A car sits in a flooded parking lot at Widgery Wharf on Jan. 10 in Portland. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press

Poverty considerations must be the central focus of any meaningful climate action, not a last-minute box to be checked if Maine wants to ensure its vulnerable populations aren’t left behind as the state strives to achieve its climate goals.

“Offering financial incentives to purchase an electric vehicle is a challenging way to address the climate change challenge,” one vulnerable population member told Associate Professor Sharon Klein, one author of a report by the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine.

“Poor community members struggle to make ends meet, so taking out a loan for an electric car that costs several thousand dollars isn’t the best option,” Klein continued during her presentation to the Maine Climate Council. “It’s really hard to focus on anything but survival if you don’t have adequate housing,”

That was the take-home message of an equity study delivered to the council Wednesday by the Mitchell Center, which was hired to ask vulnerable Mainers about the state’s draft climate action plan.

These high-priority populations included the disabled, ex-convicts, climate front-line communities, low-income households, migrant farm workers, new Mainers, older Mainers, people of color, people in recovery, rural Mainers, the unemployed, veterans and youth.

After engaging about 2,500 people, report authors told the council it needed to involve vulnerable groups early in climate planning, focus more on public transportation and less on electric vehicles, and present mitigation or adaptation opportunities in simple, easy-to-understand language.

If necessary, hire navigators to help individuals in these groups understand the importance of the goals and how to adapt, the authors said. Each one-on-one success story will then spread through that member’s family, friends, and community network and compound the benefits.

It takes years to gain the trust of vulnerable populations, the report said. Successful climate planning must begin early in vulnerable communities, take place where they feel comfortable, and include them in decision-making, not just getting their response to decisions made by others.

The Maine Climate Council had asked the Mitchell Center to solicit recommendations from Maine tribal leaders. Tribal leaders declined, however, expressing a “strong preference” for government-to-government dialogue that respects their tribal sovereignty, the report states.

“It was deemed inappropriate for them to be listed this way,” the report reads, “due to their distinct history and status, which aligns with the recommendations of the 2024 Annual Report of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous and Tribal Populations.”

It was unclear how that government-to-government dialogue might occur as of Wednesday night. Hannah Pingree, who is co-chair of the Maine Climate Council and director of Gov. Janet Mills’ Office of Policy, Innovation and the Future, said tribal perspectives are important to the council’s work.

“Council leaders hope to continue to directly engage with tribal leadership on future collaborations, as they’ve done on a variety of federal grant opportunities to date,” Pingree said in a written statement. “The council is always interested in greater collaboration between the state and the tribes.”

Tribal members have been included in the council’s work since 2019, when Penobscot Nation Ambassador Maulian Bryant joined as a tribal representative. Reappointed in 2023, Bryant has provided a prominent voice on a range of climate issues during her tenure, Pingree said.

Bryant could not be reached for comment Wednesday night. She did not address the tribal leaders’ decision to hold out for government-to-government dialogue when she summarized part of the equity report during an online presentation to the Climate Council Wednesday.