Under the Bus: Race and Power in the US Environmental Movement
Photo credit: photovs from Envato Elements. Description: The US Capitol building with a waving American flag superimposed on the sky Capitol Hill in Washington DC.
Originally published August 2022
“‘We’ve been sold out’: Enviro justice advocates slam Biden’s climate compromise.” That’s the title of a Politico article that I read this morning. The thrust of the article? Compromises struck to get Sen. Manchin on board with the legislation risk harming frontline communities. “Sacrifice zones.”
I’ll say with full transparency that I didn’t work at all on the climate bill. Not even a little bit. I had no insight into the specific machinations that went into the process. But what I can also say is that the following characterization, by someone working on the frontlines, really underscores the patterns I identified in the essay below, which I published in May 2022:
“Coalitions like the Climate Justice Alliance, composed of 84 organization representing communities facing high amounts of pollution, came out against the bill before the Senate passed it Aug. 7….. ‘DC-based groups have spoken on our behalf to Congressional members without our prior and informed consent. They have asked us to take laudatory positions on legislative and executive actions we had no knowledge of or that we wouldn’t readily agree with,” wrote the coalition’s executive director, Jamesa Johnson Greer. “Without the historic and outsized access to Congress that Big Green groups enjoy, [environmental justice] organizations have been unfairly isolated through key advocacy moments … resulting in dangerous consequences for our people.’”
Again, I was not involved in this particular process, at all. Nevertheless, here is what I can say with a fair degree of confidence:
Leadership of Big Green groups are very likely ranging from annoyed to irate because of this criticism.
They are very possibly dismissing the comments of frontline leaders as “naive”, too “radical,” and I would not be surprised if the terms “ungrateful,” “divisive” and “unhelpful” are being tossed around.
Some optimists in Big Green may view this criticism as a useful “left flank” that makes them appear more reasonable and thus increases their leverage with moderate Congressional allies in the future;
Folks who work in Big Green organizations that do not agree with the compromises struck at the potential expense of frontline communities are likely to be silenced, or retaliated against if they refuse to be silenced about their reservations.
There are other speculatory statements I could make regarding authenticity of statements and other machinations I know to typically happen behind the scenes, but I’ll leave it there for now.
It’s politics, and it’s not pretty.
All of this underscores the importance of the essay I wrote below: in summary, this will continue to happen as long as Big Green is dominated, functionally and ideologically, by people who have no real stake in fighting systemic racism.
Please consider donating or otherwise supporting the frontline organizations quoted in the Politico article, as they now proceed to fight the elements of this legislation that could hurt their communities.
I obsess about JEDI (justice, equity, diversity and inclusion) in the workplace. I am trained as a lawyer. I’ve worked in a number of capacities, but the majority of my career has been focused on advocating for environmental policies via the mechanisms by which people who do this type of work do it — lobbying decision-makers, mobilizing influencers to do the same, analyzing policies, and a ton of organizing, communicating and persuading people to pass, change or reject regulations and laws. I’ve never been trained in Human Resources. So, why am I so obsessed with JEDI within organizations, and why am I talking about corporate culture all the time? Why, when I sat down and thought about which consulting services I wanted to provide clients through my firm, did advancing JEDI within organizations — and specifically organizations that work on environmental issues -emerge as a top priority?
Well, first I should note, my undergraduate degree was in Women’s Studies with a minor in Anthropology — an education which I pursued in order to make sense of the world around me that clearly seemed to devalue, repress and harm me and the people I loved due to gender, race and class. It also drew many a smirk, commonly accompanied by “what kind of job are you going to get with that?” derision. But this was twenty years ago, and the courses I aced in pursuit of that degree are likely in high demand, as corporations scramble to hire experts who will tell them what to do about their internal white supremacy problems. It’s hard to advise on how to rectify inequity without the historical, anthropological, sociological and legal framework for how we ended up in a patriarchal, white supremacist society — not that this is stopping some opportunists. But I digress.
For the most part, my recent professional experience has been working to advance environmental sustainability, from energy and climate policy to fisheries management and coastal resiliency. This was largely pragmatic — the skeptics who laughed at my degree weren’t wrong. Experts in systemic oppression were not in high demand in the early 2000s — at least not that I could find, and not those that paid single parent-sustaining wages. So, I focused largely on strategizing and mobilizing to advance environmental conservation, working for several non-profits and government entities, always cognizant of the “JEDI” dynamics but staying in my lane. Until I didn’t. Leading up to the 2016 election, and in the cripplingly painful months after it, I became increasingly vocal about the way white supremacy was rearing its head in my life, at work and in the world. The inequity in the way that environmental burdens and benefits were being distributed was especially front and center in my work, and the hostility levied at anyone who questioned the demographics of influence over the natural resources decision-making process was palpable. Especially when those questions came from a woman. This combined experience led me to reflect on how inextricable JEDI and environmental equity truly are, and how the environmental conservation movement should be approaching them holistically.
The environmental movement in the US has long been plagued by racism, sexism and exclusion of minoritized groups, both with regard to the what, why and how of conservation policies it has chosen to advance, and the internal cultures of organizations leading the movement. Active and in some cases, violent exclusion is an inextricable part of the history of the environmental conservation movement in the US. It was a fact that was rarely, if ever, acknowledged by conservation leadership until recently.
The movement for environmental justice (EJ), on the other hand — aimed at combatting the disproportionate impacts of environmental degradation on marginalized people — primarily Black, Latino, and Indigenous people — has been led by “frontline” communities since its inception. More recently, Black and Brown people, including women, are leading the way in targeting climate and energy justice specifically. The EJ movement and the community-based groups leading it continue to function via human-centric initiatives to improve communities by reducing disproportionate and cumulative impacts of environmental degradation and shifting the inequitable distribution of conservation benefits. With the exception of warily-entered partnerships, the EJ movement tends to work separately from the environmental conservation movement and in particular, siloed from the larger environmental conservation groups that are well-funded, abundantly-staffed, and overwhelmingly white-led.
Environmental conservation groups — as well as government/quasi-government entities tasked with environmental conservation — continue to be dominated by white, male leadership, though there have been some improvements to diversity in recent years. Those of us in the field lament the ways in which green groups are notoriously stuck in white supremacist cultural structures. Under pressure from a combination of forces including federal policies, grassroots pressure via the movement for Black lives following the well-publicized murder of George Floyd by police in 2020, and, in my opinion, the recognition that the Democrats’ power in Congress and the White House — -generally friendlier to conservation policy than Republicans’ — is shakily dependent on the support of Black and Latino voters, the environmental movement is having its feet held to the fire to incorporate “equity” into strategic plans and initiatives.
In the face of a climate crisis that undeniably impacts minoritized and low-income people orders of magnitude more heavily than white folks (especially those of means), it is no longer sufficient for conservation groups to behave as if efforts to advance clean energy and conserve land and water are devoid of social impact or the legacy of environmental racism. Nor can it any longer be assumed or argued that the climate and biodiversity crises are even separable from the systems of capitalism and white supremacy under which environmental problems were created and are perpetuated. The conservation and clean energy movements are undergoing a forced reckoning, evident in the increased emphasis on equity in environmental organizational and agency strategic plans, the number of newly created job openings that specify a commitment to advancing equity, and public statements by environmental leadership promising to do better in assessing impacts of environmental programs on marginalized communities.
Here’s the problem: the leadership in these organizations, and thereby the dominant culture of the movement internally, remains largely the same — overwhelmingly white, cisgender and male-dominated; anecdotally, my personal experience has been that most senior management and leadership hail from class privilege, as well. Although efforts to improve diversity have ramped up, Black, Latino and Indigenous executive leadership and Board representation lags. Foundations, on which many large ENGOs depend, also suffer from racial and gender homogeneity. In this context, I posit that the likelihood that equitable outcomes of conservation policies and projects will emerge as top priorities continues to be slim, even when they are billed as centered around “equity.”
Speaking plainly, if non-marginalized people are the ones cutting deals with policy-makers and funders, the first interests on the chopping block in negotiations will be the interests of marginalized people, almost invariably. Folks in the environmental sector know that negotiations around final outcomes of conservation advocacy often lead to compromise. When people who have not faced inequity are in charge of deciding which objectives are absolute imperatives vs. “nice-to-haves,” it increases the likelihood that the equity “component” of a strategy will be sacrificed in service to the “primary goal” of hectares saved, megawatts brought online, or proportions of sea bottom protected. This is particularly true if deliverables to funders are framed in soft language around equity, while definitive action is expected on conservation-specific requirements. In short, environmental equity initiatives pursued by white-led environmental groups are unlikely to survive negotiations or be tangibly fulfilled and therefore, less likely to succeed.
One part of the solution is to aggressively join the call to close the massive funding gap between white-led and global majority-led environmental organizations, and rely on partnerships between the two to ensure conservation policy produces equitable results. This strategy, alone, may not work. Environmental justice and other global majority-led conservation groups often have ample reason to mistrust white-led conservation groups. Again, speaking anecdotally, it has been my observation and has been detailed to me by professionals in my network that white-led groups have a history of power-hoarding, subverting environmental justice objectives to their own, operating opaquely, and treating global majority-led groups and their staff paternalistically, at best.
This strategy — relying solely on increased funding to existing global majority-led groups, also misses an opportunity; given the depth of this funding abyss, and the fact that some of the environmental movement’s pursuits related to biodiversity conservation and clean energy development are already well-funded and effectively advancing important aims, I believe the urgent needs of environmental equity require a both/and approach. That is, global majority-led organizations already at the forefront of equity-centered environmental work need and deserve increased investment, and currently white-led green groups need a fundamental demographic and cultural shift that proactively weaves equity and diversity into their core missions.
An obvious way to achieve the needed cultural shift within the white-led environmental movement could be to simply hire more program managers from racial and ethnic backgrounds underrepresented in the environmental space, so the right people are at the strategy and negotiation tables, right? Not quite. There is a big difference between being employed and being empowered. Anyone (and especially anyone from a marginalized group) who has worked in an environmental organization or agency can tell you that not everyone’s voice carries equal weight in determining which priorities to elevate, which strategies to pursue, and even which groups to partner with.
In order to really ensure that environmental conservation group efforts effectively pursue and achieve equitable outcomes, employees from marginalized groups must be hired into leadership positions and/or promoted, and be 1. driven by equity, 2. empowered to pursue it, and 3. supported by the organizational culture in a way that truly honors and values their equity-centered work and identities.
Number one is important to note, because being a member of a minoritized group does not necessarily lead to a commitment to equity. For sure, the lived experience of being oppressed is a potent incentive for the pursuit of equity and justice. There is, however, the practice of tokenism, and minoritized folks chosen by status quo leadership to serve as “tokens” may be pursuing a self-centered agenda of career advancement at the expense of true commitment to programmatic equitable outcomes. It happens. Opportunism aside, while being a member of a minoritized group certainly creates an environment ripe for passion around equity to grow, not all minoritized people live life aiming to rectify inequity (nor should they have to). Women, Black people, Latinos, Indigenous folks, queer people, religious minorities and people living with disabilities are not monolithic, and not all members of a group see it as their purpose, have the emotional or practical bandwidth, or the interest in using their career as a way to advance equity for people who share their identit(ies) — and that’s ok. Simply hiring someone for their identity does not guarantee that person feels a responsibility to improve life for minoritized people, through environmental equity or otherwise. In these cases, where an environmental organization (or any company, for that matter) considers a hire or promotion of a minoritized individual as a “deliverable” toward equity efforts simply by virtue of that person’s identity, it misses the mark in an attempt to let itself off the hook for effective progress. When an organization or agency centers their “JEDI” efforts on the optics of “diverse hires,” the result can be more damaging to the pursuit of environmental equity and justice than beneficial.*
Number two — empowerment to pursue equitable outcomes — is arguably the most critical component in advancing environmental equity and justice via white-led environmental groups. Those tasked with ensuring equity is fundamental to programmatic goals and outcomes must have meaningful input and decision-making power in the development of overall organizational goals, strategic plans, work plans, decisions on partnerships, and even decisions on which funding to pursue and accept. This obviously suggests that people driven by equity and coming from lived experience of racialized marginalization should be in leadership; that alone, though, doesn’t necessarily guarantee the type of access and influence I mean here. Where equity efforts are siloed and viewed as an “add-on” to core strategy, the former will always be subverted to the latter.
Decisions regarding which funders to pursue are particularly important for those tasked with equity to engage in — in my experience, environmental organizational leadership often deflects criticism about de-prioritization of equity and assigns blame to “funder priorities.” Equity-focused staff, especially operating at levels below leadership, often do not have access to funders directly or the opportunity to participate in educating, pitching or negotiating with funders. In this way, leadership absolves itself from responsibility for elevating the cause of equity and perpetuates the status quo. Equity-focused staff — in official leadership roles and otherwise — within environmental organizations need to have access to meaningful participation and hold power to actually guide the big decisions.
Number three — the creation of a culture in which marginalized staff belong — is the typical focus of JEDI across industry sectors. This is the stuff of glass ceilings, microaggressions, good ole boy networks and office politics that has created a hostile atmosphere driving many talented professionals from the corporate world in the last year. Structural isms plague the environmental movement as well, with new scandals erupting periodically to remind marginalized people that these are not safe spaces. This is where we find the stories which remind minoritized professionals that being too bold, pushy, presenting too “ethnically,” or essentially existing at work in their identities are career risks. This is where we hear stories of ideas suppressed, then stolen, then used as platforms for the advancement of the thief. This is where the final straws finally break people, and they decide the uphill battle in service to organizations that will never fully respect them is no longer worth the reward.
Psychological safety, true inclusion, meaningful opportunities and basic respect are essential to retaining marginalized professionals in the sector and receiving the gifts of their insight, perspective and effort in advancing equity. Relatedly, the equity work that marginalized people lead needs to be elevated and amplified — not presented as “pet projects” or public relations opportunities. And definitely, absolutely, never conducted as unpaid labor. The work of environmental equity needs to be viewed, resourced, and fully acknowledged as fundamental to advancing environmental goals. Because it is.
Progress on environmental justice and JEDI within environmental organizations cannot be divorced from each other. It is not fair or effective to expect environmental justice organizations to continue to shoulder the burden of protecting people from disparate impacts of environmental issues under-resourced, and sometimes, against the political resistance of white-led environmental organizations. And it is not acceptable for white-led environmental groups to continue treating equitable outcomes as “mission creep,” rather than central to their work. In order to position the environmental conservation movement to effectively bolster and be led by the environmental justice movement toward equitable sustainability, Boards, funders and leadership must be subject to robust JEDI initiatives. As noted by author John Graham Jr. in his book “Plantation Theory,” to be effective, JEDI initiatives must include accountability when those initiatives are subverted, de-prioritized, and leveraged as window-dressing without meaningful change. As Graham asked pointedly, “Who gets fired?” If the answer is “no one,” not much is likely to change.
Awareness is starting to grow, I think, even within white-led environmental organizations, that to reach environmental goals everyone has to be part of the movement, and exacerbating existing inequities is a problem. I’m not sure whether that is a moral imperative for most in the movement, though I hope so. For me, this has always come from the heart. I can’t keep seeing this play out again and again, and not try to do something to change the trajectory. I think the environmental movement as a whole has a fighting chance at lessening the blow of the looming cascades of crises on the horizon, and helping the burden be shouldered more equitably. I think the only way that’s likely to happen is to get extremely serious about putting people in power within currently white-led organizations (including Boards and foundations) with a heart-centered, vested interest, rooted in lived experience of minoritization and its worst effects. The only way people are going to be able to succeed in these contexts is when provided the freedom, resources and support to do what they need to do, and when their work is lauded and recognized as the essential contribution it is. And the only way marginalized folks will stay in the long-term to lend their expertise and energy to the environmental conservation movement is when they are embraced, celebrated and fully belong as their true selves within these organizations. If the environmental conservation movement is serious about rectifying environmental inequity, it must be led, from the inside, by those with a real stake in doing better.
*Note: Individuals are not “diverse.” They may have diverse experiences, diverse skill sets, but an individual person’s identity is what it is – Black, woman, neurodivergent, etc. Please stop referring to individuals as “diverse” because they are not members of the dominant culture. Also, a team or organization that is all of the same race or gender is not “diverse.” An all-Black team is homogenous racially. An all-woman team is homogenous with respect to gender. Homogeneity is the opposite of diversity. “Diverse” is not a stand-in for identities other than those of the dominant culture. Yes, this is a pet peeve for the author.
Sources:
Opinion | Black Women Are Leaders in the Climate Movement - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Environmental organizations remain overwhelmingly white » Yale Climate Connections
2021 NGO & Foundation Transparency Report Card – Green 2.0 (diversegreen.org)
White Supremacy Culture Characteristics - SURJ
Delivering on Justice40 | The White House
Black voters were key to Biden’s 2020 win. What did they think of his first year? (nbcnews.com)
Why Democrats Are Losing Ground With Hispanic Voters (nymag.com)
People of Color Are on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis | Green America
Unequal Impact: The Deep Links Between Racism and Climate Change - Yale E360
Closing the Gap — InDEEP Initiative
To Quit Or Not to Quit? Dissecting the Impact of The Great Resignation (blackenterprise.com)
