Black History Month originally landed in the UK in 1987 thanks to Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, who arrived in the UK just 3 years previous as a refugee from Ghana. Following on from Carter G Woodson who launched America’s first Black History Week in 1926, on the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean. Akyaaba designated October to be a month of celebrating the history of Black people and challenging racism.
At its inception, Black History Month was successful at opening discussions on racism and highlighting key Black British figures and stories from British History that have previously been hidden or gone untold. I am grateful that these stories are being retold and showcased, even if it is just for one month of the year. However, every year that October creeps around, I don’t feel joy or excitement, I feel dread and grief. I grieve for the contribution of our communities which still haven’t made it into our history books, I grieve for the echoes of our ancestors who had their rights and humanity stripped away from them as enslaved people. I grieve for the pain that I and many people who look like me still feel every day as a Black person living in the UK and working in the environmental sector.
It is not easy being Black. If anything, it is a challenge being from an underrepresented background in a sector which has less than 10% identifying as being from an ethnically marginalised group. It is a struggle to watch environmental organisations celebrate Blackness and speak on how important it is to include our thoughts, our voices and our sweat in conservation work whilst perpetuating racist barriers which actively stop us from doing so.
We are asked to relive our trauma and bear our knowledge and souls to wealthy organisations for no renumeration, exploited for ideas on how to engage our communities. We are told we need specialist degrees and years of unpaid experience to secure unstable, low-paying jobs with no clear pathways for progression. We are made to experience microaggressions and bullying in those workplaces whilst shouldering the burden of making organisations more equitable, diverse, and inclusive. Then whilst watching people stroll into jobs who do not face the same barriers, we do through a system which facilitates their success through their word-of-mouth connections and the financial security to give years of their free time and energy to volunteering - we are lied to with claims that UK doesn’t have a problem with structural racism.
To clarify, I have not experienced bullying in my current workplace.
You don’t have to look far to find colonial practices in Britain’s nature conservation. The National Trust highlights that it is one of the largest private landowners in the UK with 100s of their sites locked behind an entrance or membership fee. They state ‘the National Trust cares for places and collections on behalf of the nation’ although no one elected them to do so. The National Trust recently explored its connection to slavery and colonialism, collectively we can see some positive movement with the National Trust and other environmental organisations, who have started looking back, acknowledging their role in perpetuating the barriers facing our communities today. It is vital for environmental organisations to reflect on, acknowledge and act on their own history and role in perpetuating barriers that exist in accessing nature and green spaces.
London Wildlife Trust and Wanderers of Colour published the 'Seeding Change' report and highlighted that there is a significant amount of trust-building that must be done to ensure that we are safe and welcome in the environment sector. To do so, environmental organisations, including London Wildlife Trust, must ensure marginalised voices are centred in discussions and action to address the systematic barriers that exist. London Wildlife Trust recently took another step in acknowledging the imbalance in the environment sector but it still pains me that this was done with a vague position statement which lacked substance, accountability and humanity. The mistakes around the statement have been acknowledged internally with efforts being made to approach with more intentionality going forward – it was this situation that motivated me to start sharing all of this.
For organisations like London Wildlife Trust, the aim to improve access to nature is often at odds with the reality of stepping foot on their nature reserves as although their 36 nature reserves are free to the public to visit, some are more literally locked behind gates unless you have the ability to identify keyholders and schmooze your way into getting a copy. The power of land management and place building is still held by organisations that don’t actually have roots in our underserved communities. These models are found in many of the councils and environmental organisations that own or lease land under the guise of protecting people and nature. There are countless organisations that claim to want to improve access to green spaces whilst upholding policies which disproportionately exclude people from lower socioeconomic and diverse backgrounds. This inequality in land access, robs Black people of the chance to share in the positive health and wellbeing effects of nature and takes a much more sinister turn when looking at how this affects Black people in cities.
Black people and those of mixed ethnic heritage are more likely to live in the most polluted places being subjected to illegal levels of air pollution. BAME (Black and people from Minoritised Ethnic backgrounds) Londoners are more than 50% more likely to face the highest climate risk in London including flooding, exposure to toxic air, heat risk and limited access to green spaces. It is no surprise that the first person to have air pollution listed as a cause of death was a 9-year-old Black girl called Ella Kissi-Debrah.
This year, Right to Roam published a league table of publicly accessible land which showed that 117 constituencies had access to one hectare or less – an area about the size of Trafalgar Square. 73% of those constituencies are located in cities with the majority conveniently falling in areas with the largest non-white populations. Not only do we have access to 11 times less land than majority white areas, but the land we do have contains polluting heavy infrastructure such as incinerators which threaten our health.
Funders are increasingly aware of this and have thrown their money behind projects which are apparently meant to serve our communities by renovating social housing, opening allotments, and creating new green spaces. With such a large focus on rewilding, building green infrastructure and improving biodiversity, it’s a travesty that this comes at the expense of local communities who are driven out of their homes as these newly green gentrified areas become havens for wealthy, majority-white populations. The original purpose of creating Woodberry Wetlands was to transform a place which had been fenced off for 200 years into a free place for wildlife to thrive and the community to enjoy nature. However, biodiversity often comes at the expense of human diversity - something I’m reminded of each time I walk past Woodberry Downs where council flats have been demolished and replaced with luxury counterparts which don’t meet affordable housing targets and start at £550,000-£600,000 for a one bedroom flat. Worryingly council tenants report that they have not been moved into flats which overlook Woodberry Wetlands, and are instead welcomed with a view of Seven Sisters Road, segregated from those who can afford to line developer’s pockets with profit. This is a reality echoed across urban greening projects in London and beyond as organisations go in with good intentions which are co-opted by colonial systems.
I can’t say that I don’t second guess working in a sector that still employs a colonial approach to conservation whilst ignorantly bringing harm to our communities. During the times that I find myself questioning what I’m doing here, I’m now grateful to have Tayshan Haden-Smith from Grow2Know in my head quoting Ron Finley “…if you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re on the menu.” London Wildlife Trust’s paid Keeping it Wild traineeship afforded me that seat. It’s a cliché to say that it was a transformational experience for me, but it was. It gave me a comfortable space to learn and grow as an environmentalist without exploiting me for free labour. This is one of the reasons why through my work I put so much energy into holding a space for young people to find peace, joy and wonder in nature. It proves to the sector that it is possible to build up young people to affect change and be leaders whilst reminding us that we are worthy.
It is frustrating that established organisations don’t seem to have made this same non-tokenistic commitment to fairly invest in people from underrepresented backgrounds whilst complaining that their workforces are not currently representative of UK demographics. In fact, unpaid internships and an unachievable long list of experience requirements are still prevalent throughout the sector, just two of the barriers blocking us from taking up seats at the table.
I’m not sure what the purpose of sharing this letter with you is but I do know that there is power in honestly talking about our pains and discomforts. So I’d like to start winding this up with a line which struck me from an article shared in a group chat (it’s a great read- thanks Von!), written by Andre Kpodonu - “The value of Black life, or indeed almost any life, has yet to be accepted as a valid basis to proactively and systematically curtail harmful industry”.
Grassroots and community-led groups continue to spearhead positive efforts to address this disregard, a welcomed breath of fresh air in a room stuffed with established environmental organisations and traditional conservation efforts. These groups, their influential people, and the spaces that they hold are my biggest source of inspiration and motivation to keep going when the odds are stacked against us. I am an ordinary person. And when our rights to non-violent protest are being erased, I’m reminded that the only thing that will ever lead to change is ordinary people like us speaking out about our lived experiences, standing up for what we believe in and coming together. I hope we can come together to turn this into a reality for people and wildlife. I hope that our allies in the environment sector build us up and advocate for our rights. And I hope that we can reclaim Black History Month’s original aim of celebrating Black people and challenging racism.
- Charlie N :)