Deepening Equity and Justice for Change; Why Equnival Partners Exists
A few years ago I penned two articles on the considerations and actions we must take to deepen equity and justice within our society, especially as we reckon with the legacy of racism and environmental inequities it spawns. As we launch the Equnival Partners website three years later, I want to revisit and build upon those ideas.
Equnival Partners exists to foster collaboration, identify common ground, and pave the way for innovative solutions that make a lasting impact. Specifically, we want to deepen equity and justice throughout our society, using collaborative problem solving to jointly develop solution to our most difficult problems. There is no coincidence that Equnival formed around the same time as our nation was reckoning with issues of race, class, justice, and equity in the summer of 2020. In the environmental arena where much of our work occurs, venerable institutions have had to grapple with their absence from the fight against racism and for social justice; some organizations have publicly acknowledged their past complicity with social and political structures that perpetuate systemic racism. Unfortunately, some organizations are quietly retreating from the actions they initiated in the summer of 2020 as they faced pressure to demonstrate their commitment to equity and justice. Many in the environmental community are still coming to grips with the privilege that has allowed them to benefit from social and political structures that perpetuate systemic racism and are struggling to understand what is required of them for change.
A just and equitable future requires far more from our society in general, and from the environmental community in particular. Environmental organizations have a role to play in dismantling racist systems and creating a more just and equitable society.
In many ways the environmental community is still grappling with how to be present in the struggle for equity and justice. I still hear groups attempting to define equity and justice to guide their work. Indeed, as Equnival works with individual organizations and coalitions alike, we often find ourselves beginning projects with a discussion of how the group understands the two terms. One way I have found to understand these two concepts is within the context of access:
As Equnival moves through its work, we see equity as a function of access – the ability of all of us to participate in and influence the power structures that shape our lives, as well as to tap into the financial, institutional, and natural resources and opportunities that result from those decision structures.
As we examine and recognize the historic and contemporary lack of access to decision-making power and resources for marginalized communities, we can then understand justice as the implementation of efforts to remedy those inequities and establish this access.
Certainly, other aspects of equity and justice are important to consider here. Equity and justice require the environmental community to rethink its approach to leadership within organizations and across the community to embrace non-traditional ideas and values into environmental decision making. Sovereignty and self-determination are critical for communities and people to transform the decision and power structures that govern their everyday lives. Respect for local and traditional knowledge held by communities and environmental justice organizations must be an integral part of just and equitable policy making. And transparency is indispensable to building trusted relationships between environmental organizations and marginalized communities.
Ultimately, the environmental community must reverse the backsliding that occurred in some corners and re-commit to learning and doing more to build the collective power necessary to achieve its broad goals of combating climate change and ensuring a healthy environment for all. Building this collective power will require environmental organizations, as well as governments, private companies, and philanthropies to clarify how their program frameworks and organizational culture are grounded and centered in equity and justice, and how those organizational assets can be used to support communities as they seek to generate and implementation solutions to address the impacts of environmental degradation that impact them. Equnival Partners stands poised to support efforts to build these relationships between institutions and communities and to create collective power for change.
