From: Issue 35 Categories: business

Missing Persons

8 June, 2011

The environmental movement can’t afford to exclude anyone. Yet green organizations have typically ignored people of colour.

Written by Melissa Shin, Contributing Editor

When Sonia Dong first pitched the idea of a conference on diversity, some participants thought they would be learning about ecosystem variation.

In fact, the environmental NGO (ENGO) staffer had to explain, it was going to be about increasing the diversity of voices within the environmental movement—an issue such organizations have historically failed to recognize.

That’s a problem, says Dong, because at the moment, the predominant voice is likely to be middle-class and white, despite an increasingly diverse population. As the diversity project manager at the Sustainability Network, a Toronto-based ENGO, Dong sometimes finds herself the only non-white attendee at environmental events.

“Most ENGOs today have little diversity and don’t reflect or authentically engage the communities they serve,” she says. For instance, the executive directors of the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF), Greenpeace Canada, Pembina Institute, Sierra Club of Canada and WWF-Canada are all white males.

It’s a North American problem, too. American environmentalists of colour such as Lisa Jackson, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Marcelo Bonta, executive director of the Center for Diversity and the Environment in Oregon, have coined the phrase “tyranny of fleece” to highlight the movement’s homogeneity.

Perhaps top ranks aren’t filled with people of colour because ENGOs don’t think diversity is necessary. A 2009 report by Earth Day Canada found ENGOs mistakenly believe visible minorities are not interested in environmental well-being. In a time when mainstream environmental interest is fading—contrast the discourse of the 2008 and 2011 federal elections—ENGOs must extend their reach into diverse communities more than ever.

Looking in the mirror
“The environmental movement is failing,” says geneticist and broadcaster Dr. David Suzuki. “I don’t call myself an environmentalist anymore. It’s time to broaden our tent and realize if we are working for a sustainable society, any group facing terrorism, genocide or war is not going to give a damn about the environment.”

Freelance journalist Ayana Meade agrees that when survival is at stake, environmental issues aren’t top of mind. Meade, who is based in New York, founded the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Diversity Task Force in response to the low percentage of journalists of colour reporting on environmental issues.

Share |

Featured Content from Issue 35 See all content

Video

The Toronto Zoo and the Summerhill Group teamed up in 2010 with the EcoExecutives Program to educate business leaders and companies about their environmental impacts. By bringing executives face to face with the species that are threatened by carbon emissions, material extraction and habitat destruction, the program aims to bring environmental concerns to the forefront of corporate operations.

 

Report

 Our 10th Anniversary report on the state of responsible business in Canada

Feature

On the 20th anniversary of the Acid Rain Accord, former prime minister Brian Mulroney talks true Canadian leadership with Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, reflecting on what the boss has to do to get the job done

Feature

The environmental movement can’t afford to exclude anyone. Yet green organizations have typically ignored people of colour.
 

Feature

We face economic and environmental disaster in the future if we do not address the ongoing loss of natural capital. The first step is to end the economic invisibility of nature by remodeling our antiquated compass of national performance, GDP growth. 

Feature

Building the sustainable economy of tomorrow is going to require a little ingenuity, and a lot of ideological TNT

 

Feature

Taking a critical look at the last decade of corporate social responsibility in Canada

Feature

 How the next generation of business leaders could redefine the role of corporate culture

Feature

Canadian luminaries shed some light on what's needed to give our economic system a makeover for the greater good