SEM’s CEO Maxwell Ayamba BEM, was invited by the Runnymede Trust and Clive Lewis MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Race and Community to attend the parliamentary launch of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Race and Community report, “A Vision for Climate Justice: Tackling the climate and nature emergency and global systemic racism” at the Houses of Parliament on May 19th 2025.
Clive Lewis MP noted that, the report was commissioned in response to the lack of acknowledgement and systematic undervaluing of the experiences of people of colour across the globe who are bearing the brunt of the climate and nature emergency.
An inquiry established in 2023 heard powerful testimony from almost 40 environmental activists of colour from across the Global South and Global North who highlighted the disproportionate impact the climate and nature emergency is having on people of colour and indigenous communities around the globe. Crucially, they described the unjust nature of this crisis which has its roots in histories of European colonialism and extractivism.
The Inquiry made a series of recommendations to the UK government on how to create climate and nature policy that better serves the global majority. These include:
- Establishing a new mandatory due diligence law, to ensure that British companies take proactive steps to prevent human rights abuses within their operations
- Banning all plastic waste exports by 2030
- Introducing demand side supply chain and financial legislation, which would ensure that large companies and financial institutions are responsible for any human and environmental rights abuses which might occur in their supply chains
- The UK government must commit to supporting the Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill as it passes through the Houses of Commons
- Local and National Public bodies and government agencies must work towards increasing knowledge of air pollution as a cause of ill health
- The government must commit to making data on air pollution more accessible and widely available
- The UK government and local authorities must prioritise improving access to green space and creating greener communities, especially in areas of deprivation or where there is poor or unequal access.
Activists gave testimonies and case studies about the links of air pollution to maternal ill health on minorities in the UK. A spokes person from Ogun State in Nigeria spoke of the ongoing Shell Oil Company’s destruction of ecosystems and its failure to clean up, and how that is having very serious impact on people’s health in addition to the destruction of their farm lands and fisheries which are the main sources of mlivelihood, resulting in serious famine.
SEM’s CEO noted that, minorities and marginalised groups in the UK are uninterested in a climate debate that individualises responsibilities instead of tackling the socio-political structures that instead appear to frame the climate crisis around initiatives such as Carbon literacy projects that target them. He argues that projects such as these are of no relevance to the lived experience of people facing climate anxiety. That is because framing the climate crisis in a way that is unrelatable to those outside the ethically white bubble perpetuates the underrepresentation of minorities in ongoing attempts to address the climate catastrophe. Maxwell emphasised that, framing a climate crisis that did not confront overlapping oppression responsible for its unequal consequences such as racial capitalism makes the climate discussion a non-liberatory space for people from the Global South who are the victims of economic inequality, air pollution, toxic waste colonialism due to histories of colonial legacies.”