When Sarah Mukherjee MBE joined IEMA as CEO back in 2020, diversity and inclusion was high on her agenda. In this blog, Sarah talks about IEMA’s Diverse Sustainability Initiative, the lack of racial diversity in the sustainability and environment sector, and featuring on the ENDS Report’s Eco Chamber podcast episode dedicated to the topic.
In March 2021, IEMA launched our Diverse Sustainability Initiative (DSI), a sector-wide collaborative programme of work with a vision to address and transform diversity within the sustainability profession and wider environment sector.
Following global protests about racial injustice sparked by the murder of George Floyd in the US in May 2020, many UK organisations made commitments to improving diversity within their sectors and workplaces, through actions like reviewing their recruitment practises and giving colleagues from minority backgrounds a platform to address workplace issues related to equality, diversity and inclusion.
With collaboration from partners ranging from Bat Conservation to the RSPB, members of the DSI pledged to educate, reform, and encourage the next generation of diverse professionals to join the environment profession. By signing up, organisations made a public commitment to improve diversity within their industries, be accountable and make a positive difference to bring about change.
Acknowledging that the sustainability and environment sector has a problem with lack of diversity is only the first step in a long journey to rectifying the issue.
A study of diversity across the UK economy surveyed 202 occupations to find out which were the most and least diverse. The top 10 most diverse professions are many you would expect – doctors, dentists and pharmacists, those holding up our National Health Service – also chefs and restaurant workers. And, of course, at #1 – taxi drivers!
And yet the sustainability and environment sector languishes at number 201 out of 202. This was the topic of a special episode of the ENDS Report’s Eco Chamber podcast, Access Denied: The environment sector’s problem with race.
Through the episode, ENDS Report’s James Agyepong-Parsons investigates why the environment sector remains one of the least diverse in the country and finds out what’s being done to implement change. He says:
“There are whole fields of study dedicated to employment practises and work discrimination in the UK. Ethnic penalty literature uses statistical analysis of survey data which shows that many ethnic minority groups in the UK have on average a lower probability of being employed and work on a lower quality job than the white British majority possessing the same qualifications.
“Discrimination literature has established from field experiments that ethnic minority applicants in the UK are less likely to receive a positive reply to their application than the white British majority.
“Within the conservation space, the Wildlife and Countryside Link, the largest environment and wildlife coalition in England, produced a route map to greater ethnic diversity, finding that overt and covert racism plagued the sector.”
The data paints a pretty bleak picture, not just for the environment and sustainability sector, but the UK as a whole. However, the issue seems especially dire within our sector. According to data collected from 58 environment and sustainability organisations by Racial Action for the Climate Emergency (RACE) for their 2023 RACE Report, only 6.6% of people working in the industry identified as People of Colour or other ethnically minoritised groups. This compares to the fact that 15% of the UK working population aged 16-24 are People of Colour (ONS Annual Population Survey 2023).
So, why is the sector so lacking in diversity?
Historically, protected landscapes, and especially those with heritage status, have excluded communities of Colour and the working class, even those living within close proximity. So when plans are made to make these spaces more accessible – like those in the Glover Review which formed part of the Government’s 25-year Plan for the Environment – special consideration is required to remove the barriers to participation that people from marginalised groups face, whether that’s racism, classism, or the physical inaccessibility of these spaces for people with disabilities.
It is perhaps little surprise then, that the only profession ranked lower that sustainability and environment sector for diversity is farming at 202nd place out of 202 – so important as custodians of our natural landscapes.
In terms of job opportunities, it can often be that in order to obtain certain roles, a level of socioeconomic privilege is required to get a foot in the door. The requirement of voluntary experience for example is just one way in which people from less privileged backgrounds can be priced out of entry. And, even if you get to interview stage, prejudice and unconscious bias make securing job opportunities more challenging for People of Colour than their white counterparts.
Many organisations misunderstand this issue of diversity – partly due to a lack of lived experience from even the most well-meaning senior leadership figures – as one that can be solved by saying the right things and making promises of committing to being a ‘welcoming environment for all’.
