Diversity, equity, and inclusion have been thorny issues that environmental organizations have encountered since their formation in the early nineteenth century. For more than a century, these institutions were organized on exclusionary principles that resulted in cloistered, gendered, and racially homogeneous organizations. Early on, only wealthy white males were invited to join and allowed to participate in these institutions. At the end of the nineteenth century, wealthy white women elbowed their way into the membership and leadership of environmental organizations.
However, the white working class—relegated to the role of servants, guides, and porters—was barred from membership in enviros. In the early twentieth century, working class whites objected to their lack of input into environmental affairs and the inequitable policies being promulgated by environmental entities; they created their own outdoor organizations. Nineteenth-century outdoor enthusiasts and environmentalists owned slaves and hired free people of color to assume the roles of servants, guides, porters, cooks, and launderers. Men and women of color were not allowed to participate fully in many environmental organizations until the latter part of the twentieth century.
Few questioned the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in environmental organizations until the 1960s, when academics and activists pointed to the overwhelming whiteness of the environmental movement and its workforce. In the face of criticism, environmental leaders argued that increasing the racial diversity of their staff or membership was not a part of their environmental mission.
The idea of paying attention to racial diversity caused conflict in some organizations. For example, though David Brower, executive director of the Sierra Club, declared that its membership was open to people of “the four recognized colors” in 1959, the matter was not settled for some time. During one discussion, attorney and former club director Bestor Robinson said: “Now wait a minute, this is not an integration club; this is a conservation club.” Robinson articulated an opinion shared by many in the club—that conservation was separate from social justice issues. Because club members did not see how social justice and the environment were connected, they did not believe that increasing racial diversity in the organization was an initiative the institution should undertake. Hence, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Club members voted against resolutions to admit people of color as members of the organization. During the 1960s and 1970s, social scientists studying the membership and leadership of environmental organizations likewise found the institutions to be primarily upper class and white.
Caught Off Guard: People of Color Critique the Big Greens
Activists from the nascent environmental justice movement stunned leaders of the 10 largest environmental organizations (the “Big Ten”) in 1990. As organizers finalized plans for Earth Day 20, environmental justice activists published a letter in The New York Times claiming that few people of color were on the staff of environmental nonprofits. The letter stated that the institutions discriminated in their hiring practices and activists argued that environmental organizations could benefit if they collaborated with communities of color and hired more ethnic and racial minority workers.
Environmental leaders were caught flat-footed and had difficulty explaining why so few people of color worked in their organizations. Quite often the environmental leaders evoked narrative tropes that blamed ethnic and racial minorities for the lack of engagement of people of color in Big Green enviros. Environmental leaders claimed that people of color (especially Blacks) were not working in environmental organizations because they were not knowledgeable about the environment and lacked awareness about environmental issues. Environmental spokespersons also argued that people of color did not apply for jobs in environmental nonprofits and would not stay in such workplaces if hired. They also argued that ethnic and racial minorities wanted salaries that were too high for the environmental organizations to pay. Nonetheless, some of the leaders pledged to recruit and hire more ethnic and racial minorities.
Environmental Organizations Shy Away from Social and Moral Responsibilities
At the height of the kerfuffle created by the 1990 letter, leading environmentalists sought to distinguish between concern for the environment, concern for social justice issues, and social responsibility. Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, responded to the letter by arguing that minorities are “cause-oriented,” and are therefore attracted to issues such as discrimination and poverty rather than to environmental issues. But Krupp admitted that “the truth is that environmental groups have done a miserable job of reaching out to minorities.” Bob Norman, the National Audubon Society’s director of human resources, had a slightly different interpretation. He agreed that his organization had a lousy track record of minority engagement, but he did not think that racism influenced hiring decisions. He conceded that, “We are not proud of our record—we are terrible.” However, he hastened to add, “I can’t believe it is racism. We are not getting the candidates from the minority community.”
Stereotyping the Excluded
The stereotypes used to describe people of color and their relationship to environmental organizations in 1990 are still being parroted today. Some environmental leaders gave similar explanations for the lack of racial diversity in their organizations in my 2014 report “The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations.” Some of the leaders participating in the study felt that focusing on racial diversity wasn’t compatible with their environmental mission and could put the viability of their organizations in jeopardy.
Moreover, environmental organizations are reluctant to confront their racist past and, therefore, remain challenging spaces for people of color to work in or become a member of. For instance, until 2020, the National Audubon Society was silent about the organization’s namesake John James Audubon’s slave-dealing. Similarly, the Sierra Club said nothing about the disparaging and offensive ways in which one of its founders, John Muir, wrote about Native Americans and Blacks. It was not until 2020, amidst the call for racial justice and anti-racist education that was a central tenet of the Black Lives Matter Movement, that the Save the Redwoods League acknowledged that some its founders were well-known eugenicists. The League now says it, “humbly acknowledges that some of our founders were leaders in the racist pseudoscience of eugenics. We wholly reject eugenics.” These same eugenicists were among the founders of the National Park Service.
Why Worry About Workforce Diversity?
Environmental organizations should pay attention to diversity as research shows that it enhances organizational effectiveness. This research finding is supported anecdotally by corporate executives from around the world who argue that diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences in their workforces are crucial to innovation and the development of new ideas. Executives also say that having a diverse and inclusive workplace is critical to recruiting, attracting, and retaining top talent. Corporate executives are not the only ones making these claims. Scholars posit that workplace diversity is a crucial factor in building cognitive growth, improving critical thinking, problem solving, skills acquisition, and enhancing productivity. Others intimate that greater heterogeneity in the workplace can lead to more committed, better satisfied, and higher performing employees.
Environmental organizations have been slow to embrace these arguments. An informal survey of environmental nonprofits found that in 1990 about 1.9 percent of their workforces (requires username and password) comprised people of color. The racial diversity of these organizations has increased, but people of color are still underrepresented in the environmental workforce. My study of 324 environmental organizations showed that people of color comprised about 16 percent of the workforce of environmental nonprofits and were underrepresented at all ranks in 2015.
Yet, environmental organizations deal with local, national, and global issues that are best tackled by people who can solve problems at macro and micro scales. Excluding racial and ethnic minorities from the workforce means ignoring the skills, talents, insights, and experiences that exist in roughly 42 percent of the U.S. population today. Ergo, if environmentalists want to succeed in their mission to protect the environment and foster greater stewardship of the planet, then they have to incorporate people of color into the environmental workforce more effectively.
A Push for Transparency and Anemic Levels of Reporting Diversity Data
Since 2014, diversity advocates have been pushing environmental organizations to expand diversity efforts, set strategic goals related to diversity, collect and disclose diversity data, and track their progress on achieving their goals. When the Green 2.0 campaign debuted, numerous heads of powerful environmental organizations opined about the need to increase racial and ethnic diversity in environmental nonprofits and pledged their support for efforts to increase the tracking and public disclosure of diversity data, as well as the overall transparency about the demographic characteristics of the staff, board, and membership of environmental nonprofits.
Trip Van Noppen, then president of Earthjustice; David Yarnold, former president and chief executive officer of the National Audubon Society; Ken Kimmel , then president of the Union of Concerned Scientists; Mark Tercek, then chief executive officer of The Nature Conservancy; Rhea Suh, former president of the Natural Resources Defense Council; Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s executive director; and the president and chief executive officer of the Defenders of Wildlife all vowed to support the campaign. With this show of public support, the people-of-color activists in Green 2.0 who spearheaded the effort felt that change was afoot.
A 2018 study of 12,054 environmental institutions published in Sustainability found that 3.7 percent of these institutions publicly reveal information about the make-up of their staff and board on GuideStar by Candid. So, while it is true that large environmental organizations like those named above divulged their diversity data on Candid, this action was not widespread amongst medium-sized and small environmental nonprofits.
A study of 516 environmental nonprofits I conducted that is published in the American Behavioral Scientist corroborates this finding. The study found that 31.4 percent of organizations report that they collect and track diversity data. However, only 4.5 percent of the organizations revealed their diversity data on Candid; 12.8 percent shared diversity data with funders and 6.6 percent put this type of information on their websites.
Where Do We Go from Here?
To enhance the racial and ethnic diversity of environmental organizations, more must be done to develop the diversity programming needed to create pathways for more people of color to enter and advance in the sector. Such programs are still in short supply. A 2019 report that I co-authored, Diversity Pathways: Broadening Participation in Environmental Organizations, examined diversity programming in 1,039 environmental nonprofits and found that 16.7 percent (173) had at least one pathway program.
In addition, the campaign to increase the number of environmental organizations that publicly report their diversity data must be expanded. The focus of groups such as Green 2.0 and the Green Leadership Trust has yielded modest results. Many top-40 environmental nonprofits reveal their diversity data publicly, but this practice has not trickled down to the medium-sized and small organizations.
Diversity advocates must incorporate several factors related to diversity data collection and sharing into their campaigns. They should:
- Focus on getting a larger number of environmental organizations to collect and publicly share diversity data.
- Recognize that a much higher percentage of organizations are already collecting diversity data than are sharing such data externally.
- Recognize that some organizations only share their data internally.
- Track the public sharing of diversity data on multiple platforms. Candid is the only platform currently tracking this information, but it is not where most environmental organizations share their diversity data.
Greater financial resources are needed to support diversity programming and expand the efforts of advocates who are pushing for greater public awareness of diversity in the environmental sector. Environmental philanthropists can play a role by including the public reporting of diversity data as a part of their grantmaking process and their grantees’ reporting.
To be sustainable over the long haul, enviros should pay more attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion, as these are socially responsible practices that should be a part of every environmental organization’s mission. The long-term viability of environmental organizations depends on the creation of workplaces that are based on and practice these principles.
Any opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the authors and not the American Sociological Association.
