In this special episode of our podcast, Jools Townsend, CEO of the Community Rail Network, talks to Jabeer Butt, CEO of Race Equality Foundation and Kamran Mallick, CEO of Disability Rights UK about the intersection of climate and social justice.
Key takeaways
- The impacts of climate breakdown, and related environmental degradation such as air pollution, aren’t in the distant future – they are already being felt, particularly and disproportionately so by marginalised communities, including disabled people and Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.
- Therefore the climate crisis heightens inequalities and exacerbates injustice. We can’t have a just future without tackling the climate crisis.
- Yet low income and marginalised groups contribute proportionately far less to the climate crisis and environmental degradation, and have been excluded from international and high level debates on forging solutions.
- We need to ensure everyone has a voice in the climate debate, especially those being most affected – this is a key role for our sector. There is also great promise and value in unlocking the power of creativity, collaboration and innovation that comes from giving diverse voices a platform, and bringing diverse peoples together in debate.
- The third sector is closest to communities and uniquely placed to understand and articulate the impacts of the climate crisis and the solutions that will both protect our shared future and deliver immediate benefit now. Involving our communities of place, practice and identity is crucial to achieving a just, positive transition and enabling the collective and systemic changes we need, making sure the conditions are right for our communities to lead the change they need.
- Involving and empowering young people is especially important – recognising the young campaigners fighting for their future, and helping to harness their passion.
- Communities feeling the effects of climate breakdown, and those most at risk in the future, need vocal, active allies across the third sector – we need to not only give voice to the specific groups we engage, support and represent, but build radical collaboration to challenge embedded ways of thinking and doing together.
Transcript
Jools Townsend 00:00
Well, hello everyone, and welcome to this special edition podcast for ACEVO’s first climate week. My name is Jools Townsend, and I’m chief executive of the community rail network. We’re a national organization supporting communities to get involved with their local railways and promoting sustainable, inclusive travel. I’m also a board member of ACEVO and absolutely passionate about the power of the third sector to deliver positive change, generally, but especially the scope for the third sector to help us rise to the huge challenges that we face to prevent climate breakdown, and bound up with that to achieve a more just and equitable society. And I believe that role has been underplayed and underestimated. So I’m really thrilled to be part of this conversation today, helping to bring that more to the fore. I’m joined by two esteemed guests who I’m humbled and excited to be talking to, Jabeer Butt OBE, who’s chief executive of the race equality Foundation, and Kamran Malik, Chief Executive of disability rights UK. And hello to both of you, and welcome and thank you for joining me today.
Jabeer Butt 01:26
Hello, Jules.
Kamran Mallick 01:27
Hi Jules.
Jools Townsend 01:28
So I got really excited, as you can probably tell already, about preparing for this conversation. I’ve come up with some quite chunky questions, so I’m really keen to dive into those and I’m sure that we will be bold in our thinking and going through those questions. But I want to start in quite traditional fashion by asking a little bit about why we’re here and thinking about our motivations for having this conversation in the first place, because I wonder if some listeners might be surprised to be hearing from us, rather than leaders of environmental organizations. So can you just start by telling us a bit about why you wanted to speak to this topic and be part of ACEVO’s climate week, and what you see is the relationship between the specific causes and issues that your organizations are championing and advancing, and the climate crisis.
Jabeer Butt 02:29
So Jules, as hopefully many of your listeners will know we’re a black, Asian and minority ethnic led organization that’s looking to positively transform the lives of Britain’s Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, by tackling systemic racism. And in the question that you raised, perhaps if you’d asked it four or five years ago, there would certainly have been a degree of surprise. However, I think the pandemic, the Black Lives movement and the work of organizations such as just stop oil, of late has meant that the agenda on climate change has been put on everybody’s table, and in many ways, the question for an organization like ours is, why weren’t you talking about it before, rather than Why are you talking about it now. Hopefully people will accept that perhaps we should have been been raising it in the past, but the fact that we’re now raising it and addressing it is significant, and is is something to get behind.
Jools Townsend 03:32
Thank you, Kamran, do you want to…
Kamran Mallick 03:33
Yeah, I think, can I just repeat what Jabeer just said? Because he said it’s really, really well and eloquently. I think, as so disability rights, UK, we’re a disabled people led organization, and I think it’s just really important to just understand what that actually means, what’s behind those words, and that means that we are led by disabled people. So organization structures are designed so that in the majority will always be disabled people, and our lived experience of the world, of society as individuals drives what we’re about. And exactly like Jabeer just said, about 2, 3, years ago, I was thinking, Why, with all the things that Jabeer’s just said about what was happening with the pandemic and other the Black Lives movement and meetings were happening. And really what kicked it off for me was, few years ago when COP happened in Scotland. Listeners may remember there was a delegate from, I believe it was Egypt delegate who came over a wheelchair user who couldn’t even get into the conversation. And that really just shocked me, that at high profile events where this important topic is being discussed, disabled people are being kept out of it, not just everyday community disabled people, but high profile disabled people who are part of a delegation of another country. And I just realized that again, you know, as a disabled people led organization, we hadn’t really talked about this topic, and we could have done it and should have done it sooner, but here we are, and we are talking about it now, which is a good thing. And disabled people’s voice and other marginalized communities voice is completely missing from this conversation, both in terms of its impacts, but also the solutions that we are looking for. So I felt it was really important that we are we take this opportunity to talk to your listeners and be part of the climate week that you’re holding as part of that journey.
Jools Townsend 05:33
Thank you. So, so important that diverse voices are being heard through the through the debate and and I think that you’ve both reflected the fact that climate has risen up the agenda very significantly in recent years, including as a result of the work of activists and campaigners bringing the urgency of the situation more to the fore, and, you know, creating that, that feeling of, shouldn’t all of our organizations be facing up to this, this issue? But I’m conscious too, that the idea of climate justice and achieving a just transition, not not just any transition to towards renewable energy and and making the changes that we we need to to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, but making that change happen in a way that is is involving diverse groups, hearing the voices of those who are affected and and delivering benefit for the groups and the beneficiaries and communities that we’re working with and and representing. Do you feel like that idea has influenced you? Does that feel like idea, that concept of climate justice and and achieving a just transition, has gained traction within the circles that you’re you’re working in?
Jabeer Butt 06:58
It is odd Jools in many ways, the environmental movement has always been about justice and social justice here. However, what’s also been striking about it is the the absence of diverse voices, certainly Black, Asian and minority, ethnic led voices are rarely seen in leading positions within that and I suspect, Kamran will echo that in other ways as well, and I think that’s always been one of those, those challenges that raises the question, are the issues that are confronting those communities going to be properly represented and properly addressed within, within those, those discussions, and I fear the experience has been that, no, there haven’t been, they’ve not, not been been focused on in many ways. So, for example, the discussion around air quality, it’s only in the last few years that we’ve actually started to properly understand how that impacts inequality. So Black, Asian and minority ethnic people living in London, in Birmingham, in Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester and other urban areas, are much more likely to not only be living in urban areas where air quality is poorer, but living in those parts of the those cities where air quality is poorest. So if we take Lambeth, for example, the A23 running through Lambeth means that it’s one of the most polluted. It’s one of the poorest air quality areas, yet actually car ownership amongst BAME people in Lambeth is lower than it is for London as a whole. So it’s not even they who who are causing the pollution, yet they’re the ones who are suffering it. But you’d rarely see those points being made. You’d rarely see those voices being heard. And you then do wonder whether, when we talk about the extension of the ULEZ or the costs associated with cleaning up the environment are going to be addressed, and perhaps the disproportionate impact that might have on those communities is going to be addressed.
Kamran Mallick 09:18
So for disabled people, the lens that we look at this from is kind of the idea of a disability justice lens, which is to say that there are multiple marginalizations that impact on people’s lives, and disabled people intersect with all of those. So whether it’s race, gender, the inequalities within all of those intersects, as Jabeer just talked about, when you then bring it, bring on top disability, the marginalization and inequality becomes worse, and disabled people’s voice is just missing from public discourse, from public conversation. We are talked about by non disabled people. We are done to by non disabled people, and all the inequalities that we experience, the structural inequalities that exist in society, mean that in this really important conversation, there’s almost no voice of disabled people, and the intersects that Jabeer just talked about. Talking about the impact of the climate change today, not even thinking about the future, but actually what’s happening right now kind of both in terms of extreme heat conditions, or we’re now in coming into August, but the last month has been one of the wettest on record. And we have we talk about flooding, and it’s almost become normalized that this happens now. But what we’re not talking about is what the impact of that is on the people we least hear from, the voices we don’t have the platform to talk about and we talk about vulnerability of people, and particularly in the pandemic, we heard a lot about how disabled people were vulnerable people. I think it’s really important to understand what vulnerability is. Vulnerability does not inherently exist within an individual or within a community. Vulnerability is put upon people by the situation that they find themselves in. And with climate change, disabled people are finding themselves to be more vulnerable to those extreme conditions because of the structuring inequalities. I’ll give you my personal example. Where I live in northwest London, it’s a flood area, and I’ve been flooded twice in that space. Now, people then say to me, why don’t you just move? Actually, it’s really hard to move because we don’t have adequate housing that is wheelchair accessible, that I can afford and move into. So actually, the people who are being most affected by climate change often have the least resources to actually respond to it.
Jools Townsend 11:45
I’m aware of an initiative I think both of your organizations have been heavily involved in, called Everyone’s Environment, which I had a good look at in preparation for this conversation. Looks like a really interesting piece of work, led by NPC, examining how different groups are being and will be, increasingly in the future, affected by the climate crisis and its effects, extreme weather events, increasing heat and exploring those impacts on those groups, but also exploring what those groups had have to say about the climate crisis and what they feel needs to be done, both to help address marginalization and simultaneously move us towards a more sustainable future. So really interesting piece of work that I’d encourage our listeners to have a look at. Do either of you want to comment on that piece of work and what that’s…
Kamran Mallick 12:51
Yeah, from my perspective and our involvement, it was really important to do a piece of work where we actively went out and talked to disabled people from different parts of the country to look at what was happening and what their thoughts were on climate change, extreme weather conditions, what’s happening to them today, and actually some of the decisions that are already being made that are negatively impacting on their lives. And so having that kind of conversation with communities, and hearing what they’ve said into what can become policy conversations are really important. And so as you say, I’d encourage your listeners to go out and look at that on the NPC website. And we, you know, we heard from people about decisions such as banning of plastic straws. Now people think, oh, yeah, that we should just do that. And that’s, of course, the right thing to do. But again, because disabled people were missing from that conversation, to some disabled people that’s essential to just having some water or a drink, and can’t manage without it. And unless we put alternative solutions in that work, you massively impact on groups of people, and that’s the kind of voice that has always been missing, and that piece of work has helped us to do that, but also it just showed that people were interested in the topic and want to be involved and want to be heard.
Jools Townsend 14:11
Yeah. And a really interesting takeaway from me, from one of the webinars I looked at, was the idea that often climate action is pitted against progress in terms of developing the economy and social justice. And, you know, actually, we really do need to be bringing these issues together. And you know, and that is not how people are seeing it in everyday life. It’s, it’s not one or the other.
Jabeer Butt 14:39
Obviously, we need to acknowledge NPC’s leadership on this and credit them for taking those steps. But I think a key part of what’s been going on is that lots of us who were working in health and care have actually been dealing with the symptoms of climate change and natural disasters that we’re facing, rather than necessarily understanding the systemic failures and how those systemic failures are contributing to those challenges for health and care. So for example, Black, Asian and minority ethnic children are much more likely to develop asthma than than their white counterparts. There’s actually a difference between children and the previous generation as well. Migrants are less likely to have asthma. Yet their children are more likely to have it. Now we know poor air quality is a key driver to asthma crisis. We know that, for example, in London, where it’s been looked at, it’s more likely that for minority ethnic child to end up in hospital as a result of that, that asthma crisis. And unfortunately, we also know from some of the cases that have come to public attention that it leads to some of the poorest outcomes, including early death. Now we can try and address how health and care is responding, but unless we actually address air quality itself, what we’re only doing is putting a sticking plaster on on the problem, rather than addressing the problem itself. And I think the key part of Everyone’s Environment has been to actually get us to focus on the systemic challenges, and how do we address those and make sure that those don’t exacerbate inequality rather than, rather than address it.
Jools Townsend 16:35
Such an important point about, you know, how the third sector is very often dealing with the dealing with the consequences, dealing with the aftermath of issues, and often not really getting to the root causes. So I think that leads on nicely to my next question, which is to just broaden this conversation out a little bit. So clearly, there’s a role for environmental charities, as we’ve acknowledged already. I think we’ve, as we’ve just examined, there’s clearly a role for organizations that are representing specific marginalized communities and helping them to have a voice. Broadly thinking, what do you see the role of the third sector at large in relation to tackling the climate crisis?
Kamran Mallick 17:23
So I think it’s got a really important and crucial role in addressing climate the climate crisis, extreme weather crisis, that we’re experiencing. And Jools you talked about, you know, the just transition, and I think kind of fostering that just transition, empowering communities. We’ve got that role. We as a sector, I would argue, you know, are often the closest to communities, because we are connected to we are often… our organizations are run by the communities that we’re talking about. As I said, you know, Disability Rights UK, we are a disabled people led organization, but our members are disabled people’s organizations that are local and regional, who are directly talking to individual disabled people every day, and just both through our combined lived experience and the connections we have with local people, we kind of have really detailed knowledge of the impacts and how climate change is and will affect disabled people, and we have that kind of role to make sure that the representation of those communities is loud, unified and kind of powerful, and that we’re speaking to and campaigning and lobbying to influence those people who are making decisions, whether that be government, national, local or international structures, to make sure that our voices are heard, to ensure that the solutions are inclusive and equitable, because we bring in those voices and perspectives into those conversations and decision making spaces.
Jabeer Butt 19:00
Building on Kamran’s point, I’d suggest that there are two additional things that are key here. One is that we need to have a mature debate around that process of transition and what it means. Many of your listeners will have heard lots of talk, particularly today, about the plans for new towns and a dramatic increase in the number of houses being built, and for many black, Asian, minority ethnic communities, this is, this is something that’s been seen as being absolutely essential to address the current problems, they’re much more likely to be living in temporary accommodation. They’re much more likely to be living in overcrowded conditions. They’re much more likely to be living in housing that have a whole set of other hazards as well. So some plan to expand the building of new homes, particularly social homes, will be seen as being welcome. However, that conversation needs to be placed in the context of the carbon budget. Building new homes inevitably puts more carbon into the environment if we don’t do it properly, or if we don’t do carefully. And we need to have that conversation that says, if we’re going to expand that, how we’re going to do it in a way that doesn’t actually end up causing further environmental damage. And if, if organizations like ours aren’t having those conversations with the communities that we work with, I think we’re failing. We’ve got to be able to ensure that mature conversation takes place. The second part and it builds and extends on Kamran’s point a little further, which is the involvement in the political dialogue around inequality and so on. So, for example, over the last 14 years, there’s been the exclusion of Muslim led charities in conversations with politicians. The government has decided it didn’t want to engage with many of those charities, or it put barriers in place of talking to those charities, and inevitably, organizations like ours, as well as ACEVO and others, need to stand up and say that the charitable sector has a right to be involved in those political conversations, particularly when we know that Muslims in particular, are at the cutting edge of inequality, and part of our challenge is, how do we make sure now that political debate listens and engages with those communities as well.
Kamran Mallick 21:45
I think it’s really important that we as a sector, that we come together on these issues, and we can’t leave the inequality down to those particular organizations. So we can’t leave only disabled people to be saying that disabled people are excluded. We can’t leave organizations run by Black and Asian minoritized communities, to be saying we’re out of the… Others have got to step in and be those vocal allies. It’s not enough to say we’re an ally. You’ve got to be this active ally. And I think that’s really important, because otherwise it’s seen as well, of course, you’re going to say that you’re from that community. We expect nothing different. The allies need to speak up and stand together, and we’ve got to shift those kind of power dynamics that exist in our community, in our society, and that collective change is really important.
Jools Townsend 22:36
It’s not just about bringing sustainability into the conversations that we’re having already, and highlighting the impacts that the climate crisis is already having, the heightened impacts it will have in the future, with regards to the communities that we work with and making sure those voices are heard, it’s also about us looking for opportunities to collaborate across the sector. A lot of the reading and thinking that I’ve done around what the sector can do around tackling the climate crisis has centered around this idea of radical collaboration and really thinking about how we can challenge deeply embedded power structures and ways of thinking that have led us to this point. You know, this idea that everything needs to change, so we really need to work together and and be creative and constructive in the way that we’re working together and coming up with with solutions and what better way to innovate than bringing different organizations, different communities of place and practice together and working together. And I’m very conscious too that, I think a lot of the conversations around you know what, what needs to change to turn things around, in terms of the planetary crisis that we face often center around individuals, and individuals making different different choices, which can be damaging, actually, it can feel like we’re pointing the finger at individuals and accusing the individual, accusing individuals of doing the wrong thing, and we’re placing too much weight on people’s shoulders, and that can cause people to turn away from the debate. And actually, this idea of collective change, you know, how can we change as communities, communities of place and practice and identity is much more the kind of language that we should be using and the approach that we should be taking. And I think third sector’s got a fundamental role to play in that.
Kamran Mallick 24:37
I mean, equitable change is important. So you know, you’re absolutely, talking about individual changes that people should make, but not everybody can make those changes because of the inequity that exists. And it’s often, you know, those who do and don’t have things and resources and things who can make some changes and then point the finger at others who are not making the change. We’ve got to have that equity conversation, as well as equality, is really important.
Jabeer Butt 25:04
And just to extend that a little further, Jools, I have now been in full time employment for something like 36 years, and during all that period, I’ve used public transport to commute to the base that I work at, it’s raises a particular challenge now. I actually spend more money on train travel than I do on my housing costs. It costs me more money to commute than it does to eat food on during the week. And I think it points to one of the challenges that we face. We can all focus on individuals making the right choice, but if we don’t actually create the environment for them to make the right choice, it’s never going to work. If the cost of using rail, as opposed to using the car, is such that it’s actually cheaper to use the car which is going to be more polluting, people will inevitably end up making that choice. And if we don’t address the environment, if we don’t create the infrastructure that allows us to make the right choice, we will be constantly saying, it’s actually your fault for driving a diesel car, or it’s your fault for using gas in your in to cook with and so on, rather than recognizing that, unless we actually create the infrastructure, make it affordable at the same time, when we’re not going to get a situation where people can make the right choice.
Jools Townsend 26:41
I think transport is absolutely a case in point. It’s the sector that my organization is most heavily involved in. Very, very well said, you know that the point that within transport, we often hear people talking about, you know, we need to get people making more sustainable choices in the way they travel. But their transport habits, they’re deeply habitual, but they’re also greatly constrained as you’ve just highlighted Jabeer. So we need to open up sustainable travel and enable people to use sustainable travel and break down those, those barriers that are getting in the way of people moving around using lower carbon means. But also, I think, you know, there’s, there’s a huge amount of benefit on offer from enabling communities to influence that change. I think, you know, that’s a big part of what my organization does, is helping communities to influence more sustainable and inclusive transport and travel, so that the change we see is is genuinely meeting local needs and meeting the needs of diverse, diverse groups, and helping us to make that shift towards more climate safe transport and travel at the same time as reducing inequalities. And I think my experience in transport, but no doubt the case within other sectors is that often the thinking on sustainability and climate is kind of quite separate from the thinking around accessibility and inclusion. So different people doing different thinking on those two topics, and not really acknowledging that actually, if we open up public transport, for example, to more to more people, if we make it more inclusive, more accessible, more convenient, more affordable, we also help to get more people using these lower carbon forms of transport and that thinking often isn’t well integrated. I think there’s an interesting point too around kind of thinking about sustainable behaviors, sustainable living as a right and enabling people to access these forms of living.
Kamran Mallick 28:50
You know, we need to rethink how society as a whole is structured. Because, you know, jobs are always concentrated in certain areas, so what people are having to do is commute huge distances. Then in those areas, housing becomes really expensive, so people move further away, but the job is still there. And for disabled people, transport is a huge, huge barrier. It’s just not accessible at all. I mean, if non disabled people actually experience what disabled people have to go through just to travel, you would just be up in arms to say, How is this even allowed? Why is it that a disabled person can’t just turn up at a train station and be expected to get on a train? Why, if we’re a little bit late, we almost get treated like a bad, you know, a bad person, that we’ve done something wrong because we’re late and now there isn’t time to help you, to get you on the train. It’s just this constant structural inequalities that exist, and we’re not thinking broader to say, how do we need to restructure those things?
Jools Townsend 29:47
So thinking about that, that structural change that we that we clearly need, we’re obviously, we’re talking at a time of huge political change within the UK and a rapidly evolving global political context. What particular opportunities and perhaps threats do you see around us and ahead of us at the current time to accelerate climate action and achieve that, that just transition and again, how does the third sector come into that?
Kamran Mallick 30:22
We have a new government. So I think there’s an opportunity to try and influence the agenda. What I worry about is these conversations always come down to costs and who should pay. The ambition is watered down as it were. We don’t we’re not as ambitious as we should be. We’re not thinking long term enough. It’s very short term solutions. Jabeer, early on, talked about sticking plasters on the issue, rather than actually really looking at the root cause. Being ambitious and say, This is what it will take, and we are going to do this, and we’re going to commit to it. We’re stuck in this five year cycle of you know, governments come in, then they start thinking about, in order to stay in power, what do we need to do? What’s the populist kind of thing that we need to be talking about? And how can government change the narrative about the divisions that we have, them and us situation that we’ve created, and what role do they have to play in shifting that, that it’s a collective responsibility, that we all have to contribute to the solutions that there’s not one particular element of our society that’s creating the burdens, burden on the taxpayer, as it were.
Jabeer Butt 31:28
For me, I think where there are opportunities, and many of them are restricted for various reasons, but where there are opportunities, I do think that for it to achieve the scale of change and the speed of change that we need to do have a real impact on climate and the nature crisis, it really does require government led action. Government has to not only facilitate it, but has to actually ensure that the resources are there to pay for it, so that what we don’t create is a situation where poor people in London are unable to use convenient transport systems because the costs are so such that actually even public transport is too, too expensive. So local action, yes, but it needs the government to act in as as well.
Jools Townsend 32:23
We need both. And a meeting, a meeting in the middle, and coherence across scales of government, I think is, is absolutely critical. But I mean, certainly we, we’ve seen really encouraging signs coming from the new government in terms of a clear focus on making our transport system greener, I think that that overarching focus on empowering communities and giving communities a greater say in the development of their of their local areas and transport specifically, is really encouraging. But we’ve, we’ve also just, of course, at the time of recording this, heard from our new chancellor talking about the tight fiscal envelope and Kamran as you, as you said, often people want change. People know what needs to happen, but the costs are often getting in the way. Do you think there’s more our sector needs to do to underline the costs of inaction? Do we need to get more to grips with the value that can be unlocked through through climate action, for the communities that we’re working with, and the costs of not progressing things as we as we need to do? Do we need to get a bit better at getting those kind of card, cold, hard figures together and demonstrating the economic side of the argument?
Kamran Mallick 33:49
I think that’s really important, and it’s because often the conversation is about the cost of doing something rather than the cost of not doing anything. And you know, I know we’re talking about fiscal cost, money, but there is a cost on people, our lives, our families, our neighbors, you know. So there’s that kind of human cost of what is happening, and there is a cost of inaction. So yes, absolutely. And that what I was saying is that it’s that kind of longer term thinking, that if we do nothing, if we keep doing this, tinkering at the edges, what’s happening and what’s the trajectory of what’s going to happen, and then how do we cope with that, versus actually making the investment now? These are all about choices, about where we think it’s worth spending money and where it’s not worth spending money, and this kind of collectiveness responsibility and the collective benefit of making those changes is really important, and as a sector, we’ve got a role to play in that, in unifying that voice speaking loudly and kind of influencing decision makers to kind of hear us and to make those kind of difficult decisions as they talk about.
Jabeer Butt 35:00
Just, just to emphasize Kamran’s earlier point, those climate events that we thought would be once in a century, which are now happening literally every year. I’m sure many, many of the listeners will remember what happened in july 2022, we had a period of, I can’t remember, is it 10, 12, 14, days where we had incredibly high temperatures, not only during the day, but at night as well. And sometime later, we had Office for National Statistics data published which showed an increase in deaths during that period, significant increase in in deaths during that period. And if you need a demonstration of how climate change is having an impact and who’s paying the cost, there, you had it in encapsulated there, that it actually does lead to people, people dying. My one footnote on that is that, unfortunately, the way that data is, those lives, on those lives is presented, we can’t, we know about the ages of those people who died. They’re more likely to be over 65 but we know little else about them. We don’t know about their experience or disability or their ethnicity either. And it then doesn’t give you a clear enough picture of how inequality is played a part in that. So people are paying, paying for that, that price. But we’ve also now created a ridiculous situation where we’re using, for example, the NHS to to play a bigger and bigger role in social prescribing, and we’re actually talking about the NHS funding things like heating in homes and so on. And that’s just wrong. That’s not the function of a health service. That’s a function of other parts of government. Then we need to create a situation where that joined up thinking is put in place and Kamran’s colleague rightly pointed out the use of the grant that’s given to people with a disability to improve their homes. What’s really done in that is to actually then consider whether or not insulation and ventilation in those homes can be improved at the same time. So we’re not doing the thinking there about, how do we make sure that all those improvements lead to a better quality home that addresses all those factors? Because if we did, hopefully, what we’d end up doing is spending less money, but actually ending up with a better quality. So I think it’s some of that challenges about thinking about how we better use the money that we have got, rather than always presented with a case that there’s no new money or there isn’t very much money.
Jools Townsend 37:58
We need to do that future proofing right at the right at the outset, bring in that long term thinking. But I think it’s been interesting in this conversation that actually we’ve brought in a lot of examples about the current impacts. And I think, I think some, sometimes when we think about the climate crisis, we’re thinking about what could happen in into the future and and perhaps it isn’t brought enough into the public mind the consequences that are happening right now as a result of, and I think, as you, as you said, Jabeer as a product of both climate destabilization and coupled with inequality and that is having very, very real effects for people’s lives right now, and there is an economic impact from that. So we’re nearly out of time. And I want to finish on a on a note of hope and optimism, which I think is really, really important when we’re talking about collaborating creatively and constructively in the in the face of this, this enormously complex and and desperately worrying challenge that we that we face, but also thinking, perhaps a bit more practically about our audience of very busy third sector leaders, with all the pressures on them and that their incredible capacity for leading positive change, and as I said right at the start, what I see is the untapped potential of the the sector for facilitating climate action. So where might our listeners go with this? What, what key takeaways might we propose from this discussion in terms of what climate action might might look like for them and and what messages of hope and encouragement might we offer up in support of that?
Jabeer Butt 39:48
Jools, for us, it’s quite clear that what we can’t do is catastrophize. We can’t create a situation where we think, Oh God, the situation so terrible that we end up then not doing anything at all because we don’t think anything we can do is going to make a difference. So however, it’s equally important for us to understand the urgency of the need for the action and the scale of the endeavor, and the starting point has to be as charities ourselves we need to make sure that everything that we’re doing doesn’t exacerbate climate change, doesn’t add to it. You know, the decisions we make about transport, the decisions we make about where, where we’re housed, and how we work, are all part of that process. But to recognize that that’s never going to be enough, that we actually need to campaign for the structural changes that are going to really create a situation where climate change is addressed, not only clean energy, but also ensuring that whatever we do in terms of addressing, say, housing deprivation, is done in a way that is sustainable and doesn’t add to or take away, use too much of the carbon budget, that public transport plays its part in it in a way that’s affordable and so on. So we need to do that. A final thing, and I think this is an area of real hope, is that there are lots of young people now who are not sitting around waiting for someone else to take action, but are actually taking action themselves. Our colleagues at the Sheffield environmental movement have done an incredible job working with young people in trying to develop a charter, but also in getting them involved in their local communities. So hopefully those are all things that we can build upon, and hopefully it’s not all people like me talking about it. It’s actually the people who is going to really impact, who are going to be leading that change.
Jools Townsend 41:49
I’m really glad you’ve brought that, and I think it’s so critical, isn’t it, engaging with and empowering young people to lead the way, tackling this, the twin crisis that we face in terms of planetary crises and crisis of inequality.
Kamran Mallick 42:06
Picking up on the young, younger voices is absolutely I’d advocate that encourage all of our sector leaders to engage with listen to our younger, younger people are very switched on about this issue, because it’s their future is being talked about. Young people are doing some amazing work locally and but nationally and internationally, actually around climate change and speaking up and being a powerful voice, a unifying voice, of this is not good enough, and that we do need action. Jabeer said, I think for our sector leaders, integrate the climate action into all aspects of our work. Climate will touch everything we do, and therefore there are elements that can go across all of our bits of work that we do, but not only advocating for policies, but modeling that sustainable practice within our own organizations, having the conversation and recognize that as a sector, there is that huge potential to drive change because of who we are, through collaborating, through innovation, community empowerment, being active allies and unifying our ask that working together we, I do believe we can create that more inclusive equitable response to the climate emergency that we’re all collectively facing. It’s not going to only affect one or two people. It affects some people more kind of that vulnerability we talked about earlier. I think there’s some real power in that collective effort.
Jools Townsend 43:36
Thank you. I think some really powerful insights there, and some really valuable thoughts and takeaways for our listeners. So huge thank you Jabeer and Kamran. It’s been an absolute pleasure and fascinating talking to you both, and I really hope that listeners will have taken inspiration and hope from the conversation. So thanks so much for joining us.
Kamran Mallick 44:00
Thank you.
Jabeer Butt 44:01
Thank you, Jools.
Further resources
- Read more about climate breakdown and global inequalities in this report: Oxfam, 2023, ‘Climate Equality: A Planet for the 99%’
- Climate justice – a brief overview from London School of Economics: LSE, 2022, ‘What is climate justice?’
- Just transition – a brief overview from the United Nations Development Programme: UNDP, 2022, ‘What is a just transition? And why is it important?’
- Everyone’s Environment – a collaboration between social and environmental charities, led by NPC, highlighting the social impacts of climate crisis and need for action. Research, briefings, webinar recordings and an invitation to join available here.
- Community-led climate action – a report exploring the links between social and racial justice, community involvement and empowerment, and progressing climate action: IPPR, 2021, ‘The Climate Commons’
