President Biden on Wednesday plans to make tackling America’s persistent racial and economic disparities a central part of his plan to combat climate change, prioritizing environmental justice for the first time in a generation.

As part of an unprecedented push to cut the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and create new jobs as the United States shifts toward cleaner energy, Biden will direct agencies across the federal government to invest in low-income and minority communities that have traditionally borne the brunt of pollution, according to two individuals briefed on the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it had not been formally announced.

Biden will sign an executive order establishing a White House interagency council on environmental justice, create an office of health and climate equity at the Health and Human Services Department and form a separate environmental justice office at the Justice Department, the individuals said.

Cathleen Kelly, a fellow who focuses on energy and environment at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, called the expected actions “a historic commitment.”

“The executive order will help to lay out a clear path to implementing President Biden’s climate and justice commitments,” Kelly said. “It will get the gears turning in each agency across the federal government. With Biden in the White House and the current leaders we have in Congress, this year represents an unprecedented opportunity to have executive and legislative action.”

At the heart of Biden’s executive action Wednesday is an effort to improve conditions in Black, Latino and Native American communities targeted for hazards that others did not want: power plants, landfills, trash incinerators, shipping ports, uranium mines and factories.

Communities where air quality is poor suffer from higher levels of asthma and respiratory and heart diseases. As a result, African Americans and Latinos, along with Native Americans, have suffered disproportionately from the coronavirus, a respiratory illness, and are more likely to die.

Robert Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University and longtime environmental justice advocate, praised the notion of linking the environment and health by establishing a dedicated office at HHS. And he said creating an environmental justice office at the Justice Department underscores that the problem is both important and pervasive.

“When you have the most powerful legal department in the country saying that environmental justice is a basic right, I think that is a signal being sent across the country to say that this is real at the highest level,” Bullard said.

The moves are part of a far-reaching, all-of-government effort to transition the United States away from fossil fuels — a goal that Biden has consistently listed as a top priority and one that will undoubtedly include powerful allies and fierce resistance alike.

Biden on Wednesday plans to impose a moratorium on all new federal oil and gas leasing, pledge to protect 30 percent of the nation’s public lands and waters by the end of the decade and direct federal agencies to factor climate change into a wide range of issues, including procurement, regulations and legal settlements.

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“Our urgent reduction of emissions is compelled by public conscience and by common sense,” Biden’s climate envoy, former secretary of state John F. Kerry, said during remarks this week at a U.N. gathering focused on climate adaptation.