The Hydropower Reform Coalition believes diversity, equity, and inclusion are crucial to our work protecting, enhancing, and restoring rivers and watersheds affected by hydropower. These values underpin our successes and light the way towards an ever more just and equitable future.
Our Coalition is built around bringing together people with common interests from across the country. Our strength lies in the breadth of voices and experiences that come to the table in support of rivers and watersheds. We continue to strive towards broader representation within the Coalition, including from groups other than traditional environmental conservation or recreation organizations. In addition to our Coalition membership, we engage with and support local community groups through our site-specific project work. We recognize the cultural and religious significance of rivers and watersheds, and work with tribes to support their resource management goals. The Coalition seeks to increase public access to and use of rivers, and we hope through our work to improve people’s relationships with rivers.
The Coalition embraces and encourages differences in age, color, ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, family or marital status, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other characteristics that make our staff and members unique.
The Coalition Steering Committee and staff are committed to the ongoing development of a work environment built on the premise of equity and inclusion that encourages and enforces respectful communication, cooperation, partnership, teamwork, participation, and representation of all perspectives. Steering Committee members and staff are expected to treat others with dignity and respect at all times, and to avail themselves of training opportunities provided by the Coalition.
The Coalition commits to:
- Work with organizations and communities affected by hydropower operations beyond traditional conservation or recreation advocacy groups.
- Support our tribal partners through engagement in their communities and recognition of their sovereignty.
- Continually improve our internal capacity through investment in diversity, equity, and inclusion training for our Steering Committee.
- Recruit people with subjugated identities (LGBTQ+, people of color, women, people with disabilities, etc.) to serve in leadership positions within the Coalition.
- Ensure our external communications reflect our values around diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Track our performance related to diversity, equity, and inclusion metrics to ensure accountability to these goals.
