Green, but Mostly White… The Lack of Diversity in the Environmental Movement – Part 1
There have been a series of lively discussions recently around the Future 500 office that led to the creation of a collective article on the subject. The real spark can be traced back to our expansion as an organization over the past year, as we have been fortunate enough to hire five new full time staffers since July 2013. This is when I, as well as others involved in the hiring process, first started to notice how difficult it was to pull applicants that weren’t of a certain class, race, political party and education. A lack of diversity was something I had always noticed about the environmental community, but it was now staring me squarely in the face – in the form of 400 applicants.
In the Spring of 2014, I was fortunate enough to attend the Social Venture Network’s annual meeting. It was the first time I had seen a group of people working in the environmental sustainability arena discuss the lack-of-diversity issue in any real, constructive way. It was refreshing and gave me the space I had been searching for.
During the SVN event, the Donald Sterling controversy erupted, which (re) opened a national conversation about race in America. Directly after, I attended a meeting on climate, where I had to defend to another organization why we worked with Republicans on the issue. This conversation happened right before I boarded a plane to a prominent annual sustainability conference, in which my colleague Marvin (his story to follow), was one of only a handful of non-white participants in a room of about 600 people.
So, it’s fair to say that ‘diversity’ – whether it be referencing race, class, political, or gender, was on my mind. It was on my colleagues’ minds. It’s been on everyone’s minds in every meeting that I go to where we collectively look around the room and all think the same thing but don’t say it: the environmental community is mainly a white, middle class, liberal movement and it needs to expand to be truly effective.
Marvin and I returned to the Future 500 office, where we started discussing this topic with the rest of the staff. Inevitably, discussion led to a debate about our industry and about our individual experiences within it. We wanted to share that conversation, in our own individual voices, to spark a larger conversation within the environmental movement. While we have differing perspectives and backgrounds, we ultimately believe that by putting the pieces together, we are stronger and much better equipped to tackle the daunting global environmental issues of our time.
This article was originally published on Justmeans.
Future 500 is a non-profit consultancy that builds trust between companies, advocates, investors, and philanthropists to advance business as a force for good. Based in San Francisco, we specialize in stakeholder engagement, sustainability strategy, and responsible communication. From stakeholder mapping to materiality assessments, partnership development to activist engagement, target setting to CSR reporting strategy, we empower our partners with the skills and relationships needed to systemically tackle today's most pressing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) challenges.
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Danna Moore is a former Future 500 team member and current Senior Fellow. She currently is Director of Global Operations at Project AWARE. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
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