A/HRC/48/78 disproportionate impact of crises on the Roma community and to deliver environmental justice. 39. The representative of the United States of America pointed out that addressing systemic racism and environmental challenges, including climate change, were core priorities for the United States, which had rejoined the Paris Agreement and appointed the country’s first presidential envoy for climate. That commitment included advancing environmental justice at home and holding polluters accountable, including those who disproportionately harmed communities of colour and low-income communities. An executive order on environmental justice had made environmental justice a part of the mission of every federal agency by directing the development of programmes, policies and activities to address the disproportionate health, economic, environmental and climate impact on disadvantaged communities. The order had established two new White House environmental justice councils to ensure a whole-of-government approach to address current and historical environmental injustices, including by strengthening and monitoring enforcement by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services. The order also created the government-wide “Justice40” initiative, which had the goal of delivering 40 per cent of the overall benefits of relevant federal investments to disadvantaged communities. It had also created an environmental justice scorecard to track performance. 40. The representative of Brazil agreed that traditional communities were important to ecosystem preservation, and that they should be consulted. He underlined the role of the human rights ombudsman and other institutions in Brazil to respond to threats to human rights. Brazil had produced data on the impact of COVID-19, disaggregated by race, which had proved essential to act to benefit the most vulnerable. The representative of Cuba emphasized the importance of this topic, and confirmed that the hurricane and storm season in the Caribbean was becoming more intense because of the climate crisis. 3. Environmental racism, the climate crisis and reparatory justice 41. Mr. Reid stated that the focus of the panel discussion was the matrix of exploitation, the destructive impact of colonialism on the environment, the exploitation of people of African descent, the long-term consequences of such exploitation and the ongoing concerns and problems that people of African descent faced today. 42. Prof. Hilary Beckles, Chair of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Reparations Commission and Vice-Chancellor of the University of West Indies, stated that the crosscutting concerns of combating institutional racism within environmental thinking were critical to discussions. The connection between global movements for reparatory justice for crimes against humanity and the climate crisis judgement are all relevant to global considerations. The injustices of the past now collided with the climate crisis of today. The Black community seeking to overcome the legacy of slavery was now suffering the effects of climate change. The frequency and intensity of increasingly frequent hurricanes were the result of rising global temperatures. Death and destruction were now the norm within this changed reality; history and hurricanes constituted the new cocktail posing an existential threat to the people of the Caribbean. Against a backdrop of mass poverty arising from the planation world of slavery, the climate crisis was increasing the vulnerability of communities. Reparatory justice was therefore the common demand; there could be no other perspective, no other policy framework. 43. According to the Vice Chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Prof. Verene Shepherd, small island developing States like those in the Caribbean were extremely susceptible to the effects of climate change. She referred to the role that European colonialism played in the current crisis, adding that the climate crisis had been generated by the system of planation slavery and centuries of agricultural practices, including mass deforestation, which had led to erosion, the loss of soil fertility and of valuable protected forestry. The United Nations Environmental Programme had pointed out that the production of sugarcane had led to the loss of greater biodiversity than any other single crop in the world because of its impact on ecosystems and increased soil erosion. Historical injustices had undeniably contributed to the poverty, underdevelopment, marginalization, social exclusion, economic disparities, instability and insecurity that affect 10