Our Commitment to Equity

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At Lotus, we know our expertise is a catalyst to address the current and future impacts of climate change.

However, that is not enough.

We recognize with humility that our role as consultants is to use that expertise to co-create solutions with communities. With this in mind, we commit to sustained collective action to heal past harms, uplift lived experiences, and dismantle systems of oppression to help all our clients realize a climate-just vision for their futures. We know environmental and climate justice is social and racial justice.

We take this responsibility seriously.

To achieve the climate-just outcomes we seek, our work as environmental consultants includes:

  • Working with our clients to recognize and identify actions to address the impact of past injustices and harms caused by inequitable policy decisions, financial investments, and other practices. 

  • Engaging with communities in environmental justice, sustainability, and climate discussions to co-create decision-making approaches and processes that ensure equitable representation.

  • Using data, science, and engagement to connect sustainability with social and racial justice. 

  • Acting on opportunities within each project we complete to advance equity outcomes for the communities and clients we serve.

  • Listening, learning, and staying curious to continually improve and advance our equity approach.

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We are committed to Growth

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All employees have completed an Intercultural Development Inventory to better understand each individual's intercultural competence. This learning will help increase our team’s capabilities to shift cultural perspectives and appropriately adapt behavior to cultural differences and commonalities. As part of this work, each employee met one-on-one with Seven Focus, LLC to review their scores and, as a team, we reviewed our company's findings. 

We have also developed and implemented an accessibility statement of commitment.

Each practice area has set goals and metrics to center equity in their work. You can find these below. We will report on our progress toward those goals on this webpage.

Page last updated February 2026.

Data Team Equity Commitments

In support of Lotus-wide equity goals, the Greenhouse Gas Accounting, Modeling, and Visualization (Data) Team commits to the following:

  • Implementation: Include an air quality and/or equity section in inventories with data such as social cost of carbon, emergency room visits, asthma hospitalizations, premature deaths and mortality rates, oil and gas exploration, and other enviromapper metrics.

    Reporting: Number of inventories with these metrics.

  • Implementation: Include these metrics in proposals; review internal databases and create Equity Data Catalog; conduct a Company-wide presentation on equity metrics and data.

    Reporting: Number of project or map examples, metrics examples.

  • Implementation: Ensure surveys are written for all. Acknowledge survey gaps—not all communities may be comfortable with surveys or sharing data. Describe additional efforts Lotus is making to address this.

    Reporting: Complete a Data responsibility checklist.

  • Implementation: Run all visuals through a tool to check for ADA compliance; Identify how to make dashboards ADA-compliant; Include a statement in proposals indicating that we will make all reports ADA-compliant; Reach out to clients from the past year to see if they want us to update deliverables for ADA compliance.

    Reporting: Quarterly update.

  • Implementation: Identify funding mechanisms for communities with less access to resources, map communities that are receiving funding, and map other socio-economic indicators. Create an “Inventory Lite” approach using to present a high-level inventory option. Offer ways to improve data and access funding opportunities. Reach out directly to communities to offer services.

    Reporting: Create an internal indicator of “Equity Outreach” to track efforts.

Climate Mitigation & REsiliency Planning (CMRP) Team Equity Commitments

Climate action and sustainability plans create a framework for actualizing climate mitigation and resilience outcomes in a community. If the planning process does not center on equity, systemic and institutionalized community inequities will not be identified and dismantled. Plans, policies, and programs, if implemented, may leave a legacy that will continue to impact a community for decades. We will work so that these guiding documents are the leverage points that ensure, through their implementation, the voices and needs of historically underrepresented communities are elevated and that equitable outcomes are delivered in a community.

    1. When beginning a new project, we commit to researching community demographics, the history of environmental justice issues, and/or equity concerns of specific policies or programs to provide context and prepare our team for discussions with our client and the community with equity at the forefront.

    2. Research existing frameworks other communities use to integrate equity considerations into climate action and sustainability plans. Use this research to understand better how equity is incorporated into plan development processes and final products. Utilize these frameworks to advance equity discussions and considerations with clients through planning processes and project implementation.

    3. Do our due diligence to understand the client’s past and current work around equity, including existing belief systems. Develop approaches that meet the client where they are while advancing equity solutions through our work.

    4. Use regular team meetings to reflect on recent equity implementation efforts to continuously improve our process and project outcomes.

    1. Through stakeholder engagement, ensure that the community’s various identities (race, wealth, age, religion, etc.) are reflected and that we elevate the voices of those most impacted. Collaborate with Lotus’s Communications & Engagement team to carry out equitable engagement strategies for all plans and projects.

    2. Vet each final strategy or policy within a plan to determine potential positive and negative equity impacts, as well as the distribution of each impact. Use this equity review as a prioritization metric to inform effective and equitable strategies.

    3. When developing implementation recommendations for a community, ensure equity is embedded into each step of the implementation process.

      • Stakeholders identified for plan implementation and coordination represent the community's various identities.

      • Programs and incentives that are developed target historically underrepresented communities.

Communications and Engagement (C&E) Team Equity Commitments

After 18 months of implementing the equity commitments below, we imagine the following changes internally and with our clients:

  • All engagement processes will begin with identifying the equity-impacted community members and foregrounding their participation in engagement processes. 

  • Each engagement meeting will set or reiterate ground rules to promote vulnerability and bravery.

  • Every engagement meeting agenda will have Environmental Justice as a topic of discussion.

  • All engagement materials will be translated either in-house or using a subcontractor into the relevant languages for the community. 

  • For each engagement meeting, we will work with the client project managers to determine what the community needs with regard to allergy-mindful and culturally diverse food, childcare, interpretation and translation, and stipends.

  • Internally maintain a document with best practices and next-time notes.

Our commitments to achieve this future are the following:

    1. Assess the demographics of the community during the first month of the project.

    2. Do our due diligence to understand how the community’s various identities historically and currently interact with each other and have experiences with each other.

    1. Co-create and reiterate participation agreements/meetings norms at each meeting.

    1. Put Environmental Justice on each agenda for stakeholder meetings.

    2. Create space for storytelling and sharing of lived experiences.

    1. Always offer allergy-mindful and culturally diverse food, childcare, interpretation and translation, accessibility accommodations, and stipends.

    2. Consider the unique needs of communities and opportunities to break down barriers to engagement in each community we work.

    1. Continually innovate on communication methods and platforms to better connect with our audiences and craft deliverables that are reflective of and meaningful to the community.

    2. After each engagement, we will produce “next time notes” to make real-time assessments and adjustments for each specific client and community. We will use our regular team meetings to reflect on recent engagements in an effort to continuously improve our engagement efforts.