Filipino American Kristy Drutman hosts a media series called Brown Girl Green to encourage minority groups to join the movement for climate and environmental justice. Drutman tells stories through her podcast, videos, and blog to inspire others to get involved with sustainability from the grassroots level.
“We need to embrace diversity as not just something tangential or accessory but essential as an abundant asset that we need to tap into as a climate movement at large,” Drutman says in a video.
Drutman says there is a lack of representation of non-Whites in the climate movement. The lack of representation means groups, such as immigrant and indigenous communities, are least likely to pay attention because they won’t be able to relate.
Drutman attended UC Berkeley, where she founded the Students of Color Environmental Collective after she and her friends noticed the environmental movements on campus consisted of pre-dominantly White students. She told Inquirer, the Students of Color Environmental Collective was created to be a healing space for students to address their experiences navigating the movement as a minority.
Majority of the group members were first generation immigrants or children of immigrants. The group recognized that immigrant parents did not value the environmental justice the same way they did.
new article for @browngirl_green 🌻 “how green living can be inaccessible and exclusionary” click the link to read the full article! https://t.co/VV8gvl9xNR pic.twitter.com/HGhsliGFeo
— lauren (@lauraalexaa) July 10, 2020
Drutman participated in an immersion program that was located in the Philippines, where she learned about plant-based cuisine and the mining that causes damage to indigenous communities.
“That was when I realized the work that needs to be done needed to be rooted in my identity and my connection to [climate change],” Drutman told Inquirer, “I realized I wanted to create a platform that lets people really understand the real connections to the crisis in a personal way.”
She is a board member of the Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity, an environmental justice non-profit in San Francisco, and a delegate with SustainUS, a youth-led non-profit that promotes sustainability and justice.
Her podcast covers the topics of environmental racism, racial equity and the outdoors, sustainable synthetic hair, climate change with disabilities, and more. This young environmentalist has featured other eco-influencers and environmental justice organizations, including Black Millennials 4 Flint.
In the Brown Girl Green podcast, Drutman says “It’s time to put Brown back in the Green Movement.”
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