Health and Racial Equity

In this session, Impact on Urban Health invited their project partners to discuss community-led climate action that promotes health and racial equity.

What can place-makers learn from climate action led by Black and other ethnically minoritised communities? And, breaking this down practically, how can the built environment sector enable communities to lead on climate resilience?

Impact on Urban Health is a not-for-profit organisation working to improve health in inner-city areas and supporter of our Health and Housing Impact Network.

Speakers

• Letitia Seglah, Head of Learning and Programmes, Do it Now Now (Chair)
• Bec Chau, Senior Strategic Designer, Arup
• Mohammed Ismail, Director, and Head Coach, UFFO Athletics
• Binki Taylor Founding Partner, The Brixton project
• Charlie Waterhouse Partner, The Brixton project

Letitia Seglah, Do it Now Now (Chair)

Letitia is Head of Learning and Programmes at Do it Now Now, a not-for-profit committed to empowering Black communities through open innovation.

Do it Now Now gave 17 grants last year to Black-owned organisations working within the climate space, via Impact on Urban Health. Letitia shared what they’ve learned from these organisations.

• There is a rich spectrum of work being done by Black and global majority groups in climate change and climate action. These voices are actively involved – but often unheard and unseen. A good example is the work Uffo Athletic and their community have done to build climate resilience through physical movement and to demonstrate the impact of poor air quality in specific areas (with a data collaboration with UCL)
• These organisations adopted a broad variety of approaches that were highly specialised. Each organisation was addressing different and specific challenges.
• Many of these organisations were under-resourced and working under pressure to juggle multiple objectives whilst trying to survive.

“We need to centre the voices of groups who are actively participating in climate action. This means channelling more resources their way and taking the time to understand the nuances of their voices – be it cultural, political, gendered, or something else.” – Letitia Seglah

Bec Chau, Arup

Bec Chau is Senior Designer at Arup and works for the Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose. In both her roles she explores how collective action can solve complex societal challenges that require new ways of organising across policymakers, community organisations and businesses.

In a recent project Arup collaborated with community organisations decosm and Social Broadcasts to explore racial equity in cities. Bec shared their learnings on how the built environment reinforces racial inequity, and how this is experienced.

• Their framework, ‘Layers of the City’, identifies five ways the built environment sector influences how a city is experienced. These are: influencing narratives, interactions, systems, agency and power, and spaces.
• For example, racialised people are subject to negative narratives and stereotypes. Prejudices about local people’s ability to maintain spaces or tendency for antisocial behaviour can impact investment in local amenities.
• Moving forward is about acknowledging responsibility, Bec said. Decisions built environment professionals make are often hard coded into spaces: this influence goes unrecognised. We need to think more expansively about the different ways professionals inform, plan, design and construct place.
• Bec challenged the sector to think systemically. How is race a changemaker in systemic challenges? And how can the sector address the multitude of ways it influences space in tandem, so that we’re not making progress on one aspect whilst having an adverse impact on another?

“Health inequity and the climate crisis are built into the fabric of our cities and are deeply connected in reinforcing and usually harmful cycles. At the centre of this is race and class, which often determine who suffers most in climate crises.” – Bec Chau

Mohammed Ismail, UFFO Athletics

Mohammed is Founding Director and Head Coach at UFFO Athletics, a not-for-profit based in South London. UFFO supports local communities to get involved in athletics and physical activities, as well as encouraging climate change awareness.

Through funding from Impact on Urban Health, UFFO has supported local people to engage with climate change. Mohammed shared their approach:

• UFFO athletic have worked with Imperial College London to engage local people in monitoring air pollution at Burgess Park in Southwark. This ‘citizen science’ approach has meant people involved feel included in a climate mission and that they can make informed choices about air pollution.
• Drawing on funding from IoUH, UFFO has delivered 224 walks in LB Lambeth and LB Southwark between September 23 and September 24. These walks have encouraged people to make cross-borough connections, engage in physical activity and community learning. Mohammed calls it a “support group”.
• Building community engagement around climate change starts with building trust through meaningful relationships. People have to believe your word: this means reducing jargon and encouraging participation.

“Climate change is something that’s all around us. Flooding, heatwaves and air pollution all reduce participation in outdoor activities. So we try to link our physical activity programs to climate change awareness. It’s a no-brainer, because participation is key for climate resilience.” – Mohammed Ismail

Binki Taylor, The Brixton project

Binki is Founding Partner at The Brixton Project. This is a creative community agency that centres Black and Brown voices telling different stories about health, climate and community.

Black and Brown communities in London have a wealth of involvement and wisdom around living with our changing climate that is being lost on the built environment sector, Binki said.

• Many of people of colour in London have families across the world who face harsh impacts of climate change: this is their day-to-day reality. Caribbean communities, for example, are regularly sending money to support people who suffered in hurricanes this year.
• There is a strange notion these communities aren’t quite ‘switched on’ to climate change – we’re here to change this narrative Binki said. The built environment sector is failing to see that Black and Brown people “have an intrinsic relationship with the planet based on traditional knowledge, practices and spirituality”.
• We need long-term, deep consultation, Binki said. Not just project to project engagement – but long-term participation in a deep way. The challenge is how we fund this time, listening and contribution. Community groups are often made to compete with one another for small and short-term pots of money.

“There’s a huge amount of intelligence, experience and ancestral knowledge within black and brown communities that doesn’t really get to the see the light of day. The current tone of conversation is a Western view of climate change – and the language tends to be theoretical and academic which creates a hierarchy which is not inclusive” – Binki Taylor

Charlie Waterhouse, The Brixton Project

As Partner at The Brixton Project, Charlie has worked on the Brixton Pound and explored complementary currencies. Charlie also helped to set up Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil.

The climate crisis requires a huge number of actors to work together, Charlie said. The Brixton Project are working Impact on Urban Health to help people convene across difference.

• In New York climate week, everyone talked about needing hope. Charlie challenged this: acknowledging how bad things are will open us up to think at the scale of paradigm change that’s needed. We’re sleepwalking into an intersecting crisis, about climate, democracy, and social and racial inequality.
• We know we have to work together, but we don’t how to move from a competitive mindset to a collaborative one, Charlie said. But we don’t yet have that collective muscle.
• Funding mechanisms undermine collectivism, even among community actors. Community organisations are forced to fight each other for the same meagre pots of money, because there’s never enough to go around.

“The climate crisis requires a response that is way more fundamental than tinkering around. That’s something we feel quite of often in the community space. And then we’re offered crumbs from an industry’s table to go and do a worthy project.” – Charlie Waterhouse

Future of London’s takeaways

Climate change is reinforcing deep-seated health inequalities in our cities. Put simply, race and class are key determinants of who suffers most from extreme weather – and will be at the centre of effective climate resilience.

Focusing on community-led climate action shows us that there’s a lot of initiative, knowledge and wisdom coming from ethnically marginalised groups in London. Many people of colour in London have families who are facing devasting impacts of climate change across the world. The effects of recent hurricanes in the Caribbean, for example, are for many a day-to-day reality.

Many community actors point out that they draw on non-Western intellectual traditions. These could lead London towards healthier relationships with nature, consumerism and collective action.

Yet many community voices think the built environment sector fails to recognise this wealth of knowledge and engagement. As a result, Black and Brown communities feel disempowered in placemaking. And community groups compete for tiny pots of funding, undermining the collectivist attitude they might otherwise be able to bring to the table.

To do resilience better and to make use of London’s diverse knowledge base, the built environment sector must take community empowerment seriously. It needs to invest in mechanisms for long-term community involvement – not just on a project-by-project basis.

Built environment professionals need to think more expansively about how we influence space, as Arup’s framework for ‘Layers of the City’ shows. We need to reflect – in what ways does our work inform and shape experiences of place? And how much of this happens after we might think of our contribution as ‘done’?

Conference session write-ups

Keynotes: Mete Coban (Deputy Mayor), Emma Howard Boyd (London Climate Resilience Review), Indy Johar (Dark Matter Labs)

Fresh Perspectives – Young people-led panel discussion

Fresh Perspectives – Two US projects using art and culture to explore climate resilience

Including All Voices – ensuring communities are fully involved

Neighbourhood Futures – Tackling climate resilience and health equity

Homes and Buildings – Designing inclusive climate approaches

Council-led Housing Network – climate resilience through council development

Fresh Perspectives – Alumni ideas on climate resilience, plus domestic retrofit and infrastructure innovation in Arnhem

Inclusive Finance – Financial models for equitable climate resilience

Neighbourhoods – Designing inclusive climate approaches

Health and Racial Equity – Developing community-led action for ethnic minority communities

Make It Happen – Closing plenary with conference takeaways, including governance, finance and partnerships

Strand Aldwych Walking Tour – how a striking new landscape was created in the historic London

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The conference is part of our major Knowledge programme for 2024/25, with a final report in Spring 2025. Find out more about our Climate Resilience and Equity programme.

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