Who is Missing From Executive Positions of Conservation Organizations?

Part 1: People with Disabilities

In November 2021, Israel’s energy minister, Karine Elharrar, was unable to enter the first day of the U.N.’s Climate Summit , COP26, when the Glasgow event organizers failed to provide her with wheelchair access. Elharrar, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, said staff prohibited the vehicle she arrived in from entering the event compound.

According to a New York Times article, when she explained that the remaining distance to the venue was too far for her to travel by wheelchair, the only alternative option offered was the use of a shuttle bus. She waited two hours for the bus only to find it inaccessible for wheelchairs, leaving Elharrar effectively locked out of the talks.

In the fields of conservation, climate change mitigation, and environmental justice, the lack of inclusion and disabled leadership exemplified by this incident is particularly problematic. In a 2020 report, the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recognized that people with disabilities experience disproportionately higher rates of morbidity and mortality during environmental disasters. Yet people with disabilities continue to struggle just to literally get a seat at the table.

The World Health Organization estimates 15% of the world population, over 1 billion people, are disabled. Unfortunately, the W.H.O. also estimates an employment rate of only 44% for people with disabilities compared to 75% for non-disabled people. This gap is even direr when comparing organizational leadership. Researchers have attributed this disparity in large part to ableist attitudes, practices, and barriers present in cultures around the globe that permeate the workplace.

The specific barriers a person faces can vary based on their disability (or disabilities) and can be compounded when the person is multiply marginalized by race, gender, sexual orientation, age, poverty, etc. However, the end result is the same. Those who are among the most impacted by climate change and environmental degradation, yet whose disabilities have often given them the key skills of advocacy, adaptation, and creative problem-solving, are also among those least likely to be leading the conversation.

Lack of Outdoor Accessibility

When asked about their ‘love of nature’ origin story, many conservationists will offer up wistful memories of childhood camping trips in towering pine forests or holidays spent digging for crabs along a sandy shore. These outdoor recreation experiences often serve as the gateway for future conservationists to develop a passion for preserving and protecting nature.

For people with disabilities though, accessing outdoor spaces and experiences like these can be challenging, even impossible, due to a lack of accessibility. A 2022 study published by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver recognized the physical and psychological benefits the outdoors can have on individuals, but according to the paper “people with disabilities are often excluded from these spaces because of accessibility issues.” Researchers also noted that “limited access to outdoor spaces further contributes to the inequities that people with disabilities already face in employment, housing, and health care.”

Dr. Yolanda Muñoz, a wheelchair user for the last 30 years, has worked as an advocate for the intersection of disability and gender equality since 1995. When she acquired her disability while living in her home country of Mexico, she realized almost immediately that her access to nature had been stripped from her. “It was very painful to suddenly not be able to go outdoors or to go and enjoy nature or enjoy the beach,” she said.

“When we talk about enjoying nature,” she continued, “these places are where you connect to it. Why do you lose that privilege when you have a disability? We also have the right to enjoy nature, but we have been left behind.”

The message Dr. Muñoz received from those inaccessible spaces was, “this is not for you,” and she stressed that this message is one of many very real barriers for people with disabilities getting involved in conservation.

Discouragement and Limitations

According to Dr. Susanne Bruyere, Academic Director of the Yang Tan Institute on Employment and Disability and Professor of Disability Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, often children with disabilities do not receive equal amounts of encouragement or preparation for higher education or career readiness.

“In segregated classrooms, we don’t talk as much about career aspirations as we do in mainstream classrooms,” said Dr. Bruyere. “So kids with disabilities may not get that same encouragement in conservation jobs or any jobs.”

“Even if the classroom is mainstreamed,” Dr. Bruyere continued, “if you have a speaker come in to talk about conservation or jobs in conservation, and they make eye contact with every child in that room but the one who’s in the wheelchair, presuming that they can’t work in conservation… that message is so powerful. That child knows that they have not been included in that conversation.”

Ryan Eddowes is wearing a light colored suit and leaning on a fixture — 📸: Ryan Eddowes

Ryan Eddowes, a 26-year-old herpetologist, wildlife filmmaker, and aspiring wildlife presenter from Wolverhampton, UK, learned firsthand how disheartening it can be when a child with a disability receives such a discouraging message.

An animal lover from the start, Eddowes spent much of his childhood in his grandparents’ garden, pondering the eyestalks of snails and watching the birds fly overhead. “While all the other kids were playing football or cricket, I was always the one bringing a worm into the classroom,” said Eddowes.

But when Eddowes was 13, doctors told him the pain caused by his congenital talipes, or clubfoot would likely put his goal of working in wildlife conservation out of reach. Eddowes took this ‘advice’ to heart, and it almost knocked him off his path toward his career in conservation. Luckily, Eddowes’ grandparents urged him on.

When he arrived at Rodbaston College in Penkridge, UK to study animal caretaking, his lecturers suggested he pursue higher education to increase his knowledge base and gain contacts in conservation. At Bangor University in North Wales, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in zoology, he had access to accommodations and an inclusive environment, both in the classroom and in the field.

“I felt like I was part of a family, a community that understood my needs. It didn’t matter whether I had the disability or not; they were willing to support me and get me into the world of conservation,” said Eddowes.

Hiring, Retention, and Accommodations

According to the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 121 countries across the globe have at least one law designed to, “abolish discrimination against persons with disabilities and eliminate barriers towards the full enjoyment of their rights and their inclusion in society.”

But in Elizabeth Harrington’s experience, she has found very little evidence of employers successfully applying them. “It is one thing for a law to be in place, like the Equality Act in the UK,” Harrington said. “It is another for such a law to have ‘teeth’, to be enforceable.”

Harrington, 53, studies the intersections of climate change, disability, and gender through the Center for Water, Communities, and Resilience (CWCR) at the University at the West of England in Bristol, UK. Her research focuses on the experiences of disabled women after flooding disasters. “Many of the disabled women I interviewed were carrying out work of a voluntary nature. This is admirable, but it is also questionable why so many disabled women find it tricky to secure paid employment,” she said.

A study conducted by the Yang Tan Institute may hold part of the answer. Researchers interviewed human resource professionals and found they blamed a lack of hiring people with disabilities, in part, on disabled people’s qualifications. “They don’t perceive people [with disabilities] as having comparable experience, credentialing, and sometimes education to do what their jobs require,” said Dr. Bruyere. She noted that while in some instances that may be the case, she also emphasized that in many cases, biases can be at play.

Research has shown that even when people with disabilities apply for jobs and have the appropriate background, they are less likely to be hired when their disability is visible. “It certainly can be that there is not comparable preparation or experience, but we also know that sometimes that is just a perception. Oftentimes, it’s the stereotypes and stigmas in recruiters and hiring managers that are the impediments, not the actual credential disparities,” said Dr. Bruyere.

Hiring managers also expressed ignorance and fear of the costs and implementation of accommodations for people with disabilities, despite a recent study conducted by the Job Accommodation Network that found 59% of accommodations cost absolutely nothing to make, while the rest typically cost only $500 per employee with a disability.

“Supervisors will say that they just really don’t know how to accommodate and that it’s intimidating to them. They might not hire, or they might not retain someone for lack of understanding of what they could do to accommodate a person,” said Dr. Bruyere.

Harrington experienced this herself when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a neurological disease that impacts how a person moves, feels and thinks. After she declared her disability to a former employer, she experienced alienation in the workplace. When an outside consultant who evaluated Harrington’s disability suggested an accommodation of working from home some days out of the week, her supervisor told her that her presence in the office was essential and that her position was now, “untenable.”

A 2013 Yang Tan Institute study provided evidence that Harrington was not alone in her experience. Of the study participants who chose to disclose their disability, a quarter reported “they did, in fact, experience long-term, negative consequences related to their disclosure.” For those who chose not to disclose, researchers found the workers experienced added stress attributed to not being able to come to work as their full selves. For some, like Eddowes, non-disclosure can also come with physical pain.

“I had the fear that they wouldn’t take me on,” he explained about his choice not to disclose his disability to employers early on in his career. “When you apply for a job in wildlife conservation, of any sort, they are mainly aimed at able-bodied people. For example, to work with wildlife, you always need a driver’s license and to be able to drive a manual transmission. I have my driver’s license, but driving manual is very painful for me.”

“There were a lot of jobs where I would come home at night, and my feet swelled up badly, and it was really, really painful,” he said. Eddowes added an accommodation that could have alleviated much of this pain would have been access to a vehicle with an automatic transmission.

Eddowes said he now chooses to disclose his disability early on in the hiring process. “If there are any problems, I move on straight away. It doesn’t matter if you pay me a lot of money to do manual jobs, I won’t do it if it’s affecting my health.” For Eddowes, this switch towards disclosure has given him access to the accommodations he needs to succeed. In his current role as a VIP Safari Guide at the West Midlands Safari Park, he is provided with an automatic transmission vehicle to transport guests around the park’s four-mile loop, significantly reducing his pain while working and improving the quality of the experience for Eddowes and the park’s guests alike.

Promotion to Leadership

Even if a person with a disability has made it over all of the other hurdles in their path, the last hurdle to achieving a leadership role in an organization is often the highest and hardest to overcome.

In a 2021 study published in the Journal of Business and Psychology, researchers found that even after an employee with a disability was hired and retained, many managers held onto inaccurate presumptions about the fitness of their employees with disabilities. Employers perceived their employees with disabilities as being less reliable (showing more lateness and absenteeism) and having lower job performance (slowing down the company work flow).

However, when researchers poured over the data they collected, they often found the opposite to be true. In 56% of workplaces studied, differences in productivity levels between disabled and non-disabled workers were not statistically significant. Furthermore, at 32% of the workplaces studied, people with disabilities were actually significantly more productive than their non-disabled counterparts.

That left only 13% of workplaces where people with disabilities showed less productivity than their non-disabled peers. However, questions remained whether these disabled employees with lower output had been properly supported by their employers with appropriate accommodations.

In addition to less turnover, the data showed, “better or equal attendance records for workers with disabilities, except in organizations that also reported fewer accommodations.”

“Career advancement opportunities are just as important for people with disabilities as they are for mainstream populations,” said Dr. Bruyere. But if inaccurate, negative beliefs in the boardroom and around the watercooler persist, people with disabilities will continue to be left behind: in the workplace, in the conversations around conservation and climate and during environmental disasters.

Solutions and Progress

Around the globe, people with disabilities and grassroots organizations are fighting for full, meaningful inclusion in the environmental movement and in the workplace.

Just this past summer, Eddowes finished a 95-mile trek along the UK’s Jurassic Coast, blogging about each section’s accessibility along the way. Through his continued partnership with the Jurassic Coast Trust, Eddowes plans to increase the coast’s accessibility for all. Harrington herself dreams of one day creating an accessible forest in Ireland, where she was born and raised.

Advocacy efforts like these are helping to highlight where improvements need to be made in equal outdoor access. Land management and outdoor recreation agencies around the world are beginning to take notice and make changes to their facilities and trails, evidenced through projects like the Autism Nature Trail at Letchworth State Park in Castile, NY.

Part of Dr. Bruyere’s and the Yang Tan Institute’s mission is to replicate the positive experiences Eddowes had that helped him overcome his doctors’ discouragement. In conjunction with the U.S. Department of Labor and the Council of State Governments, the institute works with high schools across the U.S. to “better transition youth with disabilities into higher education… and also to provide job opportunities and job skills building opportunities,” said Bruyere.

Bruyere recommended employers include people with disabilities on their websites and in their diversity, equity and inclusion statements to increase disabled people’s interest in working for them. She also stressed the importance of creating internships for people with disabilities and said people with disabilities are six times more likely to be hired after an internship than if they were to apply through the typical hiring process.

When it comes to career advancement, “the most important thing is to educate the supervisors to be as good a mentor to their employees with disabilities as they are to others in the workforce,” Bruyere said. She advised supervisors to reach out to their employees with disabilities, assess their career goals and provide the opportunities and training to help them get there. Many disabled entrepreneurs have started their own businesses which offer disability-focused inclusion training for employers.

The U.N.'s formal recognition of the effects of climate change on people with disabilities in 2020 represented a sea change for disabled environmentalists. Researchers like Harrington were invited to contribute to the study, and she was able to amplify the voices of disabled women, of whom she said, “these women might be considered victims, but they must be considered experts.”

The Global Greengrants Fund has awarded more than 250 grants worth nearly $1.5 million to organizations around the world that are dedicated to protecting the planet and its people. In 2018, the Global Greengrants Fund, an organization dedicated to funding small conservation organizations working towards climate justice, began consulting Dr. Muñoz with the goal of making disability a priority in their grantmaking.

Dr. Muñoz, co-founder of the Disability-Inclusive Climate Action Response Program at McGill University in Montreal and now Global Greengrants Fund’s Coordinator of the Disability-Inclusive Advisory Board, said the U.N.’s study helped their partner organizations working in disability rights start connecting the dots between their priorities and environmental justice.

“Global Greengrants Fund started inviting organizations [of people with disabilities] to the table, explaining to them how they could bring environmental justice to their organizations, and they started understanding that climate change matters for everyone,” said Dr. Muñoz. “At the same time, organizations working towards the promotion of environmental justice and climate actions started including people with disabilities in their projects.”

But more can be done to bridge the gap between disabled individuals, their grassroots organizations, and policy makers. A movement is currently underway to create a constituency for people with disabilities at future COPs, the same conference Elhararr was excluded from in 2021. Creating a constituency for disabled people would finally help center the needs of disabled people in the climate change conversation.

“The more we work together,” Harrington said, “the quicker meaningful change can happen.”

Creating an Inclusive Future

History has shown time and again, that when people with disabilities do better, everyone does better. Curb cutouts, originally designed for wheelchair users, also benefit people using rolling luggage, strollers or delivery carts. Closed captions, initially intended for the deaf community, benefit many kinds of people catching up on the daily news in noisy bars and airports. Creating a disability-inclusive conservation movement, in the outdoors, in the workplace and in organizational leadership, is not an act of charity. It is a necessity. For everyone.

Jenny Ackers (she/her/hers)November 29, 2022Comment