A Network and Landscape Analysis of Environmental and Diversity Organizations in Durham and Orange Counties, North Carolina

The American environmental movement has a legacy of excluding marginalized groups from organizational decision-making and natural spaces. Awareness of this discrepancy has gained traction in the past few decades, with an increased focus on diversity and representation within environmental organizations. Through a case study of North Carolina’s Durham and Orange counties, we explored this trend by performing network and landscape analyses of environmental and diversity organizations. Through these analyses, we found that the staff of environmental organizations are not representative of the study region while staff of diversity organizations are representative. The overall network of organizations is very loose and heterogeneous and there is a trend for organizations to work with like organizations. Our study finds that there are still inequities in environmental organizations in this study region but the majority of respondents are aware of the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in their work and have taken training to include these tenets in their work.