The environment sector has failed to act on its ambitions to become more inclusive, suggests new research that finds just one in 20 organisations are enacting plans to increase ethnic diversity.
According to a sector-wide survey, out of 44 environment charities, 84% had considered or were taking action over a lack of inclusion, but only 4% said they had a consistently implemented action plan.
Three-quarters of environmental charity executives and trustees thought increasing diversity would have a positive impact on the sector. But while 86% of leaders agreed it should be a top priority for the sector, only 22% felt it actually was.
The research was commissioned by Wildlife and Countryside Link (WCL), a coalition of environmental charities, to inform a new collective strategy aimed at increasing diversity in the sector.
It calls for members to take collective actions to implement sector-wide unconscious bias training, in-depth research on racism, and programmes to draft more people of colour into leadership roles.
“Too many people feel excluded from nature and too many people still feel excluded from the nature sector,” Dr Richard Benwell, WCL’s chief executive, said.
“Our research shows that there’s a great appetite for change in the environment movement. People want to be part of an inclusive, diverse and socially progressive movement. They know that saving nature will depend on the talents and energy of everyone working together.
“It also shows that despite this conviction, many organisations are still in the starting blocks on diversity and inclusion.”
As in many sectors, the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 inspired fresh urgency to efforts to diversify the environment professions, and to address its systemic biases.
Recent research has also shown how people from ethnic minorities are more likely to be affected by environmental harms, both nationally and globally. As understanding has grown, the narrative around environmental issues has shifted to encompass racial and social injustices, and a sense that the environment sector must diversify to tackle them.
But in 2021, just 4.8% of environment professionals had an ethnic minority heritage, compared with 12.6% of the workforce overall, according to official figures. Only farming had lower ethnic minority representation.
WCL’s research – based on a survey of 2,004 environmental professionals, 225 of whom were in senior positions – found that leaders were more optimistic about their organisations’ work on diversity than staff.
While 60% of executives believed that increasing ethnic diversity was a top priority in their organisations, only 38% of staff recognised this at their workplaces.
Responses from workers from ethnic minorities were a particular cause for concern. While just 98 of those surveyed indicated they were of ethnic minority descent, they consistently had lower ratings of their organisations’ equality, diversity and inclusion policies.
Damningly, a further 11 minority ethnic environment workers who were interviewed all said there was racism in the sector. This was more often unconscious bias or covert rather than overt racism, they said; but behaviour with racist undertones was often dismissed, and racist behaviour had few repercussions.
Most minority ethnic professionals in the sector said an inability to take up volunteering or low-paid jobs in order to gain experience had been a barrier to entry. They complained of a lack of clear career progression, and of arriving at work to find a white colleague had been promoted to a vacant role they did not even know existed.
Forty-two organisations have so far signed up to WCL’s strategy, including the RSPB, the RSPCA, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace.
Beccy Speight, the chief executive of the RSPB, said: “We are in a nature and climate emergency, and we save nature through people, all people.
“We need to be joining with people from all backgrounds in leading, championing and accessing nature.
“This route map highlights uncomfortable truths but is essential in reinforcing the crucial work needed to increase ethnic diversity and meaningful inclusion across the conservation sector, especially for people of colour.”
The development of the route map was funded by Natural England, John Ellerman Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
