Introduction
This research is grounded in the principles of justice and equity, values that resonate globally. I acknowledge and honour the activists and changemakers in Palestine, Syria and West Papua who, even amidst overwhelming adversity, continue to fight for freedom and equity—an enduring reminder of the power of collective action and unity.
Globally, climate change disproportionately impacts marginalised communities due to systemic, economic, geographic, and social barriers. Their voices, however, continue to be underrepresented in decision-making processes and policy.
First Nations and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities in Australia bring invaluable knowledge, lived experiences, and place based strategies to the forefront of climate action. However, systemic barriers, including funding constraints, lack of representation, discrimination, and rigid Western understandings of ‘climate’, hinder their full participation and leadership in climate action spaces and organisations.
Based primarily on interviews, conversations, and other research, this resource examines the work and stories of incredible First Nations and CALD climate leaders in Australia. Four of their stories can be accessed below.
They provide examples of place-based approaches, inclusive governance, equitable funding models, and cultural safety. Through these we identify actionable strategies to centre First Nations and CALD communities within the climate justice movement.
The findings highlight pathways for meaningful collaboration, representation, and systemic change. Ultimately, this resource advocates for a climate justice movement rooted in equity and self-determination, ensuring that those most affected by the crisis lead its solutions.
Note: The images are by Aṉangu graphic designer, Oumoula mckenzie @oumoulamckenzie
Findings
1. The Role of Cultural Identity for FN & CALD Activists in the Climate Movement
- 1.1: Cultural identity plays a critical role in climate justice and shapes the way activists engage with climate issues.
- 1.2: For First Nations and culturally diverse activists, climate change is not singular – environmental and social justice are connected.
- 1.3: The dominant climate movement only values environmentalism that aligns with Western and colonial standards – often excluding other cultural perspectives.
- 1.4: Climate buzzwords alienate marginalised communities and centre the lived experience of white people.
- 1.5: First Nations and culturally diverse activists draw strength and knowledge from their family and elders who have been influential in shaping their involvement and understanding of climate change.
2. The Connection between Wellbeing and Climate Justice
- 2.1: Climate change, colonial oppression, and environmental destruction deeply impact the wellbeing of activists.
- 2.2: Systemic barriers to seeing change, cultural load, and unequal power structures are contributing to widespread issues of burnout within the movement.
- 2.3: Mob-only and PoC-only spaces create a sense of community and solidarity for activists in a movement often dominated by whiteness.
- 2.4: Due to high workload, First Nations activists need support from allies, through consultation, to prevent burnout.
3. Experiences of Exclusion and Inclusion within the Climate Movement
- 3.1: Experiences of exclusion from the predominantly white climate movement are widespread, with little to no signs of improvement.
- 3.2: The movement needs to recognise the importance of lived experience, community-led knowledge, and leadership in driving long-term, meaningful change.
- 3.3: In dominantly white climate spaces, leadership that understands the importance of PoC perspectives supports inclusivity and meaningful, long-term impact.
- 3:4: Consultations are currently tokenistic, once-off, and surface level in nature.
4. Movement-Building Across First Nations & Cultural Diverse Communities
- 4.1: Movement based projects need greater visibility and remain underfunded and under-resourced.
- 4.2: Grassroots organising like community forums, webinars, and local events, are essential for community-driven solutions.
- 4.3: First Nation climate work often intersects with addressing systemic barriers rooted in colonisation including incarceration, discrimination, inadequate access to basic resources like water, housing, and healthcare, and the ongoing exploitation of land.
- 4.4: Culturally diverse movement-building approaches often intersect with areas like education for communities through understanding policies and concepts related to household expenses, clean energy initiatives, housing, migration, discrimination and displacement.
- 4.5: Intersectionality is embedded theoretically in movement-making however, it remains an under-resourced area when it comes to integrating frameworks into movements.
- 4.6: Climate work is often done on a voluntary basis with volunteers leading influential pieces of work. More financial support is needed for these volunteers.
- 4.7: In regard to communications, realistic climate messaging that balances both positive and negative aspects is essential for raising awareness and effectively engaging both communities and supporters.
- 4.8: When raising awareness within marginalised communities, it’s important to connect messages with community values, knowledge, and shared cultural values to make climate topics more accessible and meaningful.
- 4.9: Climate messaging remains a significant challenge in engaging CALD communities, highlighting the need for increased funding to explore and implement effective strategies.
5. First Nations & CALD Collaboration within the Climate Movement
- 5.1: There are shared experiences of systemic exclusion and marginalisation, which foster solidarity and mutual understanding between First Nations & CALD activists.
- 5.2: Many activists believe that Pacific communities occupy a dual identity and highlight an intersectionality where they navigate both the struggles of First Nations peoples (such as sovereignty and connection to land) and those faced by culturally diverse groups (such as migration, systemic barriers, and cultural preservation). This dual identity has fostered greater understanding between First Nations and CALD communities in climate justice work.
- 5.3: Collaboration is seen by activists as an opportunity to build broader representation in the movement, particularly within leadership.
- 5.4: There is a need to bridge misunderstandings or preconceived notions between groups in order to effectively work together.
- 5.5: Collaborative summits, retreats, and joint initiatives were seen as tools to foster stronger alliances, particularly ahead of COP31.
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Stories
Li’s Story – Breaking Barriers: A New Vision for Australia’s Climate Movement
Read Li’s Story

Studies reveal that while 90% of multicultural Australians feel strongly about climate change, many lack the resources or pathways to participate meaningfully (MLI, 2024). Li* represents this statistic, having spent over a decade attempting to join Australia’s climate movement with little success. Her experience exposed a movement that often centres on younger, educated, white professionals—leaving multicultural voices marginalised.
When we think about political power, certain electorates have very high multicultural populations,” Li explains. “If the climate movement doesn’t engage these communities and gain their support, we’ll struggle to secure the political backing we need. Take a gas ban proposal—if multicultural communities oppose it for any reason, there won’t be real progress.
Language and cultural barriers also complicate engagement. Many multicultural communities don’t speak English as a first language, and climate terms don’t always translate well. For example, climate justice can evoke concepts like police brutality instead of environmental protection. Words like energy policy or biodiversity often need cultural adaptation, with many multicultural communities viewing environmental issues holistically, rather than compartmentalising them into Western frameworks like ‘sectors.’
For Li, climate action is deeply intertwined with culture.
In my own community, we’ve always recycled and reused everything,” she says. “Migrant families often came here with very little, so repurposing is ingrained in us.
Li looks to organisations like Asian Australian Climate Solutions, who have tailored climate strategies to specific cultural contexts. Arab, Pacific Islander, and Jewish communities are also building climate momentum. However, she stresses the importance of creating frameworks that cater to each community’s unique needs. “What resonates with the Chinese community may not work for the Indian community. We need culturally specific approaches to make climate action effective across all backgrounds.”
Li advocates reframing the narrative by recognising the environmental stewardship many communities already practice. She suggests starting by celebrating what communities are doing well to showcase cultural resilience. But she warns that climate messaging should acknowledge competing priorities.
For many migrants, settling into a new country, educating their children, or buying a home are as pressing as climate change. The message has to be multifaceted and address these realities.
Safety and stability also play critical roles. Policies promoting alternative energy sources can inadvertently evoke fears rooted in past experiences, like the risk of losing access to reliable power or hot water. “We need to approach these topics with sensitivity and a deep understanding of people’s lived experiences,” Li says.
Li also calls for more resources to foster a truly inclusive climate movement. “We’re not at a stage where the movement is community-led. To get there, we need time to test messages, conduct research, to figure out what resonates,” she says. One approach is real-time testing: “Try different slogans or initiatives weekly to gauge what drives the most engagement and fine-tune our approach.”
International strategies, too, need rethinking. “In Asia and South America, messaging often fails because it’s overly Western,” Li points out. “Translations ignore local nuance. Just because a campaign works in one country doesn’t mean it will resonate elsewhere. We need thoughtful adaptation to build a genuinely global and inclusive movement.”
Li also underscores the importance of leadership within the climate movement. “CALD people bring valuable lived experience, but that alone isn’t enough. Those in decision-making roles need to understand the nuances between cultures to translate their personal experiences into systemic advocacy.”
Her message is clear: real climate action requires a movement that values and empowers multicultural communities as essential, not optional, voices. Without their inclusion, the fight against climate change will continue to be out of reach.
Kylie’s Story – The Fight for First Nations Knowing in the Climate Movement
Read Kylie’s Story

They talk about wanting to hear everybody’s voices, but when it comes to First Nations perspectives, it’s ‘Go talk to the First Nations group.
Late invitations and tokenistic gestures at events like NAIDOC week compound the problem.
First Nations communities are rarely consulted meaningfully. Instead, they are approached after the fact, often in one-off consultations that disregard local customs. Kylie stresses: “You have to introduce yourself to the land, to its traditional owners, and explain your intentions. That’s not about trust—it’s about respect. Projects need to be built around what we say we want and need, not imposed on us.”
She explains the lack of representation.
If you see a climate panel without a Blackfulla, that panel is wrong. If you’re not consulting traditional custodians, you’re not even trying. It’s so clear we’re not on people’s minds.
Unlike the mainstream climate movement, for First Nations communities, climate change isn’t an abstract idea—it’s existential.
There’s a real fear that my connection to land could come to an end because of climate change. I feel it to my core pretty much all the time.” Kylie says. “This isn’t just a job or a project for us.”
There’s a real fear that my connection to land could come to an end because of climate change. I feel it to my core pretty much all the time.” Kylie says. “This isn’t just a job or a project for us.
She connects the climate crisis with broader systemic issues: over-incarceration, lack of access to clean water and education, housing insecurity, and deforestation—all of which amplify the risks of climate change.
But there is a way forward.
The best part of climate change,” Kylie explains, “is that we actually know exactly what we did to break the climate. So we can use those steps to fix the climate and go back—not going back, but move forward—and look for a better way and try to repair what we’ve done. And with that, we can keep track of how we’re moving… using Indigenous knowledge as the way that we actually move forward.
In traditional systems, Kylie explains, everybody had a role to play based on their strengths. Kylie brings this to her work by empowering mob to find their voice, with some going into parliament to continue the fight. Kylie explains that with traditional knowledge, we can escape the colonial-capitalist ways of doing things for a more just future where everyone is valued, particularly those who are most vulnerable “Climate disasters don’t impact everyone equally. Class, disability—these things are already impacting people’s ability to survive these climate disasters. Not everyone can scramble onto a roof during a flood.”
Kylie critiques the colonial, capitalist approach to funding and action.
Why should we have to write endless reports to get scraps of funding? Come to our communities. See the impact. Hand over the money. We know what’s wrong, and we know how to fix it.
First Nations voices must lead the response to climate change. First Nations knowledge, rooted in 60,000 years of care for the land, offers solutions that are as urgent as they are necessary. Kylie’s message is clear: we need to act now to centre these voices, before it’s too late.
Priya’s Story: Reimagining Community for a Truly Inclusive Climate Movement
Read Priya’s Story

Priya* explains that culturally diverse communities have a lot more environmental harms imposed upon them in urban areas. Yet, inadequate consultation may not be meaningfully engaging these communities.
She emphasises that communities already hold the solutions—they may not fit the typical technocratic mould, but they’re real and effective. Community organising, Priya explains, doesn’t start at the organisational level; it’s rooted within multicultural communities themselves. Families and social circles, including her own, have deep, established networks that naturally foster the community engagement needed for climate justice.
Although these connections might not align with traditional notions of ‘organising,’ Priya explains that they represent genuine, impactful community work. Tapping into these existing networks allows her to connect the work with what’s already happening, creating opportunities to build community more meaningfully particularly when hosting events or running campaigns.
Priya has been asking ‘where are people already meeting?’ and what she’s found is that they are already meeting in beautiful ways.
We tell them to check in on their friends and families [during extreme weather events] and they’re like, ‘oh, we are already doing this,’ and it reminds us that communities don’t need to be told that.
This form of organising is also evident in multicultural leaders volunteering at community forums to discuss things like reading energy bills and clean energy initiatives.
Priya says
“I think ideally, collaboration will be, sort of devolved to the orgs that are already doing place based work in that area, rather than, trying to start from scratch. People already hold expertise. It may not be identical to what the top down vision would be but I think it’s realising that there’s so much more potential within these groups and using this to lead the work.
A key barrier is consultation: “Expertise is often valued if it’s confined to ‘culturally appropriate’, like wearing traditional clothing. But beyond that, it’s not really encouraged.”
She adds,
Consultation is often limited and we are brought in as cultural representatives instead of recognising us as people with broader knowledge. Both perspectives matter, but we need to engage both.
The lack of representation of culturally diverse people at climate events is an implicit barrier to participation and compounds the issue.
Through her work, Priya has seen that words like adaptation and resilience come up frequently in climate policy, yet their meaning doesn’t always resonate with these communities.
For Pyria, it’s about empowering communities to define things like renewable energy uptake on their own terms and to lead the way, rather than imposing rigid, one-size-fits-all definitions on them. She explains a recent experience conducting focus groups with participants from Indian and Chinese backgrounds, which showed how technical language, even around renewable energy, can alienate people. Priya’s team cut back technical explanations and encouraged open discussions in small groups. This shift allowed attendees to reflect on everyday impacts, like rising energy bills, without needing detailed policy breakdowns. She explains that what helped her to achieve this outcome was leadership that understood the importance of lived experience in shaping climate work.
At the national level, environmental statements contradict new coal and gas projects—decisions that go against the aspirations of migrant and Pacific communities.
People are fleeing countries already at the frontline of climate change, like India, facing extreme heat and disasters. But here in Australia, they’re placed in urban heat islands, worsening their struggles. It shows how climate crises are inescapable without proper recognition, which is missing right now.
There’s also a broader conversation to be had about how the success of climate work often depends on the resilience of those who have directly experienced disasters, like bushfire survivors, who channel their experience into advocacy.
It’s a reminder that climate action shouldn’t be reactive to disasters but should prevent them.
Instead Priya’s work intensifies as Australia prepares for severe weather events.
Priya’s perspective highlights the power of harnessing the existing cultural resilience within communities and creating space for self-determination. Her message is clear: to create a genuinely inclusive climate movement, we need strategies that truly understand that communities hold the solutions.
Mia’s Story: Defending Sacred Ground for Climate
Read Mia’s Story

Mia*, an Aboriginal activist remembers the first petition she signed. “I was eight years old, and all the aunties were signing a petition to stop one of our burial sites from being dug up to make way for a road.”
For Mia, climate justice is inseparable from the fight against the exploitation of land and the colonial systems that underpin it.
True climate justice isn’t just swapping fossil fuel billionaires for renewable energy billionaires,” she says. “It means public ownership of sustainable energy, meaningful consultation with First Nations communities at every stage of a project, and redirecting public funds from fossil fuels into education, community resources, and preventing youth disengagement. It’s about healthcare, clean food, water, and stable housing.
She explains that climate justice can’t be isolated from systemic racism and inequality. “When you realise these issues are interconnected and rooted in the same systems, you see the real scope of the climate crisis.”
Mia reflects on her entry into the climate movement: “When I started, I didn’t know much about climate change. But I realised my personal experiences mattered. Mob already have so much knowledge about this land, even without the Western side of things coming in. It’s okay not to have all the answers and you don’t need to have a degree in environmental science or whatever, we’re just here to yarn.”
Her work goes beyond raising awareness—it’s about empowering mob to lead.
Mob already know how to heal community; they just need resources and for people to actually listen—something our government and institutions rarely do.
But the work comes at a cost. “It’s emotionally, physically, and spiritually exhausting,” she admits, because of the relentless bad news, from the destruction of sacred sites to staggering statistics of violence against her people.
The pressure is magnified by expectations from allies. “Non-Aboriginal people are like, ‘You need to do more,’” she says. First Nations people juggle multiple projects, board commitments, and responsibilities far beyond their immediate families—a cultural load many allies don’t fully grasp.
Mia wants to see structural changes. “The first thing is, pay us for our time,” highlighting a major issue in the climate justice space—First Nations people are often expected to contribute their time, knowledge, and expertise without adequate compensation. Additionally, Mia stresses the need for greater inclusivity in the planning stages of projects and events. “We are really busy people… don’t think of us as a last-minute thing. You need to actually incorporate us in the beginning of planning your project.”
She also stresses the need for allies to do their own research and access existing resources before coming to them for basic questions.
While juggling high workload and systemic barriers, mob only spaces have been a place of solace for activists like Mia. “It’s hard to know if an ally space will feel safe until you’re in it. The first day of any event could be mob-only, or there could be a mob-only room—somewhere we can de-mask and stop code-switching for a moment.” Most importantly, she urges organisers to consult First Nations people on what safe spaces look like because everyone’s needs are different.
Climate change isn’t just about environmental destruction—it threatens identity, culture, and spirit. Mia’s call to action is clear: safeguarding this land requires First Nations leadership. “If you’re thinking, ‘How can we get mob into this space?’ then you’re on the right track.” Now you need to listen to us.
Movement Monitor Fellows Project
This resource was produced as part of the Movement Monitor Fellows project. Three climate activists were given support to produce resources that promote knowledge and understanding of the Australian climate movement, its practices and its impacts.
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