Mya-Rose Craig demanding race equality from environmentalists

It is of no surprise to me that the young environmental and anti-racist campaigner, Mya-Rose Craig of English and Bangladeshi heritage has been named as one of the BBC Radio 4’s most outstanding women of the year.

Mya, aka ‘Bird woman’, coined because of her in-depth knowledge of birds around the world, has been making waves with her activism within global environmental movement for some time. Of course Greta Thunberg rightly gets the plaudits as a huge icon and environmental warrior, but in truth Mya has not only been a strong voice in this space on national and global level but critically she’s also brought race equality on to its agenda, and has been doing so for some time.

At the age of 14 when most kids, including my son are semi-addicted to their Xbox playing Fornite or its variants, Mya boldly set up her first organization, Black2nature.com Her vision was to bring the natural world to, as she called it, ‘Visible Minority ethnic’ young people. She argued:

We campaign for equal access to nature for but we concentrate on BME communities who are currently excluded from the countryside We run nature camps,… organise race equality in nature conferences and campaign to make nature conservation and environmental sectors ethnically diverse”

This was at 14 years of age. Since then - she’ now 18 - Craig has not stopped. She has supported Black Lives Matter movement, she’s talked about the racism that her Bangladeshi grandmother has been subject to within the health service, but above all she has been most strident in over voice to the Environmentalist movement that its representation of Black Asian and minority ethnic professionals of 0.6% is woeful.

In a week when we are rightly praising the God-given talent of Lewis Hamilton and his energy to confront racism, it’s great to see this young dynamic woman breaking barriers in a world that is as almost white as the F1 world in which Hamilton operates in.

I have no doubt that if Mya-Rose Craig was born in the Civil Rights era she would be alongside those greats such as Dr Martin Luther King, Angela Davis, and Rosie Parks.

Congratulations on being one of Britain’s most influential women, and we know there is much more to come from this young impressive woman.

Simon Woolley

Picture: Mya-Rose with mother Helena on the left