Wildfires, floods, heatwaves — the past couple years have brought climate change’s devastating impacts to the forefront of many Canadians’ minds. But the effects of these disasters aren’t felt equally. 

Black communities in Canada face a paradox. They’re more likely to be deeply affected by environmental threats like air pollution and climate change-induced disasters, but they’re also systematically excluded from the sector best positioned to solve these problems: the environmental sector. 

Enter: the Canadian Black Environmental Initiative. Founded by Naolo Charles in 2019, Charles works — alongside a team largely made up of volunteers — to eradicate environmental racism. His organization runs trainings for Black communities interested in entering the environmental sector, consults with companies wanting to engage Black communities, and generally raises awareness about environmental racism in Canada and around the world.

To mark Black History Month — and what many are now calling Black Futures Month — we sat down with Charles to learn more about the state of environmental racism in Canada, the barriers racialized communities face to solving the problem, and the innovative work his organization is doing to close these gaps.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Kylie Adair: Can you tell me why you founded BE Initiative, and what gap the organization fills?

Naolo Charles: There are two reasons. The first reason is what we see in terms of data and evidence that shows that marginalized communities, racialized communities, Black, Indigenous communities tend to be the most impacted by pollution. And then, on the other side, we’re seeing an environmental sector where there’s not much diversity. If you look at the history of the movement, it’s mostly a white environmental sector that hasn’t really been listening to the voices of people of other races. When you think about these two things, there’s definitely a gap there. 

I’m a first generation immigrant in Canada, immigrating from a country in West Africa, where when we were having a civil war happening, people were using our country as a dump site, dumping nuclear waste there. That was really the first thing that created my interest in environmental issues. I was trying to understand — for me, it was really curiosity — how is that possible? I went on to complete a master’s in environmental studies where I specialized in life cycle thinking. I had to learn about how the world works, how international commerce works, what the social and environmental impacts are on communities. That still follows me today and it really informs the work that I do now. 

Kylie: You mention there’s a lack of data on environmental racism, experiences like yours, here in Canada. Can you give me a sense of the extent of that lack of data, and what it means to your work and environmental organizing more broadly?

Naolo: The lack of data in Canada, as compared to a place like America, is incredible. We just can’t tell for sure with data what the impact of pollution is on specific communities, because we don’t collect race-based data. In America, they only got to the point of collecting this data because of the social movements that pushed for it. What the collection of the data did, as well, is it strengthened the social movements, because once you get the data, then you get the story, and you get a story that’s based on evidence. It becomes easier to counter the denial that has always been part of systems of oppression of these communities. The reason why it’s so easy to deny is because when you’re talking about environmental issues, you’re talking about invisible killers. Air pollution cannot be seen. You cannot film it. We can film police brutality and show it on YouTube, but how do you show air pollution? This is why we need that data. 

Kylie: What are some issues that data might illuminate? Some of the issues of environmental racism communities are facing?

Naolo: Something I should add about the data: what we actually need is what we call hyper-local data. The reason why we need hyper-local data is because the way our cities are planned, from one street to another, you can have a completely different ecosystem. If you’re looking at the data just at the level of the city of Toronto, or even just Scarborough, it doesn’t tell you, really, what the hotspots of pollution are. 

In terms of the problems, one of the big issues that Black communities, Brown communities have is air pollution, especially issues like particulate matter. Air pollution tends to be really high in parts of cities where there’s a lot of infrastructure, like highways — where you also don’t see a lot of green space, where the way that the territory is designed is full of concrete and asphalt, materials that retain the heat and create situations like heat waves. We talk about all these issues in the context of climate change, because it’s making these issues worse. What we’re seeing right now is going to get worse for these communities. Some of these issues, they don’t just affect racialized communities — they affect everyone — but when they impact Black and Indigenous communities, they tend to have more dramatic effects on their well-being. Floods, for instance, and fires are going to be happening everywhere because of climate change, but only some communities will just disappear because of it — because they just didn’t have the foundation, because of long-standing social inequalities. 

Kylie: Many of our readers are people working in climate action and climate justice. What would you say to them about centring racialized communities in their work?

Naolo: First of all, we need to stop thinking of this as a secondary issue. The argument that Black communities themselves also treat [environmental racism] as a secondary issue should not be used to neglect investing in the environmental engagement of these communities. For example, we know that gun violence is a big problem in Black communities, but if we had the data, it would become clear that just like gun violence is a priority issue, air pollution should also be, because it silently claims more black lives than anything else.. But not everyone in the communities know that — some do know, but the people who are supposed to be there to teach them about it have never cared about them. It’s the role of the environmental movement to be teaching communities what the problems are. Sometimes community members know their problems, but sometimes we don’t, especially when we’re talking about silent problems that are invisible. 

But since they haven’t been doing it for the last 50, 60 years, what they should be doing is supporting organizations like us, like Indigenous Climate Action, many of these groups that are culturally-centred on these communities, supporting them to become stronger. It’s hard for us to find funding, it’s hard for us to develop teams, it’s hard for us to do this work if we don’t have resources. For instance, if we’re talking about funding, we can see how our society is more interested in polarizing politics than protecting vulnerable people when the truckers can collect over $10 million, and I’ve received only two individual donations since I’ve started this project from two people. 

Kylie: Many of our readers are also funders. What would you say to them, and what is some of the work you’re doing that is volunteer-led that you’d like to be better funded? 

Naolo: We recently created internships where we sent three Black youth to COP26 — that was just a pilot of a youth internship program that’s part of a wider program to promote green jobs for Black communities. Another part of this program is trying to find a way to create employment opportunities for Black professionals in industries like green construction. I got a call just two weeks ago from someone who attended one of my trainings, and he was like, ‘Hey, Naolo, I’m calling you to see if you can help me find a job in the sector.’ The demand is there. I can do this match-making, because I’m contacted also by businesses that say, ‘We want to hire people from your community.’ But if I don’t have the capacity, if I don’t have the funds to hire a team to do this work, then I just can’t do it. We also have another project that’s super ambitious about creating green investments in Black and Brown communities. We’ve seen projects like this in Indigenous communities, where communities will organize cooperatives to create renewable energy projects in their communities. One of the reasons it’s so hard to do this work is that you have the polluting industry going into communities, selling their projects by saying, ‘You’re going to get jobs in exchange.’ People end up having to accept being polluted in exchange for money. We’re doing exactly the contrary. Let’s find a way to bring in renewable energy projects that will also bring in jobs. 

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