Naolo Charles

Naolo Charles is the Founder and Executive Director of the Black Environmental Initiative (BEI), an organization that engages Black and other equity-denied communities in environmental action through education, environmental stewardship, leadership development, and community building.

Naolo’s journey into environmental justice began in 2006 with the Probo Koala toxic waste disaster in Côte d’Ivoire. Already based in North America at the time, witnessing an environmental crisis of such magnitude unfold in his home country sparked a desire to better understand the global systems connecting environmental degradation, inequality, communities, and the economy.

This journey took him to Bolivia for a three-month environmental internship in 2010, where he witnessed the struggles of Indigenous communities living amid the pressures of natural resource extraction, including the growing global demand for lithium. During his time there, he also embarked on a transformative walkabout through the Salar of Uyuni. These experiences eventually led him to complete a master’s degree in environment.

During his graduate studies, Naolo pursued research in life-cycle assessment, examining the environmental and social stories behind everyday products and the global systems through which they are produced and consumed. This experience helped shape the holistic and systems-oriented lens that continues to inform his environmental justice work today.

A creative aspiring storyteller, Naolo has also made storytelling a central element of his approach.

Since founding BEI in 2019, Naolo has worked to create opportunities for Black communities to participate in and lead environmental action. He organized the first delegation of Black youth from Canada to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) and continues to mentor, train, and support emerging Black environmental leaders who have gone on to work across environmental organizations, governments, private firms, and community initiatives.

Naolo is also a co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Environmental and Climate Justice, which helped mobilize civil society efforts that contributed to the adoption of Canada’s first federal environmental justice legislation in 2024. He has served on a federal advisory table informing Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy and, as a fully bilingual English-French speaker, has delivered workshops, keynote presentations, and public talks across North America. His contributions to environmental leadership have been recognized with a Clean50 Award.

An environmental justice advocate and movement builder, Naolo is also a strategist, storyteller, and lifelong student of Black history. His work explores the intersections of climate justice, racial equity, community resilience, and systems change. Through land-based education, community building, and collective action, he seeks to reconnect Black communities with nature while advancing a vision of environmentalism rooted in social justice, multiracial solidarity, community power, and healing from the enduring impacts of colonialism.