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Can our conservation efforts embrace our nation's demography?

The question left me dumbstruck. 鈥淚f you leaders of the big Green groups hadn鈥檛 been a bunch of northeastern white folks for the past 40 years, what issues would you have worked on that would have been different?鈥

I was, in fact, a Californian, and new to the environmental movement. The event, held in Detroit in 2006, forced me to look at choices made by the environmental community. The question had an unmistakable ring of truth to it.

But it will take real commitment, money, and effort to set new priorities. Why should we? Because exclusion is a path to extinction in an America that will have no ethnic majority by 2050. And it鈥檚 important because it will make our on-the-ground conservation more effective (see 鈥溾).

An employee-driven group at 探花精选 is making great strides. We鈥檙e ensuring we get diverse applicant pools. We鈥檙e creating an 探花精选 Fellowship program to bring new perspectives to our work and a broad new internship program that will give young people from all backgrounds opportunities to gain skills in conservation. 

In Los Angeles, the 探花精选 Center at Debs Park鈥攍ed by a mostly Latina staff鈥攊nvites Latino families to take part in hands-on restoration of a neighborhood green space. In the Twin Cities, 探花精选 Minnesota is working with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe to help Native American kids build towers for chimney swifts. We鈥檙e partnering with historically black colleges and universities in the Gulf region to develop new courses focused on the environmental and social challenges on the lower Mississippi River.

Our 探花精选 Centers had more than a million visitors last year, many of them kids and families of color from underserved communities. But we won鈥檛 be truly inclusive until we broaden the cultural perspectives in the rooms where our decisions are made.

This leads me to my other 鈥渁ha鈥 moment. I spent a morning in Harlem with a team at WE ACT, one of the nation鈥檚 leading environmental justice groups. After a couple of hours of spirited conversation, it became clear we were talking past one another.

鈥淵ou keep using the word sustainable,鈥 I said (thinking about my Prius, locally grown vegetables, and affordable solar panels), 鈥渁nd you bring a lot of heat with it.鈥

鈥淲e want the lead out of the paint in our apartment walls, we want the oil and the glass out of the empty lot on the corner, and we don鈥檛 want you putting your damn diesel bus yard in our neighborhood to make our kids sick just because we鈥檙e not rich enough to keep those buses out,鈥 a woman responded. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what sustainable means to me.鈥

Her perspective and the question in Detroit made the same point. For 探花精选 to thrive, we not only want to be the place where people of all backgrounds choose to work, we also want to make sure all of our practices鈥攆rom how we hire to whom we choose as partners to how we present ourselves鈥攁re based on respect, openness, and inclusion.