BDP & Intersectional Environmentalism

This Fall 2021 semester, The Bio/Diversity Project has been incredibly fortunate to provide our UArizona graduate and undergraduate student interns the opportunity to connect with 19 different guest speakers during our weekly internship meeting. Each guest speaker has provided a wealth of knowledge and insight related to their organization, role, and expertise within the realm of environmental conservation and fostering both gender and racial equity within environmental fields.

In late October 2021, The Bio/Diversity Project hosted Lexi Hernandez, Junior Environmental Justice Research Coordinator with Intersectional Environmentalist.The Bio/Diversity Project has been closely following the work of Intersectional Environmentalist for the past 3 years, and has shared many of their resources, including videos, articles, and social media posts, with both K-12 partner teachers and past and present UArizona student interns. We were ecstatic to be able to connect with a representative from their organization in order to provide a robust presentation about their work. Intersectional Environmentalist’s mission is to serve as a climate justice community and resource hub centering BIPOC and historically marginalized voices in the environmental realm in order to empower their audience to create change in their local communities and to root their environmental practice in equity and inclusion. To do this, they develop and curate accessible educational resources and connect with grassroots environmental justice efforts. In Lexi’s presentation, she spoke about the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice, Kimberlé Crenshawand her role in giving life to the theory behind intersectionality, and provided invaluable discussion questions for The Bio/Diversity Project participants to assess and answer. These discussion questions allowed Bio/Diversity Project participants to explore and unpack their intentions and impact within the realm of environmental justice and conservation work, and allowed for both critical reflection and celebration of their positive impact within their environmental science outreach to K-12 students.

The timing of Lexi’s presentation was particularly fitting, as the following week’s internship meeting centered around amplifying BIPOC voices within our UArizona internship cohort, providing a space for non-BIPOC identifying interns to discuss the role of allyship within the environmental fields, and diving into critical analysis of Band-Aid versus structural solutions to fostering racial equity within the environmental fields. We are grateful for the opportunity to learn from Lexi and all of our guest speakers this Fall semester, and look forward to applying this knowledge in our programming within our local UArizona and Tucson community.