A lost decade – Does the sector really want to diversify?

An annual report is traditionally the place to extol achievements, however, context is important to understanding the journey – it feels expedient to include a rallying call to the sector to consider its slow progress in engaging a diversity of audiences, voices and participants.

In this year’s thought piece we reflect on what has been lost in the last decade, through the reluctance to appropriately resource claims to want to diversify the sector.

Under funding; the ultimate gatekeep

POC-led groups have been enormously successful in engaging and inspiring communities of colour to enjoy more time in nature, yet are often doing so with minimal funding and without being perceived or included as part of the wider environmental sector.
In a period when the sector has asked ‘where are the Black participants and leaders’, it has taken us over 10 years to achieve what we would describe as ‘good’ funding. This is despite being in continual demand for collaboration and consultancy by leading NGO’s, government and research institutions.

We are ending 2025 with the best funding we have ever received, with £415,000 already secured for the next three years. This joyful news also gives us cause to reflect on a decade, where expertise, track record, and overwhelming need were not enough to attract funds to be able to fulfill our potential to participate, grow and serve as an organisation able to support diversification; nurturing Black participation and leadership within our organisation and the sector.

We’re not just speaking for ourselves, but tens of POC-led organisations who struggle to gain traction within the environment sector; to be seen as credible peers with value beyond extraction or requests to ‘bus in’ marginalised groups to programmes failing to engage diverse communities.

Just like people of colour in general, we are perceived as outside of the environmental sphere, with elements of both active and passive exclusion keeping the gate. The under funding of POC-led organisations in the environmental field is a key feature of a system which creates obstacles to us demonstrating leadership within the sector.

Now in our 13th year, our first 8 years were largely self funded, or operated with less than £15,000 due to our lack of success in securing or holding onto funds. This sits beside our experience of ‘stolen’ opportunities, racism and poor ethics from would be collaborators we tried to partner with, who competed or subverted, for example diverting funds awarded to us to themselves, or taking over bids we had written to submit in their own name.  Without resources, we lacked the equality of arms to challenge, having a choice between contesting or being able to deliver programmes, but not having the funds or staffing capacity to do both.

Many millions have been allocated to larger organisations towards diversification. As a strategy this has not led to significant change ‘on the ground’. A trend emerged of funders awarding organisations without track record of delivery to diverse audiences and without community engagement capabilities who then leant on POC-led organisations to provide engagement services without remuneration, whilst declining to fund POC-led organisations with strong track records of delivery and deep community engagement. This approach has undermined the ability of POC-led organisations, to contribute to the field and its diversification, and to be visible leaders and inspirers for our communities to follow.

We are well aware that many organisations within the environmental sector are currently struggling for funding, having to cutback programmes and staffing. However this recent economic reality for the sector, has been our economic reality for over 10 years, including throughout periods when much of the sector experienced inflows. There has been a persistent under funding of POC-led organisations that is separate to the current reduction in access to funds throughout the sector.

What has been lost as a result of under funding?

Institution building

What strikes us most is that we don’t believe that the sector has considered there to be a missing voice. The absence of a resourced POC-led organisation, has been seen as natural. There is a tendancy to see us as hobbyists, a temporary project, and therefore when we are not funded as an organisation – this doesn’t stand out as amiss. It meets expectations, being a racism of low expectations.

“We are not expected and so are not seen as missing”

The sector doesn’t see us as professional entities with the potential for national scale, voice and leadership (rather, there is a sector shadow which fears this).

Our ambition has always been to be a national organisation, with aims to have 20+ staff with dedicated teams in comms, fundraising, research and field delivery, with specialist focus on the needs of communities of colour, supported by an infrastructure for scaling. We are well behind our founding timeline. Some of our peer organisations have sadly closed due to under funding, we too nearly succombed.

There is an existential threat and perverse irony that participating in the sector diminishes our resources – because our participation doesn’t attract funds, despite our knowledge and methods being valued. Participation depletes us, with neither funders or would-be collaborators (rarely) willing to create a budget towards our costs, let alone investing in us as a means to diversifying. The model employed by the sector is one of extraction rather than of capacity building.

“The racism of low expectations”

Ghost stakeholders

POC led organisations have been rendered ‘Ghost’ stakeholders, occasionally seen but not acknowledged; not considered real peers.  Those who want, but can’t get, traction need to be included in the audit of the sector’s stakeholders, otherwise the issue of invisibility becomes cyclical.

It also means that the huge amount of work that we do is unseen. The mainstream is oblivious to the levels of hard work and struggle, in not achieving traction and viable presence. Viable presence alludes to the sustainability issues in being a constituent within the sector and the vulnerability of being under resourced and overstretched. A theme we discussed in our previous 2023-2024 annual report in The Cost of Decolonising.

Leadership

The typically white, middle class sector has focused on its assumptions about how we can serve them, rather than being curious and allowing us to provide leadership on how to bring a diverse range of communities into the tent. The sector’s inclusion schemes have focused on people of colour as the perpetual beginner, initiatives are aimed at entry level, young people, internships and apprenticeships. The sector has not made efforts to engage and nurture senior practitioners of colour. Notwithstanding the success of our underfunded Nature Guide leadership programme; over the last 10 years, we could have nurtured senior leaders, not just in the field but policy, research and governance, effecting decision making representing diverse needs and interests. In this time, we could have nurtured entry level starts into senior management – we haven’t seen this occur in the sector, (but will gladly be corrected).

The denial of us as knowledgeable and accomplished also serves to ‘keep us in our place.’ A Black colleague shared that there had been discussion of recruiting people of colour onto the Board in her organisation and that this was being seen as a risk, as it was presumed Black people would be ill equipped for governance.

Communicating stories

When it comes to communicating issues surrounding the engagement of people of colour in nature, the conversation hasn’t moved on or explored nuance – we’re still being asked to talk about the same foundational topics that we were 10 years ago – as if it is new insight. Our organisation is still being asked to give interviews and then see a story which doesn’t represent much of what we said or stand for, realising that our pictures were wanted to brown-up a feature that had already been written.

We have experienced competition from larger NGOs who want to control the narrative and its delivery – who attempt to tell stories about people of colour by ‘leap frogging’, using their larger budgets, extracting stories from us to present as their own whilst often presenting us in a diminishing manner.

Not enough has been invested in bringing more people into the tent by engaging communities where they listen, watch, read and gather. The sector is stuck in a silo of channels and publications in which mainstream conversations take place, which largely speak to the white middle class.

The environmental sector doesn’t talk with communities of colour, we are left out of the conversation, hence we are marginalised. We are not invested in or cultivated as an audience. The sector has done little to speak in the rooms that we’re already in, and little to develop new channels to reach diverse audiences with content that fosters belonging. Had suitable investment come to POC-led organisations 10 years ago, the cycle of content, inspired communities, greater participation, development of leaders, knowledge sharing, building of organisations, would have been rooted and producing sustainable results.

How to make up for lost time and have a lasting impact?

A reductive approach has led to a competitive or dismissive attitude towards POC-led organisations, rather than the sector seeking a win win collaborative approach in which the overall aim of diversification is the prize.

To shift the malaise around getting on with including a greater range of communities within the ‘conversation,’ we need to shift mind-sets to allow equitable starting points for belonging and contributing to the sector and for diverse leaders to have the resources to share and implement strategic thinking. Why hasn’t the sector asked or funded POC-led organisations to answer: what do we need to do to diversify the sector?

Shifting mind-sets to allow equitable starting points;

• NGOs; POC-led organisation’s success isn’t your loss, it’s diversification
• Funders; support what works
• Invest in senior leaders of colour
• Support the capacity building of POC led organisations