Culture and Social Issues

NASA Spent Millions On ‘Environmental Justice’ And ‘Equity’ Grants Despite Budget Woes

Chad Davis via Flickr

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has shelled out millions in awards to advance diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as well as “environmental justice,” despite recently laying off staff and shuttering space programs due to budgetary shortfalls.

NASA has allocated roughly $10 million to pay out dozens of grants and contracts aimed at advancing some element of environmental justice or DEI since 2020, federal spending records show. The agency is multiple billions of dollars short of the funding required to complete its current missions, has fired hundreds of people working on its Mars missions over budgetary concerns and may not have enough funding to maintain a multibillion-dollar space telescope, according to multiple Washington Post reports.

“The environmental justice movement focuses on ensuring communities receive equitable protection from natural and human-induced environmental hazards,” NASA’s webpage on equity and environmental justice reads. “It embodies the principle that all communities should be heard and represented in decision making.”

Much of NASA’s grant spending went to universities to help them study environmental justice in urban areas as well as other places with high concentrations of racial minorities. For instance, the agency approved $150,000 in funding to Columbia University so it could pair “earth observations and socioeconomic data” and enable students to do environmental justice work in New York City, records show.

Another grant, this time worth $250,000, was paid out to Los Angeles as part of NASA’s Predictive Environmental Analytics and Community Engagement for Equity and Environmental Justice (PEACE) program, per federal records. To remedy its observation that “people of color often face higher exposure to air pollutants,” NASA’s PEACE program paid the city to provide pollution data to its residents in “a way that works across communities and cultural differences and specifically analyzes, engages and responds to needs for environmental justice.”

NASA has set aside over $5 million for environmental justice grants like these since 2022, according to federal records.

As NASA paid out millions to fund environmental justice initiatives, the agency in February fired about 530 people, plus an additional 40 contractors, or 8% of its workforce, working at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Post reported. Many of the workers let go were involved in the agency’s Mars Sample Return program, which was studying possible evidence of past life on the red planet.

While short on funds for Mars research and a major space telescope, NASA shelled out millions on embedding DEI both within its own organizational structure and in the broader scientific community, records show.

In 2023, for instance, NASA approved a contract worth roughly $2.9 million to a consulting firm to “incorporate and deeply engrain” DEI in the “culture” of its Space Mission Directorate, according to spending records. NASA allocated another $900,000 in 2020 for the National Academy of Sciences to help it increase diversity among the leaders of space missions.

NASA also gave the Southeastern Universities Research Association thousands of dollars to make the agency’s heliophysics material “more relevant and open to the Latinx and Native American communities,” records show. The agency paid tens of thousands of additional dollars to The Oceanography Society to embed DEI in ocean sciences.

“At NASA, our primary mission is to explore the unknown in air and space and innovate for the benefit of all humanity,” a NASA spokesperson told the DCNF. “To do this, we must make space for a universe of talent, skills, perspectives and experiences. NASA’s commitment to equity and inclusion through STEM grants and procurement opportunities, helps ensure more qualified individuals and businesses can lend their talents and resources to the agency’s work.”

The language used by NASA to describe its environmental justice programs mirrors that used by the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice40 initiative, which dictates that 40% of the beneficiaries of federal climate and environmental programs must be from “underserved communities.” The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council later defined “underserved communities” as those that are “majority minority.” NASA’s work is also covered by the Justice40 initiative, according to government documents.