February 2019 – The Uncertain World

The Green and Black Ambassadors

Posted on February 23, 2019January 1, 2022 by r.d.pancost

Summary: The Green and Black Ambassadors project arose from a series of conversations during and after Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital 2015. Although the year was lauded for numerous successes, including in public engagement, many (including the organisers) agreed that it failed to overcome barriers to inclusion, especially with marginalised communities. The G/B Conversation revealed many of those barriers and proposed ways forward, one of which was to properly fund members of BME communities to challenge and connect different groups. To achieve that we, launched the Green and Black Ambassadors Programme, to build bridges but also to challenge and provoke. To provide focus, we engaged with the African and Caribbean communities prominent in Bristol. This work was funded by the Cabot Institute, NERC and the ERC.

NOTE: An inspiring and exhaustive collection of Green and Black Ambassadors multi-media resources are available at the website of our partners, the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. This project has been an outstanding collaboration, including the University of Bristol, Ujima Radio, the Green Capital Partnership and of course the Ambassadors. Particular acknowledgment must be given to Ujima Radio, who initiated the Green and Black Project which was the foundation for much of what is discussed here. Please also read the final report:

Green-and-Black-Ambassadors-Pilot-Report-2018-yo3y5k

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Background: In 2013, Bristol was announced as the 6^th European Green Capital (for 2015) and the UK’s first. This award acknowledge a wide range of initiatives, success stories and ambitions, including significant waste reduction, widespread cycling, city-owned renewable energy provision, a rapidly growing green economy, and strong university partnership. The year had a particularly strong focus on climate change, as it occurred during COP21. Crucially, the award itself as well as policy decisions made during and since the end of the Green Capital Year commit the city to a bold plan of leadership and social and technological innovation to become more sustainable and reduce its carbon footprint. For example, representing Bristol at COP21 Mayor George Ferguson committed Bristol to decarbonisation by 2050, a pledge that his successor Marvin Rees has reiterated. Such an ambition requires widespread buy-in amongst formal and distributed city leaders as well as Bristol’s population.

The year was characterised by a range of Summits, lectures and festivals; a cultural and arts program; new public and private initiatives; and more. However, this engagement was incomplete. Throughout the year, many explored the social justice issues arising from climate change. Echoing commentary by numerous international political and religious leaders, discussions at Green Capital events frequently focussed on the ethical dimensions of climate change, including those related to class, ethnicity and race. As such it was considered necessary to engage a diverse cross-section of society (and of course, this was also considered necessary to mobilise support for the aforementioned policy objectives). There were many efforts to achieve this. The Year included a Neighbourhood Arts Progamme and a Primary Schools Programme, both of which were rolled out across the city. The Cabot Institute led several events in the poorest parts of the city, to complement those held on our campus. Nonetheless, poor inclusion was a persistent and legitimate charge (Pancost, 2015), as it has been for other Bristol activities. It was the disconnection between the Green Capital’s ambitions for inclusion and the lack of it that has proven to be particularly frustrating to many.

There are vital lessons to be learned from this and there is a necessity to resolve it if Bristol – and other similar cities – are to achieve their desired transformations. Ujima Radio, recent winner of the UK’s Best Community Radio Station, initiated this effort in late 2014 and explored it throughout 2015 via the Green and Black Programme. In late 2015, the Cabot Institute and the BGCP joined Ujima to explore this further via a series of workshops with BME leaders. Two broad messages emerged, as summarised by our partner Roger Griffiths (Chair of Ujima Radio): ‘To many, the ‘green’ debate has hallmarks of being predominantly understood as a white, middle-class domain; moreover, there is a strong narrative of existing and potential engagement with green issues across BME communities that must be recognised and developed.’ Around these wider issues, a number of specific challenges were identified:

There was a widespread perception that formal activities – and especially the higher level decision-making – was led by an ‘in-crowd’ of established green activists, city leaders, and usual suspects (university and industry leaders).
Many venues were considered ‘off-limits’ to members of the BME community for a combination of issues related to perceived class bias, reputation or history (bearing in mind the role of slaving in Bristol’s history). Aside from that, many venues in the city centre, Bristol’s traditional focus for events (including the University), are not readily accessible.
Participation in events remains difficult for many due to childcare or work responsibilities. This reinforces the ‘in-crowd’ nature of activity and city planning, as many were able to attend as part of their jobs. Events were numerous and often organised at the last-minute, which further disenfranchised those with less flexible personal or working relationships.
Similarly, many were able to either volunteer time or were seconded from their businesses to participate; this puts particular stress on community organisations with limited resources.
BME leaders who were invited to attend workshops and planning meetings were often asked to attend or even speak but ‘rarely to help set the agenda.’

This is summarised with clarity and purpose by our partner at Ujima Radio, Roger Griffith in the Green and Black Conversation. The Green and Black Conversation 2015-2016-2f0l648

One of this consortium’s main conclusions was to launch a Green and Black Ambassador Programme, to pay, train and support (and learn from) a new generation of leaders who would: 1) foster dialogue among diverse groups, including showcasing examples of sustainability leadership arising from BME communities; 2) serve as a positively ‘disruptive’ participant on strategic boards (i.e. BGCP Board); 3) generate bespoke material on environmental issues and sustainability solutions for BME communities, some of which will be broadcast by Ujima Radio; and 4) conduct further research on the obstacles to BME inclusion in environmental initiatives. Given the diversity of Bristol with at least 91 languages spoken and 45 religions practiced, we have focussed on those communities of African and Caribbean descent, recognising that even that represents a great diversity of cultures, faiths and experience. Crucially, a goal of this initiative, directly identified during community consultations and reiterated by Mayor Marvin Rees, is to invest in the leadership skills of those bridging environmental and social justice ambitions.

Our events and networks forged

The Ambassadors have contributed to or led dozens of events, all characterised by their diversity and ambition, connecting people from a range of communities to one another and to natural resources. They have occurred across Bristol and the West of England, either in traditional locations with a specific aim to challenge and disrupt conventional approaches to engagement (i.e. Cabot Institute lecture in the Wills Memorial Building or the BGCP Board Meeting); in communities with large BME or otherwise marginalised communities (i.e. Hamilton House); or by bringing BME citizens out of the city to nature-rich areas (i.e Slimbridge).

Through Festivals, Workshops and Lectures, the Ambassadors have reached over 1000 people, and likely several 1000 more through their monthly radio shows. These events have included classical outreach activities, engaged workshops, field trips and knowledge sharing. Emerging from these activities has been sustained and deeper engagement, outlined below. This is critical. During one presentation, while discussing the outcomes of the project, the PI was asked: ‘How will you measure how BME communities have adopted more sustainable practices?’ This is a critical misconception of the entire project of engagement and certainly a misunderstanding of the Green and Black Ambassadors Programme. The goal is to constructively change the scientists, the campaigners and the communicators alongside the public participants; the goal is for these leaders to listen to, learn from and better understand the initiatives occurring in and knowledge generated in marginalised communities so that the scientific endeavour becomes richer and stronger – and better connected to a wider variety of the public. Therefore, the Ambassadors have devoted particular effort to engaging and collaborating with organisations. These include:

Slimbridge WWT: The Ambassadors brought BME citizens to Slimbridge to stimulate a conversation around engagement with nature; they then collaborated on a workshop to address inclusion and diversity in their nature programme.

Avon Wildlife Trust: The Ambassadors are developing collaborations to address diversity in the AWT programme.

University of West of England and University of Bristol (including the Students Union): The Ambassadors have worked with the Joint University SU Skills Bridge team including advising the team’s inclusivity efforts and featuring individual researchers on their radio show and promotion of Photovoice (Drs Shaun Sobers & Ade Olaiya).

Bristol City Council and Mayor: The Ambassadors have met the Head of the Sustainable Cities Team, engaged with knowledge sharing / interactions with the Mayor on social media, and met with Cllr Asher Craig. This is serving as the foundation for future projects focussing on air pollution and health.

Numerous connections and outputs have emerged from these events and activities, with highlights being: the embedding of diversity issues, awareness and responsibility across the BGCP network of over 800 organisations; a dramatically raised profile of BME-led initiatives in the city and a stronger dialogue between NERC researchers and marginalised communities; a website containing numerous blogs, commentaries and interviews (http://bristolgreencapital.org/category/green-black/); and a multimedia archive of the Ambassadors’ radio show on Ujima Radio. These dynamic and interactive shows have featured leading scientists, campaigners and politicians can be found on Soundcloud, i.e.: https://soundcloud.com/ujimagreenandblackradio/green-and-black-radio-002. Guests and topics have included: Fuel poverty in Bristol – Bristol Energy Network; What happens when you flush your toilet in Bristol – GenEco; Monitoring equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – Ade Olaiya, UWE; Focus on Guyana’s biodiversity (World Wetlands Day special); Exploring spaces outside the city – Imayla. This network and knowledge building will culminate during the 10^th Anniversary celebration of the BGCP on 6 July, where the G/B Ambassadors will showcase their findings to hundreds of industry, civic society, public and political voices in the West of England sustainability movement, a conversation to be broadcast live by Ujima Radio – this will feature environmental research, showcase the need for a far more inclusive approach to outreach activities, and provide critical commentary on how to better engage with marginalised communities.

Other networks that are being developed include those with Black 2 Nature, Resource Futures, GENeco, Sustrans, Journey to Justice, Bristol Food Network, Up Our Street, Bristol Energy Network, Easton Energy and Lifecycle UK. In doing so, the Ambassadors are facilitating a rich but challenging conversation among some of the city and region’s leading environmental and social justice networks. Over 20 other organisations have expressed interest in engaging the Ambassadors to explore their own diversity and inclusion challenges with respect to public engagement.

The Reception

It is hard to convey the enthusiasm with which this scheme has been received. Industry, government, civil society and public participants in environmental and sustainability issues are passionate about inclusion for its own sake but also because of its necessity to achieve the profound changes to which Bristol committed when it was the European Green Capital in 2015. However, those organisations and individuals recognised that well-meaning efforts to engage and include failed because of a lack of common understanding, misplaced or insufficient effort, disparity of resources, and the lack of facilitators that could help navigate interactions among diverse communities. Against that backdrop, the Green and Black Ambassadors Programme has been hailed by numerous citizens, lauded by some participants as transformative, identified by members of the BGCP as an exemplar project, and celebrated by civic leaders including the Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees. This is evidenced by a strong twitter following, hundreds of retweets, over 30 requests to engage with other organisations and the Ambassadors’ prominent role in the BGCP 10^th anniversary celebrations.

Such enthusiasm and engagement must be met with some caution. The goal of the programme is not to simply better connect environmental researchers and organisations to more diverse communities as a box-ticking exercise. The programme is meant to be disruptive and challenging – leading to genuine transformation of organisations, practices and relationships. We do not aspire to ‘communicate better’ but to have a shared agenda for making the scientific endeavour, including its participants and users, more diverse. As said by Zakiya: ‘Our task is to build bridges. We are honest about the barriers within our own communities and will hold people to account. We are also here to challenge the environmental and science sectors to co-produce, consult inclusively and step outside of the pervading bubble of whiteness and masculinity as necessary for validity. We have a daunting task that will agitate people on both sides of the divide but as we say in Jamaica “one, one cocoa fill basket”; by using our skills to fill the void in conversation, Jasmine and I are making way for better dialogue and real, inclusive actions.’

There is strong evidence that the organisations involved have been transformed, with both the BGCP and Cabot Institute being recently celebrated for better showcasing BME citizens, putting visible effort into engaging with those citizens, and adopting more rigorous and challenging practices. A crucial research question if the programme continues will be to explore how deep, wide and long-term such transformations have been in those and in other organisations.

What was learned

During Bristol 2015, the profile of environmental research was dramatically raised; from climate change scientists to atmospheric chemists to biodiversity experts, our work was showcased at Green Capital Summits, married to arts exhibits, centred in citizen science initiatives (i.e. Urban Pollinators), and integrated to local and regional policy makers (i.e. Pancost was invited to accompany the Mayor and BCC to COP21 and has contributed to developing Bristol’s 50-year trajectory by serving on the Resilience Sounding Board).

This initiative has not raised that profile but changed it.

Through the Green and Black Conversation we facilitated a community-led dialogue about the limitations of previous outreach and engagement activities in Bristol – including our own. The Ambassadors Programme allowed us, our partners and our fellow citizens to put those lessons into practice.

The most important of these lessons was: “Do not assume that different communities are not engaged; assume that they are but are doing it separately or differently. So ask them what their ideas are.” Consequently, engagement must be co-designed, with joint agenda setting (‘We are invited but the agenda is already set.’), and a recognition of different forms of knowledge and a shared capacity to contribute. Within this broader context, five key themes emerged: 1) Change or recognise the constraints of terminology, its culture and ownership; 2) Profile activity beyond that which takes place in white middle-class neighbourhoods; 3) Create a new set of green narratives that relates to different cultural perspectives and experiences; 4) Challenge leadership and decision-making, especially by developing new leaders; and 5) Fund and support active projects that make the difference rather than just well-meaning manifestos and statements of intent. From these lessons derive some self-evident actions for future events and initiatives: a) engage under-represented marginal communities early and often, funding them as appropriate, while creating the space and open dialogue that encourages all to contribute their ideas; b) host events in a variety of venues and actively ensure that all feel welcome at all venues; c) depoliticise discussions by acknowledging and exposing their political dimensions rather than treating them as apolitical; d) challenge those with influence and position to ensure that BME citizens are given voices within institutions – and to ensure those voices are supported when they provoke and challenge; and e) guarantee representation.

This project also reinforced the challenges related to time and capacity to engage. Engaging the public but especially marginalised communities requires time to gain trust; but at the same time, the public can have limited resource or capacity to engage. For poor communities, time and resource issues are compounded. These are difficult barriers to overcome but can be mitigated by: longer lead-in times and earlier invitations; providing child-care support; and having fewer events but delivering them in a way that involves a wider cross-section of the city (including perhaps running the same event several times at multiple locations).

Crucially, it was argued and accepted that privileged leaders, including many in Bristol’s thriving green economy and HEI sectors, must both build structures and cultivate the culture change that allows inclusion to thrive. Liberating the strength of our diversity requires not just good will but the creation of structures that promote inclusion, including training and genuine financial support of community partners. It is illuminating that one of the Green Capital’s strong inclusion stories was the School’s programme, which essentially engaged every primary school child in Bristol. Tapping into structures or networks – where they exist – can facilitate engagement; but where they do not exist, they must be built.

‘These issues affect everyone. Class, race and gender need not be obstacles. This gap needs to addressed and acknowledged and realised by communities and organisations together if we want to move forward as a city.’ Jasmine Ketubah-Foley, Green and Black Ambassador.

Arguably, this investigation has moved into issues far beyond those that are the normal scope of engagement and outreach discussions: how to better communicate to diverse audiences, tailoring messages, choosing diverse venues and format. Nonetheless, valuable lessons were learned – derived from the above – that could be applied to nearly any NERC-based science outreach. The programme reinforced the lesson to connect research findings to the needs and interests of your audience; however, most audiences were quite receptive to a creative connection – linking palaeoclimatic events to air pollution challenges or past biotic change to current migration debates were welcomed. Other lessons were surprising – although not in hindsight. For example, NERC scientists work all over the world or on samples collected from all over the world; BME audiences, perhaps due to a more recent immigrant past, wanted to hear more about this. Who were the partners and collaborators? What was it like working in these countries, especially for communities that have ancestral roots there? And most critically, are these scientific efforts still informed by colonial biases – have we worked with, respected and co-authored with citizens from those nations?

Project Highlights

All of us involved have different thoughts: For some it is the disruptive presence of BME citizens in places that had seemed ‘off limits’ such as the University’s Great Hall; for others, it will have been the excitement of young people taken on a field trip to the wetlands. More broadly, we argue it is the fact that the language of social justice and inclusion are now ubiquitous in environmental and sustainability conversations, exemplified across the manifestos of all major party candidates for Metro Mayor (we cannot take all credit for that but the Ambassadors Progamme has been a focus and distillation of numerous other conversations). Personally, the PI of the project thinks that the best outcome has been the unleashing of Jazz’s and Zakiya’s talents. We have given some training to these exceptional women, but the real benefit has been the commitment of the partners to give them a platform and show city leaders the skills, knowledge and passion they already had.

More fundamentally, it has changed perceptions on engagement between diverse publics, civil society organisations and universities. It is not enough to think about science communication as apolitical and in isolation. If we want citizens to engage with scientists, then we must show that we have made commitments to their communities, that we are engaged in the challenges those communities face, that we are committed to addressing the flaws within our own institutions. It is not enough to say ‘we wanted to have a diverse panel but there are very few black climate scientists.’ Of course, scientists should be very cautious about appearing partisan but nor can we ignore the challenges of those we engage, especially where it interfaces with our work. Engagement is far more than ‘better communication.’ It is becoming constructive partners in our communities, of which science outreach is a small part of a wide portfolio.

Reflections

There is much that could not be achieved during a brief pilot project (even extended to 10 months by co-funding). First, given the key outcome that engagement between researchers and communities must be protracted, allowing for deep, mutual, respectful and trusted collaboration, these types of initiatives must have long-term investment. Building trust is always important but particularly so for marginalised communities with a history of being excluded. Second, we caution against extrapolation to other marginalised communities; our efforts focussed on BME communities of African or Caribbean descent (already a multitude of different voices) and that means that we have not probed a range of more nuanced issues related to religion, gender or class. Future efforts could widen this exploration; we doubt that the fundamentals will differ (diverse venues, family or worker-friendly times) but nuanced findings almost certainly will. Third, we aspire to test the long-term changes these interventions have made. Have AWT or WWT (or UoB and BGCP) embedded diversity in their practices? Have they adopted new policies or practices? Do they remain dependant on the initiative of marginalised groups or individuals, such as the Ambassadors, or have they taken on their own responsibility to support inclusive initiatives? If these changes have occurred then these organisations, in partnership with NERC researchers, will be better poised to connect our research findings to a wide and diverse part of the UK’s population.

We collectively agree that we must challenge/re-imagine models of scientific ‘pubic engagement’ – and that therefore NERC should think about moving away from the kind of measures illustrated in this report (i.e. to be judged on number of events and number of people ‘engaged’) and towards thinking about ‘quality’ of engagement – long term meaningful relationships based on the sharing of knowledge and expertise. Most importantly, however, the final reflections should belong to our two Ambassadors:

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Holding the green sector to account

Jasmine Ketibuah-Foley, Green and Black Ambassador

Being part of the activist movement in Bristol, something kept picking away at the back of my brain. After some time I realised I could find almost no black or brown role models to look up to. Where were the culturally rich BME communities of Bristol who have so much to say on the environment, environmental racism and sustainability? Why were they not thriving in this supposedly inclusive space?

Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital in 2015 had many successes but it failed to include BME communities. The community radio station Ujima ran a debate about the issue in 2015 and this project has grown from there. The University of Bristol Cabot Institute and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership joined up to continue to fund it along with the public engagement funding from NERC. Together they set up the ambassador programme to pay, train and support a new generation of BME environmental leaders – Zakiya and I.

We are trying to find out why inclusion has failed so far and we’re challenging Bristol’s research and BME communities to work together. We have a radio show on Ujima, we run workshops and we took a group of young BME people to a large wetlands centre outside of Bristol to explore why these nature attractions aren’t attracting diverse communities.

Zakiya and I come from community research backgrounds and worked as radio and TV broadcast journalists. Our passion to tell people’s stories and our brazenness in asking difficult questions with a healthy sense of justice fits well with the role.

Tackling inequality in Bristol

Zakiya McKenzie, Green and Black Ambassador

In March 2017, The Sunday Times named Bristol the ‘best place to live in the UK’. As a black woman, single mother and mature student, I cannot help but wince at this misleading accolade. The difference in life expectancy between the city’s wealthy and deprived wards is as much as a decade. I grew up in Jamaica, studied in NYC and worked as a journalist in Johannesburg and I absolutely love ‘ole Brizzle’ – but nothing prepared me for the city’s virtual segregation.

In one of our workshops people told us they found it difficult to get the time to attend research events, particularly if they worked for small organisations with limited funds. Participants also found that they might be invited to events, but not to help set the agenda.

Our task is to build bridges. We are honest about the barriers within our own communities and hold people to account. We are also here to challenge the environmental and science sectors to step outside of the pervading bubble of whiteness and masculinity as necessary for validity.

We have a daunting task but as we say in Jamaica “one, one cocoa fill basket”. By using our skills to fill the void in conversation, Jasmine and I are making way for better dialogue and real, inclusive actions.

A proposal to link Past Climate Research to Inclusion Initiatives in Bristol

Posted on February 23, 2019March 11, 2019 by r.d.pancost

This is a proposal that was funded by the NERC to support the ongoing Green and Black Ambassador’s Project.

The Green and Black Ambassadors: Fostering a Dialogue between Environmental Research and BME Communities

Summary: During 2015, the city of Bristol delivered an extensive programme of activity around its role as the European Green Capital, the first British city to win this accolade. Despite numerous activities, including new art, concerts, international Summits, workshops, a city centre office, and hundreds of talks, the year was widely perceived as failing to crack through the long-standing inclusion issues that affect the city of Bristol and other British core cities as well as much of the global ‘green’ movement. The PI of this project, Professor R Pancost, was strongly engaged with the Green Capital programme, including partnering with a wide range of other groups and hosting joint events with colleagues to showcase NERC environmental science. Given the inclusion concerns, Pancost (and subsequently the University of Bristol Cabot Institute and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership) funded Ujima Radio to continue its Green and Black Programme of activity, which started in late 2014 and explored issues of inclusion and points of opportunity throughout the Green Capital Year. At the end of 2015 and in early 2016, we jointly convened a variety of workshops with BME leaders in Bristol, documenting their concerns and learning about how subtle organisational issues, timings, venue location and in-built pre-conceptions had a collective negative impact on inclusion.

One of the main findings was that the ‘in-crowd’ nature of Bristol’s enthusiastic environmental community, closely aligned to city leadership, universities, business and civil society, undermined engagement from outsider voices. We found little evidence for active exclusion – in fact, nearly all participants in the Green Capital year shared the frustration expressed above. Nonetheless, many implicit assumptions and behaviours of that ‘in-crowd’ – from choosing venues that were perceived as ‘posh’ or ‘off-limits’ to last-minute planning – effectively disenfranchised some citizens. Of relevance to this proposal, this implicit exclusion made it difficult to entrain the alternative voices needed to develop an ongoing dialogue about NERC-derived environmental and climate change research that appeals to, connects to and learns from the experiences of Britain’s BME communities. To address this, we are proposing to launch – in partnership with Ujima Radio and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership (BGCP) – a new Green and Black Ambassadors Programme. This programme will have several goals, supported by the Cabot Institute and BGCP (£10K). However, funding is sought from the NERC Engagement Scheme for two of its most important features:

1) Initiate a dialogue with BME communities to identify new and vital research directions, inspired by their concerns, needs, experience and knowledge; and

2) Exploring the ways in which NERC environmental change research resonates with the BME community, revealing opportunities for stronger, more relevant and more inspiring dissemination of our findings.

The PI was strongly engaged with these activities in 2015 and continues to support its follow-ups. As Director of the Cabot Institute, he seconded the Institute’s Manager to be the (elected) co-Director of the BGCP in 2014 to help prepare for the year. He served as a Science Advisor for the 2015 Company and helped to frame the discourse, Summits and cultural program. He hosted one of the flagship Summits, and advised and contributed to the others. He also contributed to the Arts Program, including writing the Introduction to its Guide, co-hosting the Coleridge Lectures with the Festival of Ideas, co-curating the Fog Bridge Exhibit, advising on @Bristol’s Blue Marvel movie, and co-sponsoring Withdrawn with the National Trust. Overall, he led or participated in events that reached >50,000 people. In all of this he showcased NERC Research, emphasising his own palaeoclimate, environmental and Earth system research but also that of others, especially that related to future climate change impacts globally and on the UK. This public engagement led directly to engagement with policy makers, with Pancost being invited to serve on the Bristol City Council (and Rockefeller Foundation) Resilience Sounding Group and to work with numerous city and national organisations on an ad hoc basis, including Bristol Health Partners, Somalia First, Bristol is Open, Voscur, Schumacher Institute and Happy City. He was invited to attend COP21 with Mayor George Ferguson, representatives of Bristol City Council and business and civil society leaders. [RDP: A bit of bragging here, as one must do for proposals. But there is a crucial subtext – I was deeply involved with the Green Capital project and by extension was part of the community that failed to engage and include more diverse voices.]

However, this engagement was incomplete. Throughout the year, Pancost (and many others) explored the social justice issues arising from climate change. Echoing commentary by numerous international political and religious leaders, discussions at Green Capital events frequently focussed on the ethical dimensions of climate change, including those related to class, ethnicity and race. As such it was considered necessary to engage a diverse cross-section of society (and of course, this was also considered necessary to mobilise support for the aforementioned policy objectives). There were many efforts to achieve this. The Year included a Neighbourhood Arts Progamme and a Primary Schools Programme, both of which were rolled out across the city. The Cabot Institute led several events in the poorest parts of the city, to complement those held on our campus. Nonetheless, poor inclusion was a persistent and legitimate charge (Pancost, 2015), as it has been for other Bristol activities. It was the disconnection between the Green Capital’s ambitions for inclusion and the lack of it that has proven to be particularly frustrating to many. There are vital lessons to be learned from this and there is a necessity to resolve it if Bristol – and other similar cities – are to achieve their desired transformations. Ujima Radio, recent winner of the UK’s Best Community Radio Station, initiated this effort in late 2014 and explored it throughout 2015 via the Green and Black Programme. In late 2015, the PI, the Cabot Institute and the BGCP joined Ujima to explore this further via a series of workshops with BME leaders. Two broad messages emerged, as summarised by our partner Roger Griffiths (Chair of Ujima Radio): ‘To many, the ‘green’ debate has hallmarks of being predominantly understood as a white, middle-class domain; moreover, there is a strong narrative of existing and potential engagement with green issues across BME communities that must be recognised and developed.’ Around these wider issues, a number of specific challenges were identified:

There was a widespread perception that formal activities – and especially the higher level decision-making – was led by an ‘in-crowd’ of established green activists, city leaders, and usual suspects (university and industry leaders).
Many venues were considered ‘off-limits’ to members of the BME community for a combination of issues related to perceived class bias, reputation or history (bearing in mind the role of slaving in Bristol’s history). Aside from that, many venues in the city centre, Bristol’s traditional focus for events (including the University), are not readily accessible.
Participation in events remains difficult for many due to childcare or work responsibilities. This reinforces the ‘in-crowd’ nature of activity and city planning, as many were able to attend as part of their jobs. Events were numerous and often organised at the last-minute, which further disenfranchised those with less flexible personal or working relationships.
Similarly, many were able to either volunteer time or were seconded from their businesses to participate; this puts particular stress on community organisations with limited resources.
BME leaders who were invited to attend workshops and planning meetings were often asked to attend or even speak but ‘rarely to help set the agenda.’

Approach and Delivery:

NERC Science to be the focus of Engagement. Pancost’s NERC funded research employs lipid biomarkers to study modern and ancient biogeochemical processes. Superficially, such research appears to be rather fundamental and somewhat removed from the actionable needs of the public and policy makers, but three main strands resonated with public and policy partners during the Green Capital: (i) our research underpins our understanding that pCO₂ levels have not exceeded 400ppm for about three million years, a symbolic threshold only recently crossed due to human activity; (ii) our research contributes to the evidence base that the current rate of climate change is nearly without precedent in Earth history; (iii) our work has also shown that rapid warming has complex biological and biogeochemical impacts – and feedbacks – on the Earth system. These observations arise from a long research career and represent the achievements of many in the NERC research community but can be specifically related to at least three recent NERC-funded projects:

Terrestrial methane cycling during Paleogene greenhouse climates, 2012-2015; NERC Responsive Mode grant to RDP (~£900K to RDP and Paul Valdes, Bristol; David Beerling, Sheffield; and Margaret Collinson and Andrew Scott, RHUL).
Timing, causes and consequences of the decline in Pliocene pCO₂; NERC Standard Research Grant to RDP (~£850K to RDP, Dani Schmidt and Dan Lunt, Bristol; and Gavin Foster, Southampton).
The Descent into the Icehouse, 2011-2014; NERC Thematic Consortium Grant: Long-Term Co-Evolution of Life and the Planet to Gavin Foster; RDP was Bristol Co-I (£110K to Bristol)

Engagement Plan. The focus of our plan is to appoint two ‘Green and Black Ambassadors’ from African and Caribbean communities, to provide reciprocal mentoring and support to and from the PI and his collaborators and research group. Ujima Radio has identified two ambassadors, Zakiya McKenzie and Jasmine Ketibuah-Foley, ensuring a prompt start to this project in Jan 2017. Specific activities in approximate chronological order will be:

Be trained in co-production research methods and then build on our existing research: The ambassadors are already receiving training on research co-production by Helen Manchester, who is directly linked to the ESRC-funded Productive Margins programme. The ambassadors will use this to explore areas of interest to the African-Caribbean community; for example, initial work indicated that air quality, a profound exacerbator of inequality in Bristol and other UK core cities, resonates more than climate change – but it is unclear how much more engaging it is or how the strands can be integrated into a wider narrative. We will also explore whether palaeoclimate can provide an alternative entry point to discussion by serving as a neutral space for discussion or by disrupting climate change fatigue (a concern of Andrew Garrad, Chair of the Bristol 2015 Company, and a reason why artists frequently engaged with Pancost). The two ambassadors will explore these issues and identify potential areas of common interest.

Test via Case Studies: Based on these findings, Pancost and the Ambassadors will develop a new suite of materials, including a joint presentation, but also interactive activities. We will share these twice with members of the African-Caribbean public in local community centres (for example, the Malcolm X Centre). Afterwards, the Ambassadors will use focus group discussions to identify how the NERC research could be better connected to their concerns and learning interests. We will specifically explore: 1) Are the research findings of interest, in and of themselves; 2) Are the findings more interesting when linked to other topics (i.e. air pollution); 3) Are the findings more interesting when linked to solutions or contemporary political issues (inequality, food or fuel poverty); and 4) what would the community like to know more about, both within and beyond NERC’s remit.

Create Media Projects: Arising from the previous activities, we will produce three brief radio broadcasts that will be broadcast on Ujima Radio. The content will depend on the outcomes of the previous exercises, but in all we will feature some aspect of NERC science. (NOTE: due to scheduling issues and the wider aims of the programme, it is unlikely that all will actually be broadcast by grant-end)

This is a pilot project but, via support from Helen Manchester who has expertise on co-production, we hope that it can be transferred to other excluded communities in Bristol and elsewhere and other parts of the NERC research portfolio. We do recognise the profound challenges associated with simplistic translating of lessons learned in this project; in fact, it is the assumption that all communities have similar interests that this project will challenge. However, we still argue that the lessons learned will provide broader lessons on engagement of value to the whole NERC community, and this will be published as a public commentary (likely The Conversation). To ensure this programme’s legacy, the Ambassadors will write a follow-up proposal on behalf of Ujima Radio to the Esme Fairborne Foundation and help identify and recruit future BME community leaders who could benefit from the programme.

The roles of Our Partners: This project arises out of the Ujima Radio-led ‘Green and Black Project’, an inclusive movement for social and environmental justice. It recognises that this vision can only be realised when people are meaningfully involved in the environmental agenda regardless of race, religion, class or origin and when the environmental community speaks to – and for – the concerns of all. It is these ethos that inform the collaboration between the Ujima Radio and the PI, supported by the University of Bristol Cabot Institute (of which RDP is also Director, but formal representation will be from Hayley Shaw, the Institute’s Manager, and Kat Wall of UoB’s Centre for Public Engagement), and the BGCP, who will co-deliver the project with Ujima Radio to address the aforementioned concerns and deliver the crucial support, mentorship and training of the Green and Black Ambassadors.

The PI will be responsible for the project’s deliverables and ensuring that NERC environmental and climate change research is shared with a more diverse community, as guided and facilitated by the Ambassadors. However, in the spirit of this endeavour, Ujima Radio will manage ambassador selection. They will also provide mentoring and media training, curate and communicate media projects, and involve wider communities. Bristol Green Capital Partnership CIC will provide mentoring through leadership development – providing Ambassadors with constructive engagement with leading civil society sustainability organisations at Board level, in addition to brokering connections within wider ‘green’ networks. University of Bristol’s public engagement team and Cabot Institute will provide project administration and research curation.

2.4. Costings and Justification:

[RDP: This is important. Nearly all of the funding went to our partners. When you ask marginalised groups to help you with inclusion issues, you have an obligation to provide the financial support for their labour. This was a partnership. But it was vital to recognise the privilege the University had in that partnership and the obligation to direct the financial support accordingly.]

Activity	Cost
Ambassador salary x2: Contract terms are 12 hours per week at £11.10 per hour for 14 weeks; 1 Jan to 31 March (These are the preferred working arrangements of the two Ambassadors)	£3,730
Ujima Radio project management costs (inc. coaching, mentoring, media production); this partnership cost is vital for engaging community groups)	£1,800
Ujima Radio operations and HR to support three pre-recorded broadcasts featuring NERC climate change science by the PI and collaborators	£1,500
‘Green and Black’ Convo workshops focussed on ‘Is past climate relevant to the BME community?’ (inc room hire and catering costs)	£450
Ujima Radio website hosting/online presence	£250
Directly Incurred Cabot Institute Costs for hosting content on website and production costs for materials and video-recording of engagement events	£750

Summary

Although this project has a relatively narrow focus – connecting a particular strand of NERC research to a specific community – we have ambitions that this pilot will enable much more substantive change. We will learn from one another, train new leaders, and start building new relationships among major institutions and diverse communities across the city. Through long-term widening of the public dialogue we aspire to influence, challenge or support current decision-makers, thereby delivering more ambitious policies, such as implementation of Bristol’s Climate Change and Energy Security Framework and its Resilience Strategy. We will do this by acknowledging, listening and promoting inclusive initiatives, engaging communities with environmental issues, and re-focusing organisations (including our own) to encompass the concerns of BME communities. Specifically, this multi-stakeholder approach will leverage the expertise of civil society partners to deliver long-lasting impact by: 1) contributing directly to a more diverse environmental community; 2) identifying and making progress on issues of concern for newly-involved communities; 3) developing new forms of communication, outreach and sharing, by which environmental and climate change issues can be better connected to BME communities; and 4) exploring how diverse communities can better access, understand and ultimately make use of academic research to drive their own social initiatives.

Environmental Justice Must Recognise and Centre Social Justice

Posted on February 17, 2019February 23, 2019 by r.d.pancost

This is Bristol: Numerous green businesses and voluntary organisations, a multitude of cyclists, recyclers and circular economists; ethical banking and a local currency; a Council-owned windfarm, Energy Company and low-carbon investment strategy; local food production, community energy, sustainable housing developments. The 2015 EU Green Capital and the owner of the most rapid and extensive decarbonisation ambition of any city or nation in the world.

This is also Bristol: Congestion, polluted air and a polluted harbour, heat-inefficient Victorian homes, fuel poverty and food deserts. Economic inequality magnified by environmental inequality.

Bristol has been a leader in the environmental movement for decades, and it has been a leader in tackling climate change. I’ve been studying climate change for 30 years but am still in awe of the Bristol spirit. And since arriving in Bristol, I’ve tried to help my small bit: I was with George Ferguson in Paris when he pledged carbon neutrality by 2050; I also collaborated on the Council’s Resilience Strategy and, more recently, Marvin Rees’ One City Approach, and especially its environmental theme.

Consequently, I was enthused to see Bristol pass a motion of intent, declaring a Climate Emergency and a desire to become carbon neutral. Carbon neutral across all sectors. By 2030. This is the ambitious Bristol that I love.

And yet I am wary. I am wary that in our fear of catastrophic climate change and in our urgency to declare a Climate Emergency, we fail to build a genuinely inclusive movement. And such a movement is needed to achieve the tremendous change that is required.

We must drive our society towards sustainability, circularity and carbon neutrality. It is necessary to protect our civilisation, to protect all of us and our planet. But most of all, we must minimise climate change because climate change is unjust. It will affect all of us, but it will affect some of us more. It will affect children more than their parents. The young more than the old.

And it will affect the poor, the vulnerable, the isolated – and it will do so not just because of the unfortunate coincidences of geography but because of the structural inequalities in that same society that we are fighting to save. Heat waves kill the poor, they kill outdoor labourers, the working class. Sea level rise will trap, drown and infect the poor, those without the means and wealth to freely move among nations. The volatility of food production will be particularly devastating to those who already struggle to feed their families, who already lean on food banks and charity. Hurricanes and storms will continue to devastate the communities with the least recourse to escape, who likely already live in flood-prone areas, who can be sacrificed, like those in Puerto Rico, with minimal political repercussions.

Climate change is an affront to our proc ideals of fairness and equality. It is classist. It is racist.

But if climate action is a question of social justice, then those marginalised groups must be part of the movement. They must set the agenda of that movement. They must lead the movement. And if they are not, those of us who claim the title ‘environmentalist’ cannot ask why they are not engaged, and instead must ask how we have failed. We must challenge ourselves, our privilege, our dialogue and our institutions and understand how we have excluded them. Have we invited marginalised groups to participate in our events and our agenda? Or have we honestly co-created an open space for multiple agendas? Have we recognised that destroying inequality is a legitimate starting point for fighting climate change? Have we recognised that many of our proposed solutions – entirely rational solutions – can be implicitly racist or sexist?

If we are going to prevent catastrophic climate change, then we must act fast and with unrelenting persistence. But at the same time, we must be patient, check our privilege and listen to those who have been marginalised by past environmental movements. This is especially true because it is those same marginalised groups who will most likely bear the greatest burden of climate change. We assault these groups doubly if we do not centre their voices in our common cause. And because the environmental movement is unstoppable – technologically and socially inevitable and therefore economically inevitable – exclusion from these opportunities is yet a third assault.

I am by no means an expert on co-creating powerful social movements, fuelled by equality amongst the participants and effective in achieving change. But I have been lucky enough to work and learn from those who do. They have shown undeserved patience and understanding and trust.

They taught me that it is vital to recognise not just your own privilege but the economic, historical or social privileges of the institutions one represents. In my case, a world-leading university. In other cases, a business or a trust – even a small green business or cash-starved charity. And even a movement, especially a movement perceived as being by and for the white middle class.

Having recognised that privilege and in many cases the structural racism, sexism and wider inequalities that come with it, it is our obligation to decolonise those institutions rather than to plead for yet more labour from those our institution oppresses. It is our obligation to do our own research and to commit our own emotional energy and labour. And when we do work with marginalised groups, we are compelled to respect their expertise by paying them for their services. Major institutions will pay consultants 100s of thousands of pounds for a re-brand or governance review but ask marginalised groups to help address our diversity challenges by serving for free – by serving on our Boards, attending our workshops, advising on our projects. It is insulting to imply that the privilege of entering our institutions and projects is adequate compensation for their time, their re-lived trauma or their expertise.

Of course, a recognition of the limitations of our institutions, our organisations and our movements is only the start. The next steps involve a fundamental reckoning with the word ‘our’ in those projects – who has owned these, who owns them now, who will own them in the future? And given those answers, are they fit for the challenge at hand? Are they projects capable of becoming genuinely co-owned, co-creative spaces, where not just new members are welcomed but also their new ideas, challenges and perspectives? Or are these projects that must be completely deconstructed, making way for the more energetic ones to come? Do we ourselves have the humility to deconstruct our own projects and cede our labour to those of someone else?

Image from the PhotoVoice Project of the Green and Black Ambassadors

These are challenging questions and the answers are not as simple as I imply. Those of us who have been fighting climate change, plastics in the ocean, toxins in our soil, pollution in the air, and the non-sustainable exploitation of our planet are deeply invested in the struggle and in the solutions we have forged. It is not trivial to patiently draw in new perspectives nor to have our ideas questioned – we have been fighting an establishment for five decades that has been guilty of predatory delay and manipulation of public understanding. We are right to be wary of anything that delays action, right to be uncivil, impatient and intemperate.

But it is also time to concede that a thousand ripples have yet to become a wave. Certainly not the wave needed to dismantle the environmental degradation that has become a near-inextricable feature of our society.

In Bristol, we have the potential to create this wave together. We have a Partnership, a One City Approach and a cross-party ambition without precedent. This is the time to re-invigorate our environmental movement, to align it with our other challenges, to become genuinely inclusive and diverse. It will not succeed with a simple majority, with a mere 52% of the vote. It will have to be a new political project but with an apolitical community that rejects the discourse of division and embraces new and unexpected collaborations.

It will be a community that makes use of all of our talent and is united not with a single strategy or action plan but a common cause and shared values. It will be a community that thrives through a multitude of equally respected agendas.

I would like to thank so many people for inspiration, patience, passion and laughter: The original Green and Black Ambassadors Jasmine Ketibuah-Foley and Zakiya Mackenzie; and of course: Roger Griffith, La Toyah McAllister-Jones; Andrew Kelly, Sado Jirde, Paul Hassan, Ruth Pitter, Hayley Shaw, Kat Wall, Sumita Hutchison, Eric Herring, Karen Bell, Ian Townsend, Vicki Woolley, Marvin Rees, Stacy Yelland, Cllr Asher Craig, Zoe Banks, Mya ‘Birdgirl’ Craig, Peaches Golding and many many more. And associated organisations (Ujima Radio, Bristol Green Capital Partnership, Festival of Ideas and the Cabot Institute for the Environment) and funders (the EU ERC Programme and NERC).

Originally posted by Rich Pancost on the website of Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees.