Asad Rehman's Remarkable Path from Anti-Racist Activism in Burnley to Heading a Major Environmental Charity

Every weekday morning, students from Asian families in Burnley would meet up before making their way to school. This was the 1970s, a time when extremist organizations were mobilising, and they were the sons and daughters of immigrant laborers who had come to Britain ten years before to fill labour shortages.

Among them was Asad Rehman, who had come to the northern town with his family from Pakistan as a small child. “We walked in groups,” he remembers, “because it was dangerous to walk alone. Younger children at the center, older children on the outside, since we faced assaults on the way.”

Conditions were just as difficult at school. Other children would perform Nazi salutes and hurl racial epithets at them. A few distributed the National Front newspaper without concealment at school. Minority children “every day, at break times, we secured ourselves into a classroom, because we would be attacked.”

“So I started talking to everybody,” he notes. Collectively, they decided to defy the teachers who had not kept them safe by as a group declining to attend. “and we will say it was due to the schools didn't provide security for us.” That marked Rehman’s initial experience of mobilizing. As he joined wider antiracism movements developing across the country, it shaped his views on society.

“We started to protect our community helping me understand that crucial insight remaining with me: our strength multiplies when we are a ‘we’ rather than individually. Groups are necessary to coordinate efforts and a common purpose to maintain unity.”

In the past few months, Rehman became CEO of the conservation group Friends of the Earth. Over many years, the symbolic image of global warming was arctic wildlife drifting on an ice floe. Today, discussing global heating and not including inequality and discrimination has become highly inappropriate. He has stood at the forefront of this shift.

“I accepted this position due to the scale of the crisis out there,” he explained to the media at an environmental protest in central London last month. “These issues are linked of climate, social injustice, of capitalist models that have been rigged the wealthy. At its core about fairness.

“And there is only one organisation has consistently focused on fairness – green rights and climate justice – this particular network.”

Having numerous backers and 233 local action groups, This environmental network (with an independent Scottish branch) is the most extensive green activist community. Over the past year, it allocated more than £10m on campaigns ranging from courtroom challenges against state decisions grassroots efforts changing municipal practices in public spaces.

However, the organization has – perhaps unfairly – been perceived as not extremely activist in the activist community. Known for fundraising and appeals than road blockades and occupations.

The selection of an advocate for economic justice such as him could be a strategic move to change perceptions.

And it is not the beginning he has worked there with the organization.

Following university, Rehman continued campaigning for racial justice, working with the Newham Monitoring Project during a period as nationalist movements remained active in the capital.

“We organized protests, handling individual cases, deeply connected locally,” he explains. “I gained experience in being a community organiser.”

Yet seeking more beyond addressing racism on the streets and government policies he, along with many others, aimed to elevate equality work within a rights framework. This led him to the advocacy group, where over the next decade he collaborated alongside international campaigners to demand a new approach regarding the interpretation of human rights. “At that time, they weren't active on economic and social rights. they concentrated solely on on civil and political rights,” he states.

As the conclusion of the nineties, Rehman’s work with Amnesty had brought him into contact with multiple global equity groups. At that time they had coalesced as anti-globalization activists resisting corporate dominance. The knowledge he acquired through this experience would affect his future work.

“I visited collaborating with activists, and each person was saying how bad climate was, agricultural challenges, how it was displacing people,” he recalls. “I thought! All our achievements and won is going to be unravelled due to climate change. This issue that is happening, it’s called climate – and yet few addressed it in those terms.”

That guided him to an initial position at the environmental charity during the mid-2000s. At the time, the majority of green groups were talking about global warming as a problem for the future.

“The organization represented the unique activist body that separated from the rest of the environment movement. helping establish of the emerging environmental justice campaigning,” he declares.

He focused to bring the voices from global south nations during negotiations. It did not always earn him friends. On one occasion, he shares, following discussions with officials with activist organizations, a politician called his chief executive requesting he control his strong advocacy. He didn't reveal the individual's identity.

“There was a sense: ‘What gives him authority challenge conventions?’ You know, ecology matters, discussion is possible. [But] I saw it as combating discrimination, advocating for freedoms … fundamentally political.”

Justice narratives found acceptance in climate and environmental campaigning. But the converse took place. rights-based campaigns increasingly tackling sustainability concerns.

And so it was the charity labor-aligned {