Representation of BIPOC Ph.D. earners remains low in EEB 
As a case study of BIPOC PhD representation, we looked at annual data of EEB PhDs awarded to US citizens and permanent residents from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Survey of Earned Doctorates (Data available from the NSF: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf20301/; seeSupplementary Methods). The data shows a continued trend of low BIPOC representation through time (Fig. 1a), which even lags behind the low BIPOC representation seen in STEM in general (Supp. Fig. 1S). The number of PhDs earned by Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, and Asian individuals remain consistently and substantially lower than that of their white peers. Notably, Indigenous scholars earn an average of fewer than 10 PhDs per year (Fig. 1a).  In total, white scholars earned nearly seven times the number of EEB PhDs of all BIPOC scholars combined from 1994 to 2018. When adjusted for racial population size, BIPOC scholars remain under-represented, whereas white scholars are moderately and consistently over-represented (Fig. 1b). Except for a notable boom in PhDs earned by Asian scholars in the mid-1990’s, in most years all BIPOC scholars fall under the line of ‘fair representation’ (Fig. 1b). Hispanic and Black scholars are the least represented, and have not been fairly represented at any time between 1994 to 2018 (Fig. 1b).
For nearly a quarter-century, as the effects of anthropogenic climate change have tangibly intensified, we find that, paradoxically, the pool of advanced knowledge holders has not diversified to represent the communities most negatively affected. White scholars continue to make up the overwhelming bulk of all PhD graduates in EEB, and are consistently over-represented when adjusted for population size. We affirm our personal observations that EEB is particularly lacking in diversity; a discouraging fact, considering that EEB-related challenges continue to disproportionately impact BIPOC communities in North America and elsewhere.