Wawa Gatheru

Oh my goodness, thank you for having me.

I'm so excited.

Yeah, I would hope so.

I would hope so.

So yes, I am the proud founder and executive director of Black Girl Environmentalist.

We are a national organization that's working to address the unique pathway and retention issue that exists in the climate sector for black girls and black gender expansive folks.

So I can zoom out a little bit as to why that's our mission.

So when we look at the US population, people of color make up nearly 40%, but we don't exceed a 12 to 16% green ceiling.

So we see that there's a gap in terms of diverse talent, but then also there's a gap in terms of who has green skills.

So Gen Z, when we look at folks who have green skills, only one in 10 Gen Z around the world has a green skill.

When we look at women around the world, only 1 in 10 women have a single green skill.

So Black Girl Environmentalists is trying to address these circumstances by building pipelines and making sure that the next generation is properly resourced to be climate leaders.

Yeah, yeah.

A green skill can look like a number of different things.

A green skill could be someone getting the skills to fill in potholes.

It could be a skill to be a policymaker.

It could be a skill to work in conservation.

But the thing is, there aren't as many folks going into the green economy space in general, so I think we also have to shift the narrative to make sure that we're making those roles more sexy.

And that's what Black Girl Environmental is trying to do, make green jobs feel cooler.

Yeah, I would say it was the first summer of our Hazel and Johnson Fellowship Program.

So one of our biggest programs is called the Hazel and Johnson Fellowship Program.

It was named after the mother of environmental justice from the great city of Chicago.

And it's an organization.

And it's a program that's working to essentially build a pipeline of diverse talent into green internships.

So there's a lot of gaps in regards to who gets to enter the green space.

So we've teamed up with different organizations and companies

to have internships available for our fellows so our fellows do 10 weeks over the summer they get at least 18 an hour we pay them at least five thousand dollars for a living wage stipend we do weekly professional development support and we end the summer with a four day long retreat in nature in washington state so the moment that was really really beautiful for me and my team was getting to meet all our fellows for the first time last summer and then meet our second cohort this year

and have them talk about how they finally feel like there's a home for them in the climate movement.

It's tough.

It's a lot of whiplash.

So we're coming off of a Biden administration that was really committed for putting millions, hundreds of millions of dollars into the hands of grassroots organizations through the Inflation Reduction Act and Justice 40.

And so we saw organizations that were awarded tons of funds, around $29 billion, and those funds have now been frozen or canceled without, yeah.

Without due process.

So I have some friends that found out that their organizations lost funding from newspapers before they even got notified by their emails.

So we have a lot of organizations in the green economy space, organizations and workers who are at the front lines of deploying and scaling climate solutions, really scrambling for funds.

So it's difficult, but at the same time, there has been good movement happening.

There's a coalition called America's All In, which is a coalition of different businesses

academic centers and cities and municipalities and states who are still committed to the Paris Accords and still committed to climate targets that are going to hopefully get us to where we need to go.

But we definitely need philanthropy to stand up, corporate America to stand up, and to really help fill the gaps that the federal government is pulling back on.

Yeah.

People always ask me that.

And I'll first affirm, I think it would be insane for folks not to feel the kaleidoscope of the emotional responses that climate change and our world, the things that it presents us.

I feel hopeless and angry and frustrated a lot of the time, maybe not online.

Sure.

But I do have moments like this.

And I think what's been really helpful is reframing the climate crisis in a lot of ways.

reframing what it is that we're inheriting.

So we are inheriting the biggest crisis of all time, and it's a crisis that we didn't create, but we have to solve, and that's frustrating, and it's important to hold that truth.

But we're also inheriting wisdom from movements of our past, movements that also had to deal with what felt like insurmountable odds, like abolition, civil rights, labor movements, women's suffrage.

None of those movements ever had any guarantee of success, yet people continue to persevere.

And there's so much that we can learn from the organizing tactics that have been left behind for us.

Solidarity being a big one, coalition building being a big one.

And we really need that in the climate space because the climate crisis is not just an ecological crisis.

Yes, ecological breakdown is clearly happening, but it's also a crisis of

of care and a crisis of connection, we really have a problem with seeing the value in nature and non-human species and other humans.

We see this with the existence of Sacrifice Zones and Cancer Alley.

We see that with the ongoing genocides happening around the world with the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.

We have to have the moral

courage and clarity to refuse to bring that type of dangerous business as usual into the future that we're building.

And so I always try to ask the question back to folks who ask me, are we doomed or are we going to solve this crisis?

That that's not the correct question that we should be asking because there isn't just one future waiting for us.

There's many possible futures and the future that we get is based off of the decisions that we make.

Yeah.

Wow.

I would always recommend that folks look up the local organizations and their communities doing the good work.

there are everyday people doing the work every single day.

People who have green jobs, people who are doing their climate work outside of their nine to five.

And it's really, really exciting.

And I think that what we need more today is good climate storytelling.

So, so much of what people hear about climate change is a doom and gloom.

And there's so much truth in that.

It is bad.

And if we don't do anything, it could get worse.

And...

There are everyday people pushing for a better tomorrow in really cool, innovative ways.

One of my favorite organizations is called The Descendants Project.

They're based in Louisiana.

And they are actually buying back plantations as a means.

Yeah, yeah.

No, they're super cool.

They've bought back two plantations that their ancestors were previously enslaved upon, and they're using them as sites of reclamation, fighting against the narrative violence of plantation tourism, as well as using them as sites to educate their communities about how the petrochemical industry is basically poisoning the health of their communities, and they're fighting back and winning.

And it's so cool.

If more people knew about women like Dr. Joe and Joy Banner, who are the founders of the Descendants Project, I feel like

more folks to lean into climate optimism and see the possibilities of how they could get involved too.

Yeah, so I think it depends on the context, right?

So if someone's interested in BGE, usually they're like a black girl environmentalist or maybe someone who hasn't always felt like that term has resonated with them.

So I think it's really important for me to meet people where they're at.

And I think that might be something that we're missing

from sustainability or environmental discourse at large, it always feels like a zero sum game.

You ask something about AI, you ask something about recycling, and no matter how you answer it, you're gonna make someone mad.

And that's fair, we all have different opinions, but I do think that we should be leaning into these conversations with values.

There are certain things that we can all get behind.

In fact, when we look at polling, the majority of Americans believe our government should be doing more around safeguarding clean air and clean water.

and safeguarding healthy communities.

That's something we can get behind.

I'd rather have those conversations to bring people in and then talk about the solutions from there.

I would say something I would like to see is less youth climate activists or less youth activists.

I started at 15, and sometimes I wonder what it would have been like for me to spend more time being a kid.

And now I'm adult, and now I have to do big girl stuff.

And sometimes I want to...

like lean back into the time that I lost in a way.

But ultimately, the climate crisis isn't going anywhere.

So continue to be doing this work and black girl environmentalists is a huge priority of mine.

But I would love to help contribute to telling better climate stories and highlighting cool solutions like solar grazing, which is like where you bring

um different grazing animals to solar farms to help bring the vegetation i can talk about solar grazing like cute climate solutions that people want to hear about and that's something that i like to to do more and help change the narrative around climate to one that restructures the climate crisis as an opportunity to restructure our world because i think that mother earth is giving us

really important feedback that the structures that we've relied on for so long aren't working, and that we have a once-in-a-species-long opportunity to be better and do better.