Asad Rehman's Extraordinary Journey from Antiracism Activism in Lancashire to Leading a Major Environmental Charity

Every weekday morning, students from Asian families in Burnley would meet up prior to going to school. It was the 1970s, a time when far-right groups were gaining strength, and they were the offspring of Asian migrants who had moved to Britain in the previous decade to work in understaffed industries.

Among them was Asad Rehman, who had moved to the Lancashire town with his family from Pakistan as a small child. “We would all walk together,” he explains, “as there were risks to walk alone. Younger children at the center, teenagers on the outside, since we faced assaults on the way.”

The situation was equally bad at school. Pupils would give fascist salutes and yell abusive language at them. They shared Bulldog without concealment at school. Minority children regularly, as soon as the dinner bell would go, we had to lock ourselves into a classroom, to avoid being targeted.”

“I initiated conversations to everybody,” he notes. Together, they chose to challenge the teachers who had ignored their safety by collectively refusing to attend. “stating that the reason was the schools aren’t safe for us.” That marked Rehman’s early introduction of activism. Participating in wider antiracism movements that were formed across the country, it shaped his activist perspective.

“We began defending our community which taught me that abiding lesson that has stayed with me: our strength multiplies when we are a ‘we’ than when we’re individual. You need organisations to organise you along with a shared goal that binds you.”

This summer, Rehman was appointed CEO of the green organization Friends of the Earth. Historically, the poster child of environmental crisis was arctic wildlife drifting on an ice floe. Currently, discussing the climate crisis while ignoring social, racial and economic injustice is widely considered highly inappropriate. And Rehman has been in the vanguard of this transformation.

“I accepted this position because of the scale of the crisis out there,” he explained to journalists on the sidelines a climate justice protest outside Downing Street weeks ago. “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 – ecological equity and climate justice – this particular network.”

Having 250,000 supporters plus hundreds of local branches, Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland (operates separately in Scotland) is the most extensive environmental campaigning network. In the year to summer 2024, it allocated significant funds on campaigns from judicial reviews against state decisions to local campaigns opposing chemical use in public spaces.

Yet it – albeit undeservedly – earned a reputation as relatively moderate versus other groups. Focusing on awareness campaigns than road blockades and occupations.

The appointment of someone focused on inequality such as him could be an effort to change perceptions.

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

Post-education, Rehman continued campaigning for racial justice, engaged with an anti-racism group during a period as nationalist movements had influence in the capital.

“There were initiatives, and it was doing casework, based in neighborhoods,” he recalls. “And I learned local mobilization.”

However, unsatisfied with simply reactively countering public discrimination and from the state he, along with many others, sought to place the fight against racism within a rights framework. This led him to Amnesty UK, for a long period he partnered with international campaigners to advocate for a new approach of the definition of freedoms. “Previously, they weren't active on economic and social rights. they only campaigned political freedoms,” he says.

By the end of that decade, his activism at the organization connected him with a range of international social justice organisations. At that time they came together in opposition to neoliberalism resisting corporate dominance. What he was to learn through this experience influenced his ongoing activism.

“I traveled meeting campaigners, and each person mentioned the climate crisis, how farming was becoming impossible, forcing migrations,” he says. “And I was like! Every gain and won is going to be unravelled because of environmental collapse. This issue that is happening, it’s called climate – however nobody’s talking about it with urgency.”

Which directed him to an initial position within the organization years ago. At the time, many activists were talking about global warming as a distant threat.

“Friends of the Earth stood out as the sole activist body which diverged from the rest of the environment movement. helping establish of the emerging environmental justice campaigning,” he says.

His efforts centered to amplify concerns from global south nations during negotiations. This approach wasn't earn him friends. Once, he shares, after a meeting between UK government representatives and green groups, an official called his chief executive insisting he stop his “climate Taliban”. He would not be drawn the individual's identity.

“There was a sense: ‘What gives him authority operate differently?’ Understand, the environment is a nice thing, we can all agree and talk. [But] I saw it as a fight against racism, defending rights … a deeply political fight.”

Fairness perspectives were increasingly becoming accepted in climate and environmental campaigning. Simultaneously was also happening. organizations focused on equality increasingly tackling sustainability concerns.

This led to the anti-poverty campaign the trade union-backed {