Working towards building a more diverse and inclusive community of BSBI botanists

BSBI’s Strategy
2024-27 includes the goal of inspiring, building and supporting a diverse
community of botanists to sustain and develop the skill base. To reach that
goal, we knew that we had to find even more ways of engaging a broader
community by identifying – and then working to reduce – any barriers to
participation.

This is why BSBI set up an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
(EDI) Working Group in 2024 to brainstorm ideas that would help us make botany
more accessible for everyone, and then come up with a statement and an action
plan that we could take forwards. Joni Cook, Secretary
of our Events & Communications Committee and a key member of the EDI
Working Group, has offered an update on progress so far.

Over to Joni:

“It was fantastic to see the launch of the BSBI Equity, Diversity
and Inclusion (EDI) Statement in March 2025 – what really excites me about
this development, and bolsters my hope in these troubled times, can be emphasised
by Maya Angelou’s powerful words “In diversity there is beauty and there is
strength”. With nature in the
UK in crisis – known ranges of 53%
of native plants have declined since the 1950s – driven by the rising
impacts of climate breakdown amongst other drivers and society grappling with
the consequences of these interconnected challenges including sharply
rising inequality amongst a dramatically shifting political climate exacerbated
by a cost-of-living crisis and the impacts
of the Covid-19 pandemic which are negatively impacting marginalised groups
the most, there has never been greater urgency to drive progress towards making
botany accessible for everyone.

“The BSBI EDI Statement sets out the Society’s commitment to
actively championing EDI across all activities – striving to make botany
accessible to everyone, continuously learning, adapting, and being accountable
for progress. By working collaboratively to uphold this statement through actively
embedding EDI in everything that we do and accelerate a just and equitable
transition towards making botany accessible for everyone, we will not only bolster
the BSBI’s resilience and success, but also build a more inclusive, diverse botanical
community which empowers underrepresented groups, elevates marginalised voices
and drives collective action for the UK’s wild plants.

“Building appreciation for plants, highlighted as a key
action in the results
of the BSBI Plant Atlas, is a critical part of the solution to accelerate
this transition and drive progress in conserving, restoring and enriching the
UK’s flora. Reducing ‘plant
awareness disparity’ (PAD), a difficulty in recognising and appreciating
wild plants, will help people to reconnect with nature which nurtures
nature guardianship and is a particularly pressing issue in the UK – where adults
are amongst
the least connected to nature worldwide, ranking 59th out of 65 national
groups surveyed.

Recording the urban flora during  New Year Plant Hunt 2024 Image: L. Marsh

“Results also highlighted the inequalities in connectedness
to nature across different social groups. For example, people with less
financial security, lower level of education, living in an urban location or
who are not of a racial majority in a particular country experienced a lesser
connection with nature. These findings highlight the importance of championing
an equitable approach to reducing barriers to botany access for those who at
present are the most disconnected from nature. With plant-based citizen science
initiatives shown to have high potential to boost
interest in and engagement with wild plants, the BSBI’s New Year Plant Hunt, with its wide
geographical reach and continual success – the 2025 Plant Hunt engaged over
3000 participants across Britain and Ireland including via numerous group hunts
in urban locations, is just one example of the BSBI’s diverse range of initiatives
which offers immense opportunity for widening participation and acting as a
gateway for empowering underrepresented groups to set out on personal botanical
journeys.

“In light of the immense disparity in access to nature in the
UK, accelerating progress towards making botany accessible for everyone will contribute
towards improving the health and well-being of those who are most in need. Nearly
one in five people struggle to access green space in the UK, for example ethnically
diverse communities, people living on low incomes and people living in northern
regions are more likely to living in places without access to green space,
and more likely to suffer poorer health outcomes. The UK is in the midst of a
mental health crisis – in 2024, more than 1
in 7 UK adults say their mental health is currently either bad, or the
worst it’s ever been, which has intensified
since the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, inequalities
in mental health are prevalent – the greatest
increase in poor mental health has been seen in people of younger ages
(16-34 years). Spending time with plants can, it has been demonstrated, boost
mental health and well-being – looking
at a flower for just six seconds has been shown to lower blood pressure and
stress levels, and indeed spending time in nature, even just
15 minutes, can reduce stress, and improve cardiovascular
health and mood.

Joni recording the urban flora with the Leicester Botany Group Image: L. Marsh

“There is tremendous potential to reduce these inequalities
in access to nature and associated health impacts through actively engaging underrepresented
groups with plants through BSBI initiatives and activities. The network of BSBI local groups in Britain and
Ireland, predominantly based in cities and major towns, offers immense opportunity
to expand engagement with urban communities through group botany events which
are free of charge and held within easy reach by public transport or active travel.
There is also opportunity to expand on the BSBI’s recent increased engagement
with people of younger ages. Sarah Woods, BSBI Fundraising & Engagement
Manager, noted how wonderful it was to have so many more younger botanists participating
in the BSBI British
& Irish Botanical Conference 2024 compared with previous years.
Engagement is also being boosted through diversification of the BSBI’s social
media presence, where BSBI Events & Communications Committee member
Lindsay-Anne Heald is doing superb work in building a strong presence on TikTok, helping botany to reach
younger audiences and to ensure continuity of botanical expertise across
generations. With the Department of Education recently announcing
plans for the introduction of a GCSE in Natural History, there is future potential
to collaborate with participating institutions to introduce botany to young
people. One key initiative of the BSBI’s EDI Working Group, which is being implemented
in 2025, is a greater emphasis on collecting feedback from event participants.
This includes an option for attendees to share their EDI data, which will enable
BSBI to establish a baseline upon which evidence-based, measurable progress and
ongoing monitoring of EDI goals can be made.      

“At a fundamental level, access to botany and as a result,
increased botanical literacy, is empowering, opening up opportunities such as
employment, further education and volunteering. For example, progression to Level
4 (‘Good ID skills’) on the BSBI
Botanical Skills ladder enables the undertaking of National Vegetation Classification
(NVC) surveys as part of consultancy work, teaching of vocational courses,
or becoming an Identiplant tutor. Empowerment
of underrepresented groups in botany is particularly important considering the
urgent broader needs for addressing stark inequalities in post-compulsory STEM (Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education, particularly in terms of socio-economic
background, gender and ethnicity, and in the environmental sector which is
the second
least diverse of all sectors in the UK, for example with just 4.81%
identifying as Black, Asian or from other minority ethnic groups, compared to
12.64% across all UK sectors. There is huge potential to build on taking a
targeted, equitable and inclusive approach to opening up opportunities for underrepresented
groups through BSBI activities. A recent example is the provision of Welsh translations
for two BSBI publications, thanks to the Welsh Government’s RhydweighartNatur
Programme, provided by the Heritage Fund, which is boosting opportunities for
Welsh communities, particularly those situated in rural areas, to engage with botany.
It is not only people who will benefit from making botany accessible for everyone,
but the BSBI too – organisations that take a bold approach to embracing EDI are
more likely to be successful and resilient – for example, making use of the
passion, talents, skills sets and perspectives that diverse communities provide
can boost
creativity, enhance innovation and reduce risk.

Joni enjoying the canalside flora at Aylestone Meadows Nature Reserve, Leicester Image: L. Marsh

“I would like to propose that advancing progress towards EDI
goals should not be siloed in the BSBI community or even in botany as a
scientific discipline, but to consider instead approaching our EDI journey as
part of broader transitions within the environmental sector and indeed as part
of a collective drive towards forging an inclusive and just society. In this
respect, the importance of making and maintaining strong collaborations with a
diverse range of organisations and actors, and the resultant cooperative exchange
of knowledge, skills and experiences, cannot be over emphasised. For example,
for the Modern Energy Cooking Services
(MECS) programme (where I work as part of the UK-based core team), the ‘leave
no-one behind’ agenda is of central importance to programme activities and aim
of accelerating access to clean, electric cooking, and transdisciplinary and global
collaborations with a wide range of partners, such as communities, NGOs,
governments, private sector, academia and research institutes, and policy
representatives across 16 countries of interest are key to driving action on
the ground towards achieving this. It is wonderful therefore to see a
collaborative approach in the environmental sector being championed through the
recent launch of a joint statement ‘Nature for all:
diversity makes us stronger’ by the UK Terrestrial Evidence Partnership of Partnerships
(UKTEPoP) initiative, of which the BSBI is one of the 10 partners, pledging
commitment to diversity, equity & inclusion in UK species monitoring
schemes. The UKTEPoP initiative is just one example of a variety of
collaborations in which BSBI is engaging in order to drive EDI progress in the
environmental sector, other examples include as a signatory of The RACE Report and (from 2025)
contributing data to monitor racial diversity within the sector as well as
monitoring the BSBI’s progress, and working with partners to engage with
diverse communities in botany projects, and learning from this work, for
example the Eco-Museum of
Scottish Mining Landscapes Project.

“By working together to champion equity, diversity and
inclusion by embedding in all our activities – identifying and breaking down
barriers to participation, empowering people from all backgrounds with
botanical skills and knowledge, amplifying and celebrating underrepresented
voices, building an inclusive and vibrant botanical community and accelerating
progress towards the goal of access to botany for everyone – we will deliver
multiple cascading benefits for the UK’s threatened plants,
the BSBI, all of us – the BSBI community, and indeed contribute to progress
towards achieving a kind, compassionate, socially just and nature-centric wider
society”.