
U.S. As a result, frontline
communities are
disproportionately
lower-income and/or Black,
Hispanic/Latino, and
Indigenous.
However,
although these communities are
at greater risk from climate
change, it does not
necessarily follow that they
are more worried about it. In
this study, we integrated six
waves of public opinion data (n
= 6,183) from the Climate
Change in the American Mind
study with geographic data
from the U.S.
Climate and Economic Justice
Screening Tool (CEJST),
which designated specific
neighborhoods (Census tracts)
as disproportionately burdened
by environmental and climate
risks. These communities also
qualified for priority federal
funding through the U.S. Justice40
initiative, a program
that designated 40% of federal
funding for mitigation and
adaptation solutions to
communities disproportionately
harmed by climate change,
although this program ended in
2025. About 33.7% of people in
the U.S. live in these tracts
(using 2022 population
estimates).
Results
We
find that, at the national
level, frontline communities
and non-frontline communities
are equally worried about
global warming: About
two-thirds of people in both
frontline (65%) and
non-frontline communities
(65%) are worried about it.
However, frontline communities
are more worried about
specific climate change
impacts like extreme heat
(52%) and power outages (48%)
compared with non-frontline
communities (42% and 36%,
respectively).
One
possible reason frontline
communities are more worried
than non-frontline communities
about some of the impacts of
climate change, but not about
climate change itself, is that
communication about climate
risks may be happening less
often in frontline communities
than in non-frontline
communities. For example,
frontline and non-frontline
communities are equally likely
to say they have experienced
global warming, but fewer
people in frontline
communities hear about global
warming in the media (47% hear
about it at least once per
month). People in frontline
communities are also much less
likely to know that most
scientists agree that global
warming is happening (47%).
However,
frontline communities are not a
monolith, so we also
conducted a geographic
analysis to look at
differences between them by
merging summarized
county-level data from CEJST
with the Yale
Climate Opinion Maps. We
found the relationship between
frontline community status and
worry about global warming
varies significantly by
geographic location: For
example, counties in the
Southwest (particularly New
Mexico and the Texas-Mexico
border region) have high
percentages of frontline
communities and high levels of
worry about global warming,
while counties in the
Appalachian and Ozark regions
have high percentages of
frontline communities but low
levels of worry.
Geographic
differences are explored in
much more detail in a new
interactive ArcGIS
StoryMap, which allows
users to explore detailed
demographics, climate change
worry, and frontline status
data for each of the 3,143
counties in the 50 states of
the United States and
Washington D.C. We also
provide case studies exploring
counties with large
percentages of the population
in frontline communities,
illustrating the variety of
climate change impacts faced
in these communities and the
actions they are taking to
protect community members from
those impacts.
Key
Takeaways
Although
federal funding initiatives
such as Justice40 are no
longer in place, frontline
communities still
exist, and many state,
local, and philanthropic
efforts can still support
them, including through
strategic communication
efforts. Specifically, we and
our partners recommend the
following:
-
Community
engagement efforts
should discuss specific
impacts of climate
change and emphasize how
climate change worsens
these impacts in these
communities. We
do not suggest that
increasing worry about
global warming should
itself be the end goal of
future engagement efforts
in frontline communities,
as over-emphasizing
negative aspects of
climate change can be
disempowering,
particularly in
communities with fewer
resources to address them.
Instead, connecting the
dots between impacts
(especially heat and power
outages) and climate
change may be a way to
build engagement in
climate solutions.
Personal stories of
climate change
experiences, including its
health impacts, may be
especially effective.
-
Strategic
communication in
frontline communities
should also highlight
how investment projects
benefit the people who
live there.
Funders of climate
solutions in frontline
communities should not
assume that people in
these communities will
immediately recognize the
benefits of those
investments – particularly
if those benefits are
described in terms of
general climate benefits
and not in terms of the
community concerns that
matter most to them.
-
Strategic
communications should
aim to increase
conversations about
climate change among
people who live in
frontline communities. This
may include engaging
trusted communicators in
frontline communities,
such as community groups
and community
organizations, to start
conversations about
climate.
These
findings align with the
experiences of many people who
work
regularly with and in
frontline communities. Thus,
it is important to heed the
views of people and
practitioners in frontline
communities not only in
decision-making but in the
science that informs it.
The
full article is available here
to those with a subscription
to One Earth. If you
would like to request a copy
of the published paper, please
send an email to climat...@yale.edu
with the subject line: Request
frontline climate attitudes
paper. Or, a free preprint
version is available here.
The ArcGIS StoryMap
accompanying this article is
available here.
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