Multnomah County Turns to Community-Driven Plannin

‍Multnomah County is pioneering an initiative, the Climate Justice Plan, in close partnership with several local community-based organizations. Unique in its approach, this plan moves beyond traditional mitigation and greenhouse gas emissions measurements. It comprehensively incorporates the intersection of multiple connected and adjacent issue areas, establishing several goals and strategies rooted in a targeted universalism framework. Multnomah County and community partners ultimately envision a county where climate justice is possible by prioritizing the needs of structurally disenfranchised communities, amplifying community power, voice, and leadership, and fostering shared decision-making and collaboration between government, community organizations, and residents to identify and implement climate solutions. The aim is to create a plan that is both technically effective and equitably centered, serving as a comprehensive government action plan and a community toolkit.

Multnomah County, Oregon, is the state’s smallest county by land area but the most populous, containing the city of Portland. From a climate justice perspective, the growing intensity of extreme weather events, along with the health impacts on the most vulnerable residents, including unhoused, low-income households, BIPOC communities, outdoor workers, older adults, youth, and pregnant people, make this planning process a model for how municipalities can collaboratively work strategically in addressing climate impacts and resilience locally. The 2021 heat dome that killed over 800 people in the entire Pacific Northwest was a major wakeup call for climate professionals and is another reason why new climate planning methods are needed.

From 2020 to 2023, the County and its community partners laid the groundwork for the climate justice plan. This involved co-creating a shared vision and values, notably through a Climate Justice Earth Day Convening and Worksession that brought together over 60 community members and climate leaders in Portland. This groundwork led to the creation of an Environmental Justice Indicators Storytelling Zine and a vision and values Climate Justice Framework document, developed with local artists, community organizations, the County’s Office of Sustainability, and the Health Department. The purpose of these products was to help set the direction of the planning process, highlight the trustbuilding that was emerging, and allow the climate and environmental justice data and information to be more accessible to the local communities.

The period from 2023 to 2025 focused on deep community engagement. This phase included launching a steering committee and prioritizing non-transactional conversations with the communities traditionally excluded from government planning processes. Engagement methods were diverse, encompassing presentations, feedback sessions using interactive popular-education approaches, focus groups, open house sessions, one-on-one interviews with subject matter experts, surveys, and a public comment period. As of spring of 2026, the plan is in its final phase of refinement, as we synthesize feedback from public community forums on each of the 12 goals with community organizations, industry partners, mainstream environmental groups, and subject matter experts. The refined plan will seek approval from the community-based organization steering committee and eventual adoption by the Board of County Commissioners, after which it will transition to the implementation phase.

A key lesson learned from implementing a hybrid community-driven plan is that engagement remains an ongoing commitment, extending beyond the formal strategic planning process and into the implementation phase. This differs significantly from traditional top-down planning, demanding substantially greater capacity, resources, and time to effectively facilitate and coordinate with communities that are often marginalized from planning. Despite extensive efforts, there will always be sentiments that some communities and entities feel left out, posing a challenge as the plan moves toward finalization, adoption, and implementation.

The Climate Justice Plan has faced several extensions, largely due to requests from elected officials for more information on strategies and concerns from various entities, particularly industry groups, who felt their involvement and input were insufficient. These power dynamics are palpable: while the concerns of frontline communities are typically disregarded in a top-down model to meet institutional deadlines, requests for refinement from more powerful entities, who hold positions of wealth and influence, have necessitated adjustments to the plan's continued extension. Extensions in the planning process can erode trust and faith in institutions among community members who expect a more urgent and resourced response, especially from frontline communities who were invited in and are already vulnerable to climate impacts. 

The journey of the Climate Justice Plan underscores a fundamental truth about equitable governance: true change is complex, demanding, and often slow. The Plan’s priority to center the needs of those most impacted by climate change, while also addressing the needs of dominant institutions, including government and industry groups, is precisely why the process has been so intensive and, at times, difficult to conclude. The challenges faced—the need for extensions and the negotiation of power dynamics with established industry groups—are not failures of the process, but rather direct reflections of the effort to move from an inequitable "top-down" standard to a genuine "community-driven" model. As the plan transitions to the critical phase of adoption and implementation, the lessons learned—about continuous engagement, resource commitment, and navigating systemic power—will be invaluable. Ultimately, the Climate Justice Plan stands as a testament to Multnomah County’s enduring commitment to building climate resilience that is defined by justice and founded on authentic, deep-rooted community partnership.