How can we learn from the daily household behaviours of diverse communities in the UK?

At this event, Dr Sherilyn MacGregor, with colleagues from the Sustainable Consumption Institute discussed how we can draw upon sustainability practices found within diverse communities across UK.

If we are to ‘build back better’, we need to rethink our approach to local policymaking to prevent the continued marginalisation of racialised communities. This means, as we look to address climate change, we need to consider race in relation to sustainability in order to disrupt and rethink current understandings. 

In this In Conversation, academics looked at the narrow, one-size-fits-all framing that currently limits sustainability policies, and argued why we should - and how we can - find ways to better engage, and learn from the diverse communities that make up the UK.

Sustainable Consumption Institute 

Policy@Manchester was joined by three academics from the Sustainable Consumption Institute in conversation about these issues. The academics drew on their research and practical experience. Dr Sherilyn MacGregor has studied environmental politics in Canada and the UK for twenty years and is now leading an innovative project researching everyday sustainability with immigrant communities in Manchester. She was joined by Dr Nafhesa Ali, who has been working with local authorities in Huddersfield and Sheffield to challenge the exclusivity of local and national policymaking around sustainability, and BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Power List’s Zarina Ahmad, who has spent the last ten years in the third sector engaging with ethnically diverse communities in Scotland on climate change and other environmental justice issues.

 

This event was recorded on 20 April 2021.