Climate Reframe: Amplifying BAME Voices in the UK Environmental Movement

Beth Collier

Also working within:
Journalists & Writers
Based: London
Beth is a Nature Allied Psychotherapist and ethnographer who teaches natural history and woodland living skills. She is Director of Wild in the City, supporting people of colour to feel belonging within and learn about nature in the UK, creating opportunities for the representation of black leadership and challenging racism within the environmental field. She has theorised our relationships with nature from a psychotherapeutic perspective, developing a modality of practice for ongoing client work. Beth is one of the first to conduct in-depth ethnographic research into people of colours’ relationship with nature in the UK; white attitudes towards black presence in green spaces and the development of cultures which shun nature. Beth also hosts the Black Nature Narratives podcast.
“There are many talented and passionate black environmentalists within the UK but our voices rarely get through the gates. There is significant racism within the environmental field, a colonial mindset persists and messages become internalised by black communities that we do not belong. We need to ensure equity in funding and institutional support to ensure that black perspectives on the natural world and our relationship with nature can be heard.”