Asher Craig: Social Inclusion

Having identified the equalities issues endemic to the environmental sector, we have spent the last four years at Bristol City Council learning and acting to address these issues. These will inform our three year programme of engagement and communications to help the city reach carbon neutral by 2030.  We recognise that:

• Those most excluded from climate conversations often have the lowest carbon footprint.
   
  Solution: We will carefully analyse our audiences and target messages sensitively, working with local and grassroots organisations and empowering them to communicate locally – and this two-way process will inform citywide messaging to be more appropriate too. In other words, our aim is to avoid these groups being preached at and being told how they can save carbon!

• Whilst concern about climate change is often portrayed as a middle class concern, in fact there is a high level of concern across all socio-economic groups, all classes and ethnicities and protected characteristics. We recognise that some communities have more pressing issues that make it harder for them to engage with climate change activity in the city – but that this doesn’t mean they are not concerned and don’t want action taken to address it. As our journey to 2030 has to be about climate adaptation as well as mitigation, it’s important to recognise that people in these communities have some of the deepest knowledge of resilience and how to adapt to shocks and threats of anyone in the city. 
  
  Solution: Climate Change and Community Development colleagues have started working with neighbourhood organisations to gather stories of overcoming challenge, and people’s environmental passions, ensuring all of Bristol is represented, not just the “usual suspects.” These short films will be shared through the Climate Action Hub, social media and other channels – including non-digital.

• Some well-intentioned action to reduce CO₂ emissions can exacerbate existing inequalities.
  
  Solution: Under Mayor Marvin Rees’s leadership, the city has moved to a more collaborative way of working through the One City approach. The One City Approach brings together a huge range of public, private, voluntary and third sector partners within Bristol. They share an aim to make Bristol a fair, healthy and sustainable city. A city of hope and aspiration, where everyone can share in its success. The city’s first ever One City Plan was published by Mayor Rees on January 2019, a first written attempt to set out the challenge and bring the city together around its common causes. A refreshed One City Plan 2020 is now available. When you have representatives from the care sector sitting down with the police, climate experts, community representatives and many more, collective working helps identify issues like this and prevent unintended consequences.

• The most deprived and excluded communities are often creating – from the grassroots up – the most holistic solutions to climate change, with clear co-benefits.
  
  Solution: Our work with the Climate Action Fund, assuming we are successful, will get right to the heart of this issue as many if not all Community partners have developed and delivered co-benefit projects, i.e. projects that save CO₂ but are “badged” as warm homes or mobility or jobs and training projects.

• We need more ambassadors from across diverse communities to champion environmental change.
  
  Solution: We are rolling out a new Black and Green Ambassadors programme for Bristol 2020-23. This programme will recruit, mentor and support nine Ambassadors, who will be emerging leaders with environmental and social justice ambitions. These ambassadors will work between Bristol’s diverse communities, businesses, organisations and individuals on issues of environmental sustainability, equality, diversity and inclusion. The forthcoming programme, supported by The National Lottery Community Fund and co-delivered by Ujima Radio and Bristol Green Capital Partnership, will build on the work of the pioneering pilot project which began in 2016. The programme will support Ambassadors, representative of Bristol’s Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, to develop and deliver an extensive programme of activities intended to enable bold and inclusive action towards a more sustainable Bristol.

Climate change and Covid Recovery have to be integrated; Bristol like cities across the world needs to build back but it needs to do so in a way that means jobs in sectors that are future proof.  Whether it’s heat pumps instead of gas boilers, the shift over to electric cars or the circular economy, we need these sectors to provide not only jobs now but training for young people coming out of education at all levels and into the jobs market.  And we need to build on that glimpse Bristolians have seen, of clearer skies and cleaner air, of quieter neighbourhoods and safer streets. In the recently published A One City economic renewal partners agreed that the recovery plan will be informed by and consistent with our One City Climate Strategy and 2030 carbon neutrality goal, helping drive forward a £1bn programme of investment in cleaner, greener energy.

Cllr Asher Craig is Deputy Mayor of Bristol City Council. She has spent over 30 years as a community activist, leader, management consultant and now local politician with overall responsibility for communities, equalities and public health across the city. This is the second of three articles about local climate action in Bristol, from an inclusive leadership perspective.

Photo by Martyna Bober on Unsplash