The environmental sector is notoriously one of the least diverse, with only 3.5 per cent working in environmental jobs identifying as an ethnic minority. This is in stark contrast to the makeup of the UK more broadly, where 82 per cent of the population of England and Wales identify as white, and 18 per cent as black, Asian, mixed or other ethnic group.
In addition, although climate change will affect working class people soonest and most sharply, the climate change movement is still seen as a predominantly middle class preoccupation. And yet, climate change anxiety is not stronger among those in middle classes – 39 per cent of the UK’s working class and 42 per cent of middle-class voters experienced significant eco-anxiety.
The dissonance is stark between those who worry about climate change, those who will be most affected and those who get to make decisions around environmental issues such as green transport, retrofitting housing stock, low emissions zones and heatwave preparedness. Lack of diversity in the environmental sector is not driven by who cares most or who is invested in a green future, but rather who is privileged enough to work within the sector and, more importantly, who is heard when decisions are taken. Our recent study in Bristol (UK) focused on these issues of exclusion – in particular on the planning, discussion and implementation of a just transition to climate change.
A just transition, loosely defined, is a transition to a post-carbon economy that is green, sustainable and socially inclusive. Bristol is one of the first cities to make an explicit promise to pursue a just transition to combat climate change. The Bristol One City Climate Strategy aims, by 2030, to ‘have achieved a fair and inclusive transition, capturing opportunities of new jobs and investment, improved health, wellbeing and education, and a better environment for local people’. Fair is defined as ‘maintaining a democratic mandate, ensuring there are opportunities for all to participate in the benefits of change with its costs shared fairly’.
It is this wording around democratic mandate and participation that grabbed our attention. We wanted to know what happens once a city sets out to pursue a just transition. How is it being interpreted and how is it being pursued? Who is heard when decisions around just transition are taken?
To answer these questions, we focused on six actors engaged in climate policy in Bristol, very broadly speaking: two from the public sector (Bristol Advisory Committee on Climate Change, Bristol One City Boards), two from the private sector (Arup, Cycle Works) and two from civil society (Liveable Neighbourhoods, Black and Green Ambassadors). We conducted nine hours of observations to get a sense of how meetings were conducted and decisions taken, as well as semi-structured interviews with leaders from each organisation to ask in-depth questions about decision making.
The first thing we noticed was the uneven nature of decisions making in meetings. Discussion was at all times heavily skewed towards white men. White men made up 40 per cent of participants in meetings and spoke 64 per cent of the time. White women made up 41 per cent of participants in meetings and spoke 33 per cent of the time. By comparison, women of colour made up 14 per cent of participants in meetings and spoke two per cent of the time, and men of colour made up five per cent of participants in meetings and spoke only one per cent of the time. This is in the context of Bristol 2021 demographics where 84 per cent identify as white, and 16 per cent of people identify as belonging to an ethnic minority.
On a positive note, these issues were known to our participants, who discussed the imbalances of decision making openly in interviews. This critical awareness is positive, but there was confusion over how to include and engage people of colour, as well as climate-vulnerable groups including the disabled, communities living in poverty, children and the elderly.
Finally, we found very little critical engagement with existing policies. Often, there was no space or time in meetings to be critical of existing ideas and narratives, or to challenge existing policy processes and systemic problems. Climate justice was only mentioned in one of the nine meetings we observed, and climate vulnerability was not mentioned at all. Meetings instead felt very busy, filled with packed agendas and talking points, with little opportunity to make radical suggestions for change.
Overall, then, not only was decision making exclusionary, but it also offered little opportunity to stray from business as usual. Given the huge societal shifts required for just transition to occur, this is concerning.
Our main recommendation for overcoming these issues is that inclusive decision making must be embedded into the process of just transition from the beginning and throughout its implementation – it is not a step that can be ‘ticked off’ and then abandoned, but rather an ongoing process that must be consistently returned to.
We also have three key policy recommendations. The first is that space needs to be made for a variety of community perspectives to feed into decision making, with an emphasis on the participation of groups that are vulnerable in just transitions. The second is that policy makers must be careful to avoid tokenism in this process of creating space for a variety of perspectives. An example of bad practice might be, for example, inviting one or two select representatives to articulate the views of entire groups. Finally, policy makers should try to innovate public consultation processes, for example through citizens’ assemblies. Strengthening the follow-up processes will be crucial in building public trust in this model of participatory governance.
Our next steps are to help implement some of these changes. We are working with The Diversity Trust to create a series of workshops and away days focused on training policy makers to become more inclusive in their hiring processes, meetings and practices more broadly. We hope that by providing such resources, we can follow up on the research finding and help provide solutions to the problem of a lack of diversity in the environmental sector. There is simply no time to waste, as it becomes more and more urgent to address climate change in a fair and inclusive manner.
Dr Alix Dietzel is a senior lecturer in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS) at the University of Bristol, specialising in climate justice, climate policy and just transition.
Dr Alice Venn is a lecturer in the School of Law at the University of Bristol, specialising in human rights law, climate justice and just transition.
Dr George Boss is a research fellow in the Department of Political Science at UCL, specialising in the political theory of needs and how these apply to practice including climate change decision making.
Dr Dan is a lecturer in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol, specialising in immigration removal centres, refugee rights and violence against migrants.
Politics, voice and just transition: who has a say in climate change decision making, and who does not by George Boss, Alix Dietzel, Dan Godshaw and Alice Venn for the Global Social Challenges Journal is available on Bristol University Press Digital here.
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