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This week, Désirée Abrahams talks to Anjali Raman-Middleton from youth led air pollution campaign Choked Up about COP27, the importance of youth voice, and whether youth activists are being listened to on the global stage.

(This week's video is a bit longer than 5 minutes, we'd love for you to watch the whole thing, but if 5 minutes is all you've got, the first half of this video will give you a great introduction to the conversation.)

 

"We Share Freely". The change we want to see in the world is bigger than we are. So, we're sharing our knowledge, resources and ideas to help more people and organisations take steps forward towards our vision of a green and thriving planet, where everyone can enjoy happy and healthy lives within the Earth's limits.

 

As part of this, we've launched our "5 Minute GAP" series, a collection of five minute conversations that will share how we work and what we're working on. We'll talk about what we're trying to achieve and why, how we function as an organisation, and the thinking behind our plans and strategy.

 

We'll be regularly sharing these conversations, which will feature different members of our team and trustee board, as well as external experts.

 

We hope you enjoy listening in to our chats, getting to know our team and finding out what makes us who we are. 

 

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If you prefer to read rather than watch, the transcription is here:

 

Désirée: Anjali, hi! Good to meet you. Thanks for coming to GAP to meet me today, so I know who you are. But for those of you that don't, would you be able to tell us who you are and what Choked Up is all about?

Anjali: Yeah. So I'm Anjali Raman-Middleton and I am the co-founder of Choked Up which is a youth led organization from London, so all us are from London, which is aiming to clean up our clean air laws, effectively and make sure that everyone living in the UK has the right to breathe clean air. So all of us are from ethnic minority backgrounds and so a key part of our campaign is making sure that we are protecting the lives of those who are most vulnerable. So the people who are most affected by air pollution in the UK are people of colour who live in the most polluted areas and the busies roads, breathe the most air pollution, and so that is a key part of our messaging.

And also we think it's really important to have our voice, the voice of young black and brown people within the environmental movement, as we are people who are at the forefront of this crisis and our voices are ignored within the climate movement as a whole. So we really think that by being in the space, we are able to uplift other people like us and make sure that we are being heard.

Désirée: Anjali I love it. I wish I was young again so I could join Choked Up. Unfortunately I'm slightly older!

Anyway, we are on the second day of COP 27 and I'm sure you've heard the news, all of these proclamations and announcements and so as a youth led campaign, I just want to know, how do you feel that COP27 reflects you as the younger generation? And if you feel as though COP 27 has made a good attempt to include the voices of young people?

Anjali: So I think that there was a lot of controversy around COP26 being hosted by... COP27 even, being hosted by Egypt among a lot of youth climate activists due to its human rights records and its treatment of journalists around human rights issues. So I know that a lot of people, probably myself included within the youth environmental movement, understand the need for it for the conference to be hosted by African nations, because obviously Africa is suffering from the climate crisis in a way that a lot of like European nations aren’t and other places in the global north as well. So we really should have a global South nation hosting news conference, but that was a lot of debate as to whether it should be Egypt that holds that mantle and holds that position as a country that is effectively mistreating activists, is mistreating, beating a lot of journalists who are reporting on the climate issues. So that was the first point going into COP27 that a lot of people were talking about.

And in a way, by hosting it there, the youth voice was, in fact ignored. I think it will be... COP27 is only just starting. So I think it will be interesting to see where it goes and what a lot of youth activists think coming out of it. I'm not attending this time myself, but I know some people who are, so I want to keep in touch and see how it's going for them. Yeah, but I think that it was a lot harder for people to get accreditation this time around. And I could see that a lot of youth activists were struggling with actually being able to get to COP, which is not really what we want to see. I think that more accreditation should have been given to youth activists. They should have been allowed in this space and actually in these rooms where important decisions are being made. Instead of just like having to be on the outskirts looking in, that is completely not what we want. And that defeats the point of inviting youth to COP or in fact, like promising us action, promising us change when we actually aren’t given any sort of political role or political power within climate spheres.

So I think that there's a lot of improvement that could have been done there, but as I said, it will be interesting to see what comes out of this. And I think that it's quite good to just see climate being talked about again because for the past, like over six months, it's been really quiet about climate, people have been talking about inflation, cost of living, the war in Ukraine, which are all important things to be talking about. But they've kind of been ignoring the climate aspect of this and how we can be using these like global issues to actually try and combat climate crisis as well.

I think that people are trying to focus on single issues when we should be looking at the bigger picture and how these issues all relate to each other and what we could be doing to solve all of them at once instead of coming up with solutions to the cost of living crisis that involve making new oil rigs. Like, that is completely not what we need to be doing. We need to be investing in renewable energy and making sure that we have a sustainable world to be living in in the future. So I think that it's good that the lens has been turned here, and I think it's good that it's in an African nation as well, as I said, because too long the voices of the Global South have been ignored.

So it will be interesting to see what comes out of this conference in terms of the Global South Voice and how their needs are recognized. Because I know a big focus of COP 27 is going to be adaptation and how the Global North can be helping Global South countries adapt and what like actually strategies can be implemented within climate vulnerable areas to help the people living there adapt to the crisis and the ecological catastrophe that is approaching. And in many places is already extremely present and we can see it every day.

Désirée: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I feel as though, COP 27 compared to other international fora, they have missed the opportunity to embrace the younger generation. And I know that other conferences have made better attempts at embracing younger participants and having youth led panels. And so I know Anjali that you've attended something quite recently, so would you like to tell us a bit more about that?

Anjali: Yeah. So I attended the C40 Conference of Mayors in Buenos Aires, Argentina in October, and there was a proper youth delegation there. So there was a youth delegation of, I think about 50 to 60 youth participants, 30 of who were international, 30 who were local delegates from Argentina. And it was really interesting to see our voices be formally recognized within this space. And for us to have an actual kind of platform and an action forum to engage with politicians and mayors through. And that was really refreshing to see. And this was the first time that I think that this was being done at C40. And so there were like some obvious flaws that came out of it that were just things that like you, how would you start a project and you realize there are some things that need ironing out.

But I think that this could be a really quite powerful way of engaging youth if it's done properly and if it's kind of if people learn from this experience and look at look at actually what went wrong, what could have been done better and tried to adapt it and change it into something that could really be used to just like, let youth access these avenues of powers and actually talk to mayors in a way that their voices are recognized and held as like equivalent to the voices of these politicians and properly listened to. And so that was it was really powerful being in that space and just seeing how this is something that is rapidly changing and rapidly, I think that the youth voice is becoming more and more of a pressing concern of the politicians and just seeing how at C40 they had actually made a proper avenue for young people to engage with the conference, to actually engage with the mayors. I think that was really good to see and I would like to see other conferences implementing that as well.

Désirée: It sounds fascinating and I'm sure you've got some good insights to share with all of these organizations, international and national. And and just while we've got this five minute gap, do you have any maybe one or two nuggets that you'd like to share?

Anjali: So I think the big thing is that young people and the youth really want to be engaged in these conversations. And we really do want to be present and be listened to and we have useful ideas. So I think that people really should be listening to us and really trying to actually engage us in these conversations more and so often we are called like we're called either inspirational and or idealistic. But the truth is like maybe we are a bit idealistic, but there are some valuable things that can be taken from idealism. I think that it's unfair to just dismiss us as idealistic and young when there are things that we're saying that could actually be implemented and maybe not in the way that we quite imagine, in the way that we quite visualize them. But some things that could be implemented that would create a vision of the world that we really want to see, or at least start us getting there start us on the path towards that world and towards that vision.

And so I think that people really should be listening to us and people really should be taking at least some of what we're saying seriously and trying to actually implement that because we have ideas and it's our world too, and in fact, we're going to inherit it like we are going to live in this world and we are taking up a position here. And it's unfair to just ignore everything that we have to say about it.

Désirée: Right. Thank you for telling me all of that, Anjali. So just before we close, I just wanted to give you the opportunity as Choked Up to basically tell us, you know, what are your ambitions for the future and what are these calls that you have for governments and companies on tackling air pollution?

Anjali: Yeah, so I think Choked Up, our direction is now heading more towards lobbying government and working with government to try and get like a Clean Air Act through that actually enshrines World Health Organization targets in law and holds the government to them. So they actually have to protect our air and make sure that everyone in the UK is breathing clean air. Another thing that we're trying to focus on is actually engaging communities and groups otherwise wouldn't be engaged by environmentalism because I think a lot of people see it as a turn off because they think, oh, that's a bit too serious or that's a bit too scary and I don’t really want to think about that. So just making sure that people are being engaged in this movement for a way that's quite fun and accessible and not just fearmongering. So that's something that we're trying to move towards so that we can actually like help people engage with this because no change is really going to happen, unless like over 50% of the population really want it to happen. And so we need to get people engaged.

Désirée: Yeah, sounds great. Thanks very much Anjali for coming to GAP today.

Anjali: Well, thank you for having me.