Castor Semenya is a female South African Olympic medalist in track and field. She’s racked up countless accolades over the years and become an icon in mid-distance running. Yet, because she happens to have a particularly high testosterone count for a female athlete, she’s only allowed to compete in international-level competitions if she takes hormone blockers. 

Consider another athlete: Michael Phelps. 28 Olympic medals. A symbolic figure in athletics. Yet, although Phelps produces approximately 7x less lactic acid (which produces body fatigue) than the average Olympic swimmer, no one is banning him from competing, or offering him pills that mess with his biology.

There are a few things at play here: Caster Semenya is a woman. She does not fit the physical conventions of a female athlete. She is gay and out. She is African. She fought for her rights to compete. She is stuck with a career that has historically questioned her right to compete and compared her to male athletes.

This problem isn’t limited just to athletics. It also pervades environmentalism. It is these issues of identity, representation, and equity that intersectional environmentalism deals with.

Intersectional environmentalism is a movement that emerged in recent years, and is increasing in popularity. To give some introduction, intersectional environmentalism addresses that environmental spaces and movements are generally populated by wealthy and privileged peoples (often white). 

Contrary to popular belief, people of color (POC) and other minorities are not disinterested in the environmental crises- in fact, an overwhelming number of studies show that they are the most affected and simply have not had access or time to deal with things outside their immediate circles. Moreover, environmental spaces haven’t historically been inclusive enough/welcoming enough for people of color. 

Intersectionality needs to play a larger part in the climate movement. Who is working towards intersectional environmentalism, and how do we support them?

Just recently, in July 2023, a study was published examining intersectionality in the UK within two social movements: the disability movement, and the environmental movement. The study  looked at what role intersectionality plays in grassroots activist groups, activist networks, non-governmental organizations, and charities. 

What is grassroots action? While we as a society are familiar with NGOs and charities (like WWF, Greenpeace, and Friends of Earth), grassroots action might be a newer term for many readers. Counterintuitively, ‘grassroots’ doesn’t literally refer to the stem of a piece of grass; it actually refers to when people make change on a local level in order to affect change on a greater scale. It comes from the idea that people most affected by problems should be at the heart of solving them (to which, you might respond with ‘duh’, but upon further research will find it is often not the case). Based on this definition, it makes sense that grassroots organizations listen and care about the voices of people most affected by climate change more than efforts that do not adopt a grassroots approach. Grassroots activists, for example, probably wouldn’t leave it up to the European men in athletics to make decisions about whether Caster Semenya gets to compete.

Yet, right now, that is often the case in environmental activism — those most affected are least well represented.  The study found that of the 21 environmentalist groups studied, only 10 explicitly used the term ‘intersectionality’. And of those 10, only a few placed a real emphasis on intersectionality as a key component of their organization. 

One exception was ‘People and Planet’, a grassroots, student-led organization, who actually explicitly defined the term intersectionality, mobilizing intersectionality as a way to frame their organization’s politics. This included actions such as creating and publishing a guide featuring a page titled ‘How can we organize more intersectionality?’, which discusses concrete action and strategies informed by intersectionality, “such as ‘notic[ing] which voices are heard most often in meetings and ask[ing] people who have spoken a lot to “step back” and create space for others”. People and Planet also have a grassroots blog, in which they publish the success stories of the students fighting against things like fossil fuel recruitment. 

Other grassroots groups also used language that advanced  intersectionality conceptually even if they didn’t use the specific term.  Those groups emphasized things like breaking down societal injustices and building up underrepresented voices (for example, offering support to POC, queer people, or disabled persons in the workplace so that they have equal opportunities as their more privileged counterparts).

On the other hand, some of the largest, professionalized, environmental names, such as WWF, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth, barely  referred to intersectionality at all. One group, Friends of the Earth, referred to it in one job posting — hardly a sign of an organizational priority. And yet, these are still some of the most common household names in environmental activism. The study doesn’t discourage people from supporting these movements, but it does show us why looking into other rising movements in environmentalism can be extremely helpful as well.

Let’s have a recap. 

1. Intersectional environmentalism is important because it allows people of color and minorities to enter environmental conversations and spaces. On its own, environmental activism should be accessible to everyone- the climate crisis requires as many hands as possible. And, especially because climate change affects minorities the most, minorities need to have a voice in the conversation- an emphasis on intersectional environmentalism allows for that.
2. Grassroots activism, in practice, also allows people most affected by a problem (ranging from athletics to the climate crisis) to be at the forefront of activism.
3. According to the study above, grassroots activism, out of all other kinds of environmental activism studied, has the potential to focus most on intersectionality.

So what does this research tell us? Most clearly, it seems possible that we’ve been looking at environmental activism wrong- we need to start looking to and supporting grassroots action more if we care about intersectionality in environmental movements. Grassroots organizations certainly seem to offer us more authentic and upfront ways of supporting environmental movements; after all, the leaders of these organizations are often ones who have actually experienced the kind of problems they are working to solve.

It doesn’t have to be a choice between supporting a charity or a grassroots movement- why not do both? The next time you’re looking for a cause to support or a place to start engaging in environmental movements, do a google search on a grassroots movement that matters to you!