Racial diversity in the environmental charity sector is 10 percentage points lower than the UK workforce average, a report has found.

Just under 5 per cent of staff across the environmental charity sector identify as people of colour and other racially or ethnically minoritised groups, according to this year’s Racial Action for the Climate Emergency report.

This is more than 10 percentage points below the UK workforce average of 16 per cent.

The figure is lower than last year’s Race report, which found 6 per cent of staff in the sector identified as people of colour or belonging to ethnically minoritised groups.

But this survey, which was carried out between April and October last year, had a much larger response rate, surveying a total of 161 environmental charity organisations representing more than 28,600 employees – more than double the number of staff surveyed in last year’s report.

The proportion of people of colour or from ethnic minorities was higher in smaller organisations, the report found.

In organisations with between 10 and 49 employees, the proportion of people of colour or from ethnic minorities was 14 per cent, compared with just under 2 per cent in charities with between 500 and 1,000 staff.

The report found that just under 5 per cent of staff that were promoted to better-paid or more senior positions in 2023 were people of colour or from ethnic minority groups, while 87 per cent were from white ethnicities.

It says that 10 per cent of people on trustee boards were people of colour or from ethnic minority groups, with 80 per cent being from white ethnicities and 11 per cent undisclosed.

The report found improvements on the implementation of equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives among respondents that have contributed to the report since its inception in 2022.

Out of these organisations, 23 per cent have fully implemented a policy to ensure racial diversity in recruitment and interview panels, compared with just 4 per cent in 2023 and 2022.

More than half of these respondents have implemented a statement on their recruitment page stating areas where the organisation is underrepresented, compared with just 31 per cent in 2022.

The report adds that 68 per cent of these respondents conduct a regular review of EDI activities to ensure they remain effective, compared with just 36 per cent in 2022.

Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “Let’s face it – environmental organisations are still very white, especially at the top. I find myself in chief executive meetings where I’m the only person of colour in the room, and it just doesn’t feel right in 21st-century Britain.

“Since measuring a problem is the first step towards solving it, it’s good to see more and more organisations publishing data about their staff’s ethnic diversity. But, as a sector, we now need to move swiftly from talking about the issue to actually doing something about it.”

Manu Maunganidze, co-director of the inclusion and climate justice team at one of the report’s founding partners, SOS-UK, said: “The more we uncover, the more we realise there’s still much work to do – but that’s not a setback, as long as we stay committed and grounded in why racial diversity matters in the first place.

"People of colour may be minoritised in the UK but, globally, they’re on the frontlines of climate change. Those most affected by environmental disasters – floods, wildfires, rising tides – are too often those who aren’t given a seat at the table.”