Wawa Gatheru: Building an Environmentally Conscious Movement — A Movement That Represents Everyone

INTRODUCTION
In today’s ever-changing environment movement, there may be no voice that has articulated itself with such urgency, and clarity, and with the same level of inclusiveness as Wanjiku “Wawa” Gatheru. As an environmental justice activist, Rhodes scholar, and the creator of Black Girl Environmentalist, Wawa has become one of the defining leaders of generation z, and she is pushing the boundaries of what can be done within the climate movement. The foundation upon which her work is built is this: the struggle to protect our planet is inextricably linked to the struggle for racial and social justice; and therefore the solutions to the climate crisis will be developed by those most affected by it.

Wawa’s emergence as a leader of the environmental justice movement is more than just about her achievement (which are remarkable); it is also an example of how powerful narrative transformation can be. By placing the voices of black girls, women, and gender expansive individuals at the forefront, she is creating a new path through which people of color can be involved in leading the conversation around environmental issues. From her backyard gardening as a child in Connecticut, to her current studies at the University of Oxford, to her involvement as a member of the U.S. Government advisory boards, Wawa is creating a model of activism for this new age, one focused on not only saving the earth, but building a world that represents “unprecedented care.”

Roots and Early Influences:

Wawa Gatheru was born to Kenyan parents in the U.S., therefore her love for the environment began much earlier than she would have ever thought about learning about carbon emissions and climate change scientifically. In Pomfret, CT, (where Wawa lived) is considered rural and has many acres of beautiful farmland. However, Wawa has always felt disconnected from the way the majority of Americans perceive themselves in relation to the mainstream environmental movement. Wawa perceived the mainstream environmental movement to be white, wealthy, and most importantly, recreational; it seemed to be something that Wawa’s family couldn’t relate to. However, there was another type of environmentalism being practiced every day in Wawa’s backyard. Wawa’s mother and grandmother were both avid gardeners and used their Connecticut property as an extension of their heritage by growing plants that are native to the Agĩkũyũ people of Kenya. For Wawa, the garden was a place of education. She learned the ethic of reciprocity in the garden. Wawa learned from her family that the reason they gardened was to sustain themselves and connect with each other. Wawa’s gardening experience was different from what she had seen in environmentalism textbooks; her gardening experience was rooted in survival, culture, and caring for the earth.
Although Wawa connected so well to the earth through gardening, Wawa never identified herself as an “environmentalist” during her youth. The word ‘environmentalist’ was foreign to Wawa. She believed that people who wore hiking boots in Patagonia clothing and hiked mountains and forests were environmentalists; people who grew kale for dinner were not. Wawa’s perception changed dramatically in her sophomore year of high school when she took an Environmental Science course taught by Mrs. Rose.
It is in this class room that Gatheru was first introduced to the concepts of environmental justice. In this classroom, she learned that while climate change and pollution are not equal opportunity disasters, these disasters tend to fall most heavily on communities of color and low income communities. As well, she learned about the history of environmental racism; how zoning laws have been used historically to place toxic waste dumps in black communities and how the Global South has borne the brunt of a warming world due to the actions of the Global North.

This realization was a turning point for Gatheru. “In this call I learned that my environment had EVERYTHING to do with me”, she said. The academic content helped bridge the divide between her lived experience as the Black daughter of immigrants and the science behind a changing earth. The feeling of disconnection she experienced was not an issue of personal failure, it was a matter of systemic erasure. This epiphany ignited a fire within her that would help move her from a curious student to one of the leaders of the national movement.

The years at UConn: Activism, scholarship, and making history

Gatheru attended the University of Connecticut (UConn) and completed a Bachelors degree in Environmental Studies with minors in Global Studies and Urban and Community Studies. During her years at UConn, she made a commitment to find and implement intersectional solutions. She refused to compartmentalize her experiences and approached all of her studies with the knowledge that food security, racial equity, and environmental sustainability were all interconnected components of a large and complex system.

Campus leadership and local impact

Gatheru’s transition from theory to action at the University of Connecticut was rapid. As a key activist at the University of Connecticut, she was a founding member of the UConn Access to Food Effort (UCAFE) – a grassroots initiative aimed at fighting food insecurity as both an environmental and social justice issue. Under her leadership, UCAFE conducted the first comprehensive assessment of food insecurity at a public institution of higher education in Connecticut. Data collected demonstrated that a significant number of students at the University of Connecticut were unable to purchase healthy foods.
The reach of Gatheru’s efforts was far greater than the University of Connecticut. Her research at UCAFE was cited by U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, and was referenced in the development of state and federal legislation focused on reducing hunger among college students. This experience provided Gatheru with an early illustration of the value of using data driven advocacy to bring about institutional change; by bringing attention to issues that are often hidden, she has been able to create an obligation for institutions to act.
She simultaneously ran the “Ban the Bottle” campaign, a student-lead effort which removed single use plastic water bottles from several retailers at the University of Connecticut. She also served as the Vice President of the Undergraduate Student Government – the first black person to do so. She was chosen as the student co-chair of the 2019 University wide Metanoia on “Youth for Change”.

The “Triple Crown”

Wawa Gatheru’s academic excellence and commitment to public service were recognized by many.
She achieved something no one else had accomplished before – and that was a big deal. In 2019, she became the first student to ever win both the Truman Scholarship and the Udall Scholarship in the same year. The Truman Scholarship recognizes the best and brightest students in the U.S., and are meant to be awarded to those students with the potential to become the next generation of leaders in public service. The Udall Scholarship recognizes students who excel in the areas of the environment and Native American public policy.
But, the crowning achievement came her senior year. In 2020, Wawa Gatheru was named a Rhodes Scholar, which is considered the most prestigious international scholarship in the world. She was the first Rhodes Scholar from the University of Connecticut. But what made this accomplishment even more significant was that she was the first Black person to receive all three of the Rhodes, Truman, and Udall scholarships – or the “Triple Crown”.
This was more than an award; it was a platform. It indicated that the establishment was starting to realize that Wawa Gatheru’s intersectional environmentalism had value. After being announced as a Rhodes Scholar, Wawa was interviewed about her plans after arriving at Oxford. She said that she would go to Oxford not only to study, but also to do research on the barriers that keep people of color from participating in the environmental movement. She stated that she wanted to use her position to help create opportunities for other people of color to participate in the environmental movement.

Oxford and the Global Perspective
When Wawa arrived at the University of Oxford, she began pursuing a Master of Science degree in Nature, Society, and Environmental Governance. The program allowed her to build upon the strong theoretical background she developed in college, and provided a strong framework through which to explore the social and political aspects of environmental issues.
At Oxford University, Gatheru was immersed in a rich history of tradition. But she never lost sight of the present. Her research investigated the social aspects of the “Green Ceiling,” which is when individuals of color get hired into the entry level environmental jobs but will rarely be promoted to lead positions. She studied how the colonial past continues to influence the way that contemporary conservation efforts are undertaken and how environmentalists’ language tends to push away the very communities that environmentalists need to engage.
Gatheru’s exposure to international students through her membership in the Rhodes Scholarship Community further expanded her understanding. Gatheru discovered that she had commonality with environmental activists from all over the globe, particularly those who fought against climate injustice in their own countries (indigenous peoples in the Amazon, farmers in Kenya, environmentalists in the Pacific Islands). The sense of global solidarity solidified her conviction that the climate crisis was ultimately a crisis of justice.
The Founding of Black Girl Environmentalist
As Gatheru’s academic career continued to blossom, she began to recognize a consistent void. Even though she had received many honors, Gatheru repeatedly found herself to be the “one” — the only Black person, the only woman, or the only young person in the majority of her high-level environmental meetings. Gatheru understood that there are hundreds of Black women and gender expansive people that care about the Earth. However, these people have historically been structurally hidden inside the big greens (major environmental organizations).
Statistics also supported her feelings. Reports consistently show that while people of color as a group support environmental preservation more frequently than white Americans, people of color are grossly under represented in environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and federal agencies. Black women specifically experience a double bind of both racial and gender based discrimination.

The Spark

In 2021, as a way to connect with other Black girls/women/non-binary environmentalists while escaping the isolation of primarily white academic environments, Gatheru made a simple post on social media asking Black girls/women/non-binary people who were interested in the environment to join her for a zoom call. She thought maybe 10-15 people would show up. More than 80 showed up.
The energy was electric on that first call. People shared stories about how isolated they felt, how they were talked over in class, how they had their expertise doubted and how they felt like impostors in a movement that they love. However, they also shared their joy, their ancestral connections to the earth and what they envision for the earths future. This meeting was a moment when it became apparent that BGE was more than just a support group — it was a constituency waiting to happen.

Creating BGE

After that initial meeting, Black Girl Environmentalist (BGE) was formed. Gatheru started BGE with a very clear mission. Her mission was to address the pathways and retention challenges that Black girls/women/gender expansive individuals experience in the climate space.
BGE was created to be the missing bridge that the majority of the environmental movement did not create. Under Gatheru’s leadership as Executive Director, BGE quickly expanded from an Instagram account to a nationally known registered 501(c)(3). Today, BGE has thousands of members and hubs/chapters located throughout major cities in the United States.

The BGE Model

What makes BGE unique is its focus on both recruitment and retention. Gatheru realized that getting Black women into the environmental movement was only part of the problem; retaining them in the movement required a supporting community structure. BGE provides:

• Mentorship: Emerging Leaders and Established Black Women in the Field
  Professional Development: Grant Writing, Public Speaking and Institutional Racism Workshops
• Community Care: A Space Where Members Can Be Themselves Without The Pressure To Perform Or Educate White Peers
• Green Workforce Pathways: Connections to Jobs and Internships That Value Their Lived Experiences.
  Gatheru had a “climate movement made in the image of all of us” vision for BGE by focusing on Black Women who have been impacted first by climate disasters and have also led community resilience efforts, BGE believes that the whole climate movement will become stronger, more innovative and more successful when centered around Black Women.

Philosophy: Unprecedented Care and Narrative Change

In addition to what Wawa Gatheru does, her impact is about how she thinks. Her philosophy of change is complex and challenges the dominant fear-based climate narrative.
Climate Doomerism Is A Privilege
Gatheru is a strong advocate against “climate doomerism” or nihilism (the idea that it’s too late to save the planet) and believes that nihilism is a privilege. For those in frontline communities who are already working to survive, there is no option to give up. Rather than promote a narrative of climate nihilism, Gatheru promotes a narrative of active hope.
“I don’t think we’re educating people anymore,” she said to Bryant University students. “Most people understand that climate change is an issue… What we’re doing now is activating people.”
UNPRECEDENT CARE
She has one of the strongest conceptual frameworks – “unprecedented care” – that she has developed. She believes we are experiencing an “unprecedented” time of crises – extreme weather events, heatwaves, collapsing ecosystems – therefore, the response cannot simply be technological or political; it needs to be a cultural transformation to unprecedented care. In this sense, we need to care about the soil, we need to care about the water, but we need to care about each other.
“We do not want to go back to precedent,” she states, “we want unprecedented care for our people and planet.” This concept of unprecedented care rejects the notion of returning to the “normal” we had previously known – the “normal” we had previously known was based upon extraction and exploitation.

THE POWER OF STORYTELLING

Wawa Gatheru identifies herself as a climate storyteller. She recognizes that data alone does not change people’s hearts. Using her large social media presence (over 100,000 followers across multiple platforms) she takes the complicated policy jargon and makes it accessible and relatable to all people. Wawa Gatheru is using platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, and she is not using them for trends; she is providing “climate receipts” to educate her generation regarding the history of the environmental justice movement, and the unsung heroes of color who paved the way.

PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP AND RECOGNITION

Wawa Gatheru’s transition from being a student activist to becoming a professional leader has been rapid and seamless. Her expertise is now sought after at the highest levels of government and in the non-profit sector.

• Vogue Cover: In January 2023, she was featured on the digital Vogue magazine cover with other youth climate activists including Billie Eilish, representing a landmark example of how high-end fashion will begin to advocate for climate justice.
• L’Oreal Paris Woman of Worth: Recognizing her charity work with BGE.
• Grist 50 Fixer: Identified as an emerging leader who will address the issues which are currently plaguing the earth.
• Ebony Power 100: Honoring black excellence.

Legacy in Progress:
By age 20, Wawa Gatheru has altered the course of the U.S. environmental movement. Gatheru has made it possible for the voices of both the street level and the board room to be heard by each other and to be involved in the decision-making process.

Her biography is a list of “firsts,” although being the first African American Rhodes- Truman-Udall scholar is forever etched in history. Her legacy is that of opening; she has forced open the heavy doors of the environmental establishment and wedged them wide enough for others to enter.

Through Black Girl Environmentalist, she is creating a new generation of leaders who no longer have to decide whether they want to be part of their community or if they want to fight for social justice. Through her work as an advisor at the federal level, she is making sure that when policies are created, they include equity. Through her writing, she is telling people that our most sustainable resource is community.
As the climate emergency worsens, the world will be looking for leaders to provide more than just dire warnings of what is coming, but also a vision for how we can live in an environmentally sustainable way while still experiencing joy. Wawa Gatheru provides this vision. She exemplifies the fact that saving the earth is not simply about levels of carbon in the atmosphere (ppm) or the melting of our ice caps; it’s about restoring the relationship between us and each other as well as creating a future where everyone is included when we rebuild. She is, in essence, building a movement in the likeness of each of us.