Climate activists and scientists say a reckoning over institutional racism needs to happen in the environmental movement, which experts say has had a long and uneasy relationship with racial politics.

Elevating racial justice issues within the environmental movement has been a struggle even though "racism and implicit bias is evident," said Jacqueline Patterson, director of the NAACP's Environmental and Climate Justice Program. Implicit bias exists despite the science, which shows that communities of color are disproportionally at risk from climate change.