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One of our key priorities over the next few years is to improve diversity and inclusion at all levels across the organisation.
We are renewing our commitment to action, at four levels:
1. Increasing reach and representation
We will find ways to increase numbers of groups currently under-represented among all our stakeholders, including trustees, staff, students, members and visitors.
One way we can approach this is to use networks and channels that can help us ensure that advertisements and promotions are likely to be seen by diverse audiences. Reviewing the wording of job advertisements to make these more attractive for different groups is a further important step. We can also look to provide opportunities for people from under-represented groups to find out more about CAT through dedicated days or programmes.
As an organisation based in Wales, we would like to increase the number of staff – particularly at senior levels – who come from the local area, and who are fluent speakers of Welsh. One way to address this may be to put more emphasis on training and development of employees, so as to enable them to progress within the organisation and take on more senior positions.
2. Ensuring an inclusive and enabling environment
It is vital that we ensure that we create an environment that feels inclusive and enabling to all. This may entail changes to physical layout – for example, for the past few years we have had some toilets in the WISE building and café designated as “gender-neutral”, to provide for people of non-binary gender. New developments on site need to be made with accessibility issues kept firmly in mind.
Equally important is staff training and development, so that everybody is treated with respect and in the ways they would like to be treated. We will include diversity and inclusivity training as a standard part of new staff induction, as well as offering ongoing refresher courses for existing staff.
3. Relevant content
We will continue reviewing the content of CAT’s educational messages, whether in displays onsite, tours and lectures for visitors, short courses, programmes for school groups, or graduate courses.
We want to ensure that we are representing issues that are relevant to people from all different sections of society, and that we do not make assumptions that seem to exclude some people. We are very conscious of the need for CAT’s messages to be relevant to the wide variety of situations in which people live and work.
4. Highlighting the need for climate justice
It is important that we understand the links between systemic racism and environmental and climate justice in order to properly address the solutions to climate change.
CAT has a history going back decades of including climate justice and global equity in its education programme, through its work with schools and teachers, as well as with older groups – its activity in this area was pioneering at the time.
More recently, CAT’s 2017 Zero Carbon Britain: Making it Happen report included a section specifically addressing the links between global inequality and climate change.
Over the last few years CAT’s Graduate School of the Environment has increased its teaching about the connections between climate change, racism and global inequality, and this is an area we will continue to emphasise in all our educational work.
Why do we want to do this? Well, one reason is that it’s the right thing to do from an ethical standpoint and means that our commitment to value all individuals and diverse voices is put into practice. But just as importantly, it is the only way in which CAT can be most effective as an organisation. On the one hand, greater diversity of staff, trustees, students and members will bring a richer set of ideas and viewpoints, leading to increased creativity and a more complete picture of the issues. On the other, it will help us reach out further in terms of inspiring, informing and enabling people from all backgrounds to respond to the climate and biodiversity emergency – in other words, achieving CAT’s mission.
We would love to hear from you if you are keen to help CAT continue its diversity and inclusion journey, especially if you have expertise, ideas or contacts that you feel may be beneficial.
Please get in touch with your thoughts
