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Day after day, students from Asian families in Burnley would meet up prior to going to school. It was the 1970s, an era when extremist organizations were actively organizing, and they were the offspring of Asian migrants who had moved to Britain in the previous decade to fill labour shortages.

Among them was Asad Rehman, who had relocated to the northern town with his family from Pakistan when he was four. “We would all walk together,” he remembers, “as there were risks to walk alone. Younger children in the middle, teenagers around the edge, as there was a threat of violence on the way.”

The situation was equally bad at school. Other children would perform Nazi salutes and yell abusive language at them. Some exchanged the National Front newspaper publicly in corridors. Students of color “every day, as soon as the dinner bell would go, we had to lock ourselves into a classroom, because we would be attacked.”

“I initiated conversations to everybody,” he notes. As a group, they decided to defy the teachers who had not kept them safe by jointly deciding not to attend. “and we will say that the reason was the schools were unsafe for us.” It was Rehman’s first taste of mobilizing. When he became part of national equality efforts that were formed across the country, it shaped his views on society.

“We began defending our community which taught me that crucial insight that has stayed with me: collective action is stronger acting together than when we’re individual. It takes organizations to coordinate efforts along with a shared goal that binds you.”

Recently, he took on the role of chief executive of the green organization the well-known activist organization. For decades, the familiar face of climate breakdown was the iconic bear on melting ice. Today, addressing the climate crisis while ignoring inequality and discrimination is now almost impossible. Rehman positioned himself at the forefront of this transformation.

“I took this job because of the scale of the crisis out there,” he told the media during an environmental protest in central London recently. “It’s an interconnected crisis of climate, economic disparity, of economic systems that have been rigged against ordinary people. At its core an equity issue.

“A single organization that has always centred equity – ecological equity and global climate fairness – namely this charity.”

Boasting over 250,000 supporters plus hundreds of local branches, Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland (with an independent Scottish branch) is the most extensive environmental campaigning network. Over the past year, it spent more than £10m on campaigns from judicial reviews against state decisions to local campaigns changing municipal practices in public spaces.

However, the organization has – possibly mistakenly – gained a profile as a less radical organisation in the activist community. More bake sales and petitions than road blockades and occupations.

The appointment of someone focused on inequality like Rehman could be the organisation’s attempt to change perceptions.

And it is not his initial stint he's been involved with the network.

Following university, he maintained fighting discrimination, engaged with a community organization during a period while extremist groups was still a force locally.

“We organized protests, supporting victims, based in neighborhoods,” he says. “I gained experience in being a community organiser.”

But not content beyond addressing everyday prejudice and government policies he, along with many others, worked to frame the fight against racism within a rights framework. This led him to Amnesty UK, during ten years he collaborated alongside global south activists to demand a fundamental shift of the definition of freedoms. “At that time, Amnesty didn’t campaign on economic and social rights. they concentrated solely on on civil and political rights,” he says.

Towards the close of the 1990s, his activism with Amnesty had brought him into contact with multiple global equity groups. At that time they had coalesced into the counter-globalisation movement challenging free-market policies. What he was to learn from them would affect his ongoing activism.

“I was going collaborating with activists, and everybody you spoke to discussed how bad climate was, how farming was becoming impossible, how it was displacing people,” he says. “I thought! Everything we have fought for through activism is going to be unravelled due to climate change. And this thing that is happening, termed environmental crisis – but few addressed it like that.”

This led Rehman to an initial position within the organization years ago. At the time, many activists discussed global warming as a problem for the future.

“The organization was the only mainstream activist body that separated with what I’d call the rest of the environment movement. helping establish of what we now call environmental justice campaigning,” he states.

His efforts centered to bring the voices of affected communities to the table. These efforts rarely make him popular. Once, he remembers, following discussions involving ministers and environmental NGOs, an official phoned the leadership insisting he stop his “climate Taliban”. He would not be drawn the individual's identity.

“There was a sense: ‘Who is this person operate differently?’ Consider, ecology matters, we can all agree and talk. [But] I viewed it as combating discrimination, a fight for human rights … about power structures.”

Justice narratives were increasingly becoming accepted within green movements. But the converse occurred. organizations focused on equality engaging with sustainability concerns.

This led to the charity labor-aligned {