Within days of the new year, Oxfam research revealed that the world’s wealthiest 1 per cent had already exhausted their fair share of carbon emissions for the entire year – emissions that must be limited if global warming is to remain within the internationally agreed limit of 1.5°C threshold. For the richest 0.1 per cent, that limit was reached in just three days.
Those driving the climate crisis are overwhelmingly not those who bear the brunt of its most devastating consequences.
In October 2025, Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica, causing almost eight billion dollars in damage, close to half of the country’s annual GDP. Just weeks later, Super Typhoon Fung-wong displaced approximately 1.4 million in the Philippines alone; while torrential rains and flooding swept across Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.
Such climate catastrophes and the extent of devastation they leave in their wake are not random. They are exacerbated by long histories of underinvestment, weakened infrastructure,debt and inequitable economic systems imposed on low and middle income countries. Together they reveal a global truth: climate change does not affect everyone equally, and the communities with the least responsibility for the crisis are consistently hit the hardest.
This is climate injustice and it’s inseparable from racism.
Climate injustice in the UK
The same unequal pattern is seen in the UK.
Despite overall improvements in air quality, analysis from Friends of the Earth shows that Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities, alongside low-income households and non-drivers, are increasingly concentrated in the five percent of neighbourhoods exposed to the most dangerous levels of air pollution.
These outcomes are the result of planning, housing, transport and economic systems that have long failed to centre racial equity.
Climate inaction is therefore not neutral. It is a political choice – one that determines whose lives are protected and whose are placed at risk.
At COP30, fossil fuel lobbyists once again outnumbered delegates from climate-vulnerable countries, while frontline communities were told, implicitly and explicitly, to wait for their voices to be heard. This pattern of exclusion reinforces a system where those most affected by climate breakdown are least represented in decisions about solutions. We need climate justice initiatives that centre racial equity and lived experience so that all are adequately protected from the devastating consequences of climate change.
Just and effective climate action is not possible without centring the lived experiences of those most affected. To do so, we must explicitly identify and confront racism where it arises in environmental policy discourse, decisions and spaces.
The myth of neutrality: inaction is violence
Climate debates often focus on abstract targets: net zero by 2050, or limiting warming to 1.5°C. But for many in Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities, the crisis is not so abstract, but lived every day with toxic air, extreme heat, poor housing and limited green space.
A review of air quality in London commissioned by the Greater London Authority shows that Black Londoners are significantly more likely to live in areas with the poorest air quality. The consequences can be deadly.
Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, a 9-year-old Black girl from southeast London, became the first person in the UK to have air pollution officially recorded as a cause of death. She lived just 25 metres from the South Circular Road, where nitrogen dioxide regularly exceeded World Health Organisation guidelines. Her death exposed how long-term environmental harm in Black and minoritised ethnic communities is allowed to persist, normalised and ignored.
Governments often frame delay or inaction as unavoidable or caused by pragmatic challenges. For frontline communities, supposed “neutrality” is lethal. Subsidising fossil fuels, delaying clean air measures, or failing to invest in climate-resilient infrastructure are choices that determine who is protected and who is not. Inaction is not passive. It is violence.
The climate crisis will not end without racial justice
The climate crisis cannot be separated from the systems of anti-Blackness and racism that render minoritised ethnic communities expendable. Climate action that fails to centre racial justice is not only incomplete, but unjust.
The Race Equality Foundation is committed to building coalitions across movements, centring frontline leadership, holding institutions to account, and pushing for structural change. Through Everyone’s Environment, we are working towards a future where every community has a voice, agency and protection in the face of climate change.
Not doing climate work is racism in action. And climate work that ignores racial inequality is unjust.
Work with us
If you are shaping climate policy, delivering environmental programmes, or seeking to strengthen equity in decision-making, we welcome collaboration.
Contact: Lee@racefound.org.uk
Media enquiries
If you’re a journalist, researcher, or storyteller committed to reframing the climate crisis through a race equity and justice lens, we’d love to work with you.
Connect with us to help amplify frontline voices and reshape the narrative. Email Lauren Golding at comms@racefound.org.uk
