Climate Justice
V4CE Environmental Strategy
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Our Environmental Strategy opens up a new chapter of work at V4CE to understand and address the climate crisis through the critical lens of anti-racism. Our approach is based on the premise that the climate crisis is rooted in the same systems that created racial injustice, inequity, and hierarchy to begin with. Extracting land and resources, and exploiting the labour of racialised and marginalised groups has always been deeply unsustainable.
Beyond restoring nature, addressing the climate crisis is also about redistributing wealth and resources more equitably, building an economy around care and wellbeing, and restoring democratic voices within our communities.
Where Climate Meets Race is our foundational programme borne out of this strategy. It is a three-year project supported by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation to build deeper and more inclusive engagement on climate and nature. Our main aim through climate education, relationship and movement building, and policy influence is to broaden the scope of what people consider to be sustainable or a form of climate action. We want to challenge who gets to be seen as an expert or environmentalist, and use our platform to amplify the work already underway.
Building Partnerships for Climate Action
We are actively developing and seeking partnerships where we can deliver, co-create, or provide support on climate education, community engagement, and policy initiatives. This includes:
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Educate Her: Supporting a cohort of girls and women through a partnership with Real Hope Initiative (RHI) and Bradford University’s Gender Climate Governance programme to address climate and gender inequalities, build leadership around hyperlocal climate solutions in Bradford, and find joy and community through connecting with nature.
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Climate Resilience for All: A delivery partnership with Equally Ours, Groundwork South, the Voluntary & Community Sector Emergencies Partnership (VCSEP), and other pan-equality groups, shaping community resilience and emergency preparedness efforts at local and national levels. The public announcement can be found here.
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Climate Action Partnership: Working with social enterprise funder UnLtd and the Centre for Energy Equality (CEE) to identify and fund social enterprises led by people from Black and minoritised backgrounds, while providing access to different levels of funding and tailored social enterprise support.
Our Climate & Environmental Insights
Explore our most impactful environmental insights - covering the policies, stories, and solutions that drive our advocacy work. From climate cafés to community programmes, these pieces highlight the ties between climate justice and racial justice and the future we're working to build.
Joy is Sustainable: Insight into Dominique Palmers’ Journey into Climate Justice Activism and Advocacy. We were lucky enough to talk to the award-winning climate activist, writer, and speaker Dominique Palmer. In the interview, Dominique discussed what she wished she'd known about climate activism, her experience attending summits, and what needs to change within and beyond the movement to create a cultural shift.
The Case for Beavers Once near extinction, beavers are making a comeback as a keystone species. This article covers our recent visit to the Ealing Beaver Project at Paradise Fields, London’s first fully accessible urban beaver reintroduction site, to see how nature-based solutions can support climate resilience in cities.
Exploring Our Shared Grief, Joy, and Hope through Climate Cafés A climate café is for everyone. But it’s particularly useful for those who want to share their concerns in more informal settings, and build a stronger political voice on climate over time. In this article, our Environmental Officer shares some reflections and takeaways from our very first 'Climate Café'.
Reflections on our First Climate Workshop: Climate Justice is Racial Justice We kicked off our Where Climate Meets Race project with a workshop introducing the intersections between climate justice and racial justice. The session had over 60 attendees and gave us the opportunity to introduce the project and set the scene. This article covers some reflections from the session, from ideologies such as the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ to notions of private property.
What We’re Reading: Climate & Justice
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Climate change glossary: the terms you need to understand, explained
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Let Them Drown: The Violence of Othering in a Warming World
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A vision for climate justice: a report from the APPG on Race and Community
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How will the climate and nature crises impact people from Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority Communities?
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How will the climate and nature crisis impact older people and Disabled people?
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No police, no pollution: A vision for Black liberation in the UK
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Share the Land: Modelling an agroecological land-sharing approach to UK land use
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How can the Great Wealth Transfer enable people and planet to flourish?
Acknowledgments: The content above has been written and researched by Jennifer Wat, with edits and design contributions from Ella Armitage, Jessica Webber and Ditipriya Acharya.