Diversity, Equity & INclusion

The Energy & Environment Specialty Group (EESG) of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) has a normative commitment to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, antiracism and decolonization. In the past few years, we have been working to further institutionalize these commitments within our group and operationalize these commitments through group processes and programming, focusing on advocacy, governance, recruitment and retention and data collection. In the past few months, we have done the following:

• Formed a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) subcommittee that meets several times per year

• Worked towards diversifying our group leadership and Board of Advisors

• Launched the Advancing Diversity and Inclusion Award and the Powershift Award

• Rewritten our Mission & Vision statements to reflect our commitment to DEI

• Designed and circulated a DEI survey to all group members, the results of which can be found here

• Host a number of DEI-focused events throughout the year, some of which are at the AAG Annual Meeting and the Energy Geography Conference

• Connect and collaborate with the AAG's Director of Diversity and Inclusion to further strategize how we can institutionalize and operationalize DEI within our group

We have many more initiatives that we are currently planning and at various stages of implementation. Although we do not consider our work to be comprehensive nor complete, we are committed to transforming our group in ways that elevate and empower marginalized and vulnerable populations. We acknowledge the material and discursive violence committed by energy and environment scholars and practitioners both historically and currently. Our field must reconcile with these legacies of colonial-capitalist accumulation achieved through dispossession, displacement, discrimination, exploitation, genocide, erasure and extinction. We must also work to dismantle and abolish the systems of oppression, rooted in heteropatriarchal cisgendered white supremacy, that have structured our field of study and practice. We welcome your participation and provocations as we move forward with DEI initiatives.