NERCOUTE: Citizen science for Advancing Racial Equity in Environmental Research Super-consortium (CAREERS)

The environmental workforce lacks ethnic diversity at every level, limiting the UK’s capacity to solve the complex socio-techno-environmental challenges facing society. CAREERS will scope and pilot approaches to inspire and enable people of colour to be part of the future talent pipeline. An environmental career often starts with a personal connection with nature. For many, particularly those from under-represented backgrounds, engagement with nature though fieldwork happens rarely. The Citizen science Advancing Racial Equity in Environmental Research Super-consortium (CAREERS) strongly believes that engagement with fieldwork is enabled by participation in citizen science (CS). We will explore how existing CS schemes are enablers for, and have barriers that limit, people of colour to engage with environmental fieldwork. CAREERS will focus on current students because environmental subjects are among the least ethnically-diverse: people of colour represent only 13% of undergraduates, shrinking to just 7-9% at doctoral level. We will explore how CS can give students from ethnically minoritised backgrounds the skills that future employers require - empowering, upskilling and inspiring them to continue into environmental research careers. However, for CAREERS to be effective, we need to acknowledge the historical, engrained barriers in environmental disciplines, before exploring the social and technological opportunities that enable inclusivity. Only then can we make environmental education and careers, and fieldwork especially, more inclusive. CAREERS will: 1) Build a ‘super-consortium’ uniting two partnerships with shared goals and complementary expertise, facilitated by skilled enablers and a diverse Leadership Team: YCEDE: a Research England/Office for Students-funded collaboration of five Yorkshire universities and >12 partners widening access to postgraduate research for people of colour. UKTEPoP: a partnership of 16 UK organisations using CS to monitor our environment with a joint commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. 2) Co-create a deeper understanding of the barriers and enablers so that CAREERS partners widen access to environmental research, education and CS for people from diverse ethnic communities, through practical action. 3) Evaluate our project outcomes, data and best practice for opening access to education, volunteering and careers. Disseminate widely across the environmental sector via our partners, funder, Leadership Team and co-creation panels. Our super-consortium has advantages over small-scale initiatives by individual organisations which can lack evidence for what works, and are insufficient to support meaningful evaluation or scale-up. To deliver our objectives, CAREERS will: Facilitate staff across our super-consortium to better understand organisational issues around race equity and readiness for change via a reflective workshop with our EDI expert; Recruit a co-creation panel of 20 students to join a CS engagement day run by CS schemes from the CAREERS partnership (including RSPB, Butterfly Conservation and Plantlife) in greenspaces in Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield and York. Evaluate our activities with reflective interviews with staff and student participants to identify challenges and enablers to engagement, and co-create potential solutions to the challenge of ethnic under-representation. Plan for scaling up to more students and intersecting demographics. Working with undergraduate students is the start of our ambition. From 2026, CAREERS partners plan to build a programme of future activities and investment to ultimately increase recruitment of people of colour into environmental study, careers and CS. CAREERS is an exciting collaboration that unites partners committed to co-creating inclusive solutions that will benefit environmental education, research, citizen science and. importantly. a more ethnically diverse environmental workforce for the future.