Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Diversity (EIB&D)

Our lab is one of the many places where we engage as individuals, and as a community, toward building a more equitable, inclusive, and just environmental field where diverse perspectives are represented, differences are valued, and everyone belongs. A persistent legacy of systemic inequities in our field creates barriers to entry, retention, and advancement for scientists from historically excluded and minoritized identities/groups. The removal of these barriers benefits the advancement of science by allowing everyone the opportunity to participate and bringing in the full range of diversity in backgrounds, perspectives, ideas, and scientific pursuits. Every member of our lab group is dedicated to the work of understanding and dismantling these structural inequities as part of the work we do as scientists. We understand that this work is never done, we are limited by the perspectives we have at the table, and we welcome feedback on how to be better agents of change. 

Being agents of change for building a more equitable, inclusive, and just environmental field requires engagement through learning, reflection, and discussion, as well as individual and collective action. To continually support this important work, members of our lab commit to the following actions:

• Lab members are expected to take responsibility for educating themselves in the following areas, so that we have a shared starting point and common vocabulary in our EIB&D work:
  • Systemic inequities and the past and current state of EIB&D in the environmental sciences
  • Microaggressions, intent, and impact
  • Power and privilege
  • Implicit bias
  • Best practices in Inclusive research and teaching

• As a lab, we:
  • Devote at least one lab meeting per quarter as a deep dive where we read and discuss a paper that examines the intersection of EIB&D and environmental science / ecology. At the end of the meeting, we commit to at least one new action stemming from the discussion.
  • Incorporate EIB&D regularly in all lab meetings in addition to our focused deep dive and workshop meetings, often by checking in on progress of ongoing actions.
  • Require each lab member to take one training or class per year focused on EIB&D and/or environmental justice.
  • Some current/past actions have included:
    • Discussing and committing to priority areas for building an antiracist lab
    • Building accountability for educating ourselves on inequities in STEM and the academy
    • Evaluating and implementing holistic and inclusive practices in our fieldwork
    • Partnering with organizations in ecology / environmental science that provide structured and supportive internships for students from historically excluded / minoritized groups

We are part of the larger School of Environmental and Forest Sciences community, which is also committed to building a more equitable, inclusive, and just environmental field. Read more about EIB&D efforts in SEFS here.
Our EIB&D statements benefited from examples from the UW Quantitative Conservation Lab and the UC Santa Cruz Conservation Science & Solutions Lab.