A Green New Deal must have racial justice at its heart

Global systemic racism has produced racialised inequalities that mean people of colour and Indigenous groups are the most affected by the climate and environmental emergencies. In response, writes the Runnymede Trust’s Nannette Youssef, a new parliamentary inquiry has been launched to examine the issues. 

Around the world, people of colour are being disproportionately affected by the climate and environmental emergencies, despite, historically, having little involvement in creating them. This is due to global systemic racism, a term that describes how a society’s institutions, structures and practices harm people of colour in ways their white counterparts do not experience. 

This is why, earlier this year, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Race and Community launched a parliamentary inquiry into the relationship between racism and the climate and environmental emergencies. The Runnymede Trust acts as secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Race and Community. 

The majority of countries affected by extreme weather events caused by the climate and environmental emergencies are in the Global South. For example, Mozambique experienced an estimated $3.2 billion in losses in infrastructure, production and social sectors in 2019 due to cyclones exacerbated by global heating, while contributing a tiny 0.02 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. 

In addition to their vulnerability to climate and environmental emergencies, long histories of colonialism and extraction by British and European powers have led to these countries struggling to mitigate and adapt to the climate and environmental emergencies. 

For example, in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, decades of oil spills by Shell have polluted the water and soil, with those living in the region experiencing poverty, dysfunctional economic growth and chronic underdevelopment. Granted exclusive oil exploration licences by the British colonial government in 1938, Nigeria is now the largest producer of oil in Africa and the continent’s biggest economy. Yet the Niger Delta region, where the exploration has been concentrated, lacks basic amenities and infrastructure, including a lack of roads, schools, drinkable water and medical facilities.

Meanwhile, in the UK, people of colour, those living in areas of high deprivation, marginalised groups such as refugees, asylum seekers, disabled people and those experiencing homelessness are also more exposed to the effects of the climate and environmental emergencies. From the disproportionate exposure and vulnerability to air pollution to a lack of access to green spaces, people of colour in the UK are at the forefront of these effects. 

Across England, people of colour are more than three times more likely to live in areas with pollution levels classed as ‘very high’. Take, for example, the construction of the Silvertown Tunnel, which will run beneath the Thames between the Greenwich Peninsula in southeast London and the Silvertown area in Newham, east London. The tunnel’s construction alone is estimated to produce around 82,077 tonnes of carbon dioxide, as well as significantly increasing the amount of traffic in Newham.

Newham is an incredibly deprived and diverse borough: half of its children live in poverty and 71 per cent of the population are Black. On average, Newham residents are exposed to a level of air pollution a third higher than World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, and it is estimated 96 residents die every year due to poor air quality.

Despite these clear injustices, it is increasingly recognised that not enough is being done to recognise the links between systemic racism and climate change. In 2020, Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate was infamously cropped from a picture of white climate activists by Associated Press, after she appeared at a joint press conference in Davos. 

What happened to Vanessa is part of a wider, systemic issue of environmental professionals, activists and leaders of colour being routinely ignored in media reports and academic literature, meaning that their stories and narratives of the environmental emergency are excluded from mainstream discourse. 

If the people most affected by the climate and ecological crisis are sidelined in decisions about solutions, the decisions made will only replicate the injustices we see in the current system. A Green New Deal must be designed to benefit people in parts of the world blighted by resource extraction – not just people in the Global North who overwhelmingly consume those resources. A Green New Deal is a set of policy proposals designed to address climate change in ways that also tackle inequalities and improve people’s quality of life.

The APPG’s inquiry hopes to provide a space for the stories and narratives of people of colour to be told, firstly in written responses to our call for evidence, and secondly in oral evidence sessions which will run in parliament. 

By bringing environmental professionals, activists and leaders of colour from both the Global North and Global South into Westminster to tell their narratives on the environmental emergency to members of parliament and policymakers, we hope to begin a process of deconstructing the structural barriers that have too long excluded these organisations and individuals from spaces of power.

With COP28 having just come to a close, with a historic agreement in place to transition away from fossil fuels (albeit with lack of a clear call for a fossil-fuel phase-out this decade – and a litany of loopholes in the text that might enable the production and consumption of coal, oil and gas to continue), the time is now to create better, more inclusive and intersectional climate policy. 

Nannette Youssef is the Runnymede Trust’s policy officer. For more information on the inquiry process, email appg-race@runnymedetrust.org.