Equality & Diversity

One of our major goals as outlined in our Strategic Plan is to inspire, engage and recognise talent. We seek to overcome the barriers to career progression at all stages and work to address areas such as, but not limited to, gender, ethnicity, disability and socio-economic status.

In early 2015, we launched an equality & diversity task and finish group to explore how we can do more to both promote and champion diversity within the ecological community. Over the summer we collected data related to our goal to champion inclusion, which we used to make recommendations to our Council in December 2015. In late 2015, we launched our “Women in Ecology” mentoring scheme, and also partnered with a number of bio-science learned societies to co-organise an Athena SWAN best practice event. Stay tuned for lots more over the next 12 months and beyond.

We are also currently involved in a number of activities to address equality and diversity within ecology. These include:
In2Science
BES Mentoring Scheme for Women in Ecology

Committing to increasing ethnic diversity in the environment sector 

In October 2022 we solidified our commitment to supporting people of colour by signing on to the Wildlife and Countryside Links’s route map towards a more ethnically diverse environment sector. We join Link and many other environment organisations in making the following commitment:

Our organisation is committed to achieving the outcomes of this route map to create a more ethnically diverse and inclusive environment movement. Organisations across the sector may take different paths to achieve these changes, but we are united in our conviction that change is necessary.

We intend to create a more inclusive culture and more inclusive ways of working, to address racism and barriers to progress for people of colour, and to increase our ethnic diversity. We are determined to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to be part of our vital environmental mission.