How elitism and privilege hijack climate research and education
And a note on the UK's slide away from democracy.
Never did I imagine that I find myself defending people labelled as terrorists by the UK courts, but here we are.
The Filton4 - Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani - are four activists who took part in an action to disrupt Elbit Systems, a factory that manufactures weapons that Israel used for its genocide against Palestinian people in Gaza.
Having already spent 18 months in prison for criminal damage, the judge sent the jury home and then held a new closed-doors trial, this time for alleged terrorist connections. Last week, they were sentenced to a collective 25 years.
Peace ‘terrorists.’ Anti-genocide ‘terrorists.’
I suspect the judge thought this verdict would teach us a lesson, and silence potential protestors - like the hundreds of nurses, priests, students and pensioners arrested for holding signs protesting genocide outside the UK High courts.
They have taught us a lesson. They have taught us that direct action works, in every way. The activists disrupted the factory operations, potentially saving lives. The protests have not stopped. The media have covered the UK’s slide away from democracy, as it plummets down the human rights rankings.
When power feels threatened, it digs its claws in and lashes out. The repressive crackdowns on protestors and anti-genocide movements like Palestine Action must be taken as a sign that it poses a credible force.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop saying this. Verdicts like this are part of the strategy to shock, exhaust and disillusion us into compliance. I haven’t really thought about anything else since the news broke, and it is exhausting. Perhaps it hits closer because it’s my home country. But I want to turn that exhaustion to energy, not despair.
When you’re being attacked, they tell you to shout and bring attention to it. Use your rights and your voice, before they take them away.
What’s Going On?
An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival.
Super-rich’s assets cause outsized amount of climate harm, study says.
‘Protecting the land and rebuilding’: How Syrians are restoring their forests.
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Focus On: How inequality shapes climate education and academia
Written by Emily Pink. Edited by Myriam Gambini and Cass Hebron.
One of the most crucial ways of navigating the climate crisis is through education. But from childhood through to academia and research, our access to climate education is limited to the most privileged, creating a disparity in both who learns and who teaches environmental justice.
Geographical location significantly influences how often children engage with green spaces, a key entrance point to fostering a lifelong love of nature and the environment. The Children’s People and Nature Survey for England in 2023 noted that ‘over half of children and young people surveyed reported feeling highly connected to nature (52%)’. While this has increased from 44% in 2021, that leaves a significant portion of children disconnected from the joys of nature and the outdoors, with the risk that their understanding of environmental breakdown would not elicit strong concern.
Children from lower-income and racialised households, particularly those residing in urban areas, are significantly less likely to have safe and accessible green spaces nearby. In London, 21% of households have no access to private green space (gardens), compared to 12% of the rest of the UK. This pattern is replicated in the Netherlands, Germany and Portugal.
In the UK, private school students enjoy 10 times more green space than their state-educated counterparts. If only the most privileged of children have the opportunity to develop an affinity to nature, how can we expect intersectional and equitable climate justice in the future?
Access to green space in childhood not only strengthens our appreciation of the environment, but it also shapes who feels entitled to enter academic paths that focus on environmental issues. In other words, those who grow up without frequent and positive interactions with nature are less likely to see the environmental movement as relevant to their own lives, and therefore less likely to enter the field that actively works to protect and advance it.
Environmental academia risks becoming an echo-chamber of class privilege, and not an intersectional community of voices.
Even attending university in the first place is impacted by structural inequality – particularly within the UK. Continually rising tuition fees [Editor’s Note: Tuition fees in the UK average 10,989 EUR per year for a domestic student] and the catastrophic cost-of-living crisis put many students in a position where they must sacrifice valuable study time for working to afford their degree, or not attend at all.
Meanwhile, more affluent students can dedicate themselves to their studies and relevant extracurriculars, as well as complete unpaid internships to gain valuable experience in their chosen field.
This dynamic may be particularly clear within the UK, but environmental education across the world is shaped by economic inequality, and reproduces the very structural inequalities that it demands to change. University remains a space of privilege for those who have the means to afford it – and as academia is deeply influential in nurturing climate advocacy and environmentalism, it sets a precedent for research to be completed by the privileged for the privileged. While we sit idly by writing our thesis statements on climate breakdown, we do so in the comfort of our studies, and not on the frontlines of actual catastrophe.
When I studied at Exeter University, I was fortunate to learn about diverse and global perspectives on climate change, from Ken Saro Wiwa’s fight for the Ogoni people in Nigeria, to the Israeli government’s abhorrent attempt at becoming global sustainability leaders, while forcibly displacing Palestinians from their land. And while I attempted to write radical and passionate arguments for intersectional environmentalism, I would often ruminate on how I got to this position: with hard work, yes, but also with immense privilege and opportunity.
Having the financial backing and geographical access to world-class institutional education and the opportunity to return home to recharge – all of these tenets provide me with the best possible opportunities to succeed academically. And while I grapple with my cystic fibrosis and neurodiversity, I do so with a solid support system; one that allows me to thrive.
I feel deeply that academia remains a hugely elitist enterprise at its core – with working-class students comprising around 20% of undergraduates at the 24 Russell Group universities.
[Russell Group: 24 high-ranking UK public research universities that receive the majority of national research grants.]
These academics who later go on to get published, write detached from the material realities of climate breakdown, reporting on the horrors that so many face across the world. From climate refugees in Tuvalu to farmers losing their livelihoods in the Sundarbans, Bangladesh, to garment workers battling ferocious temperatures in factories in Pakistan – what gives Western academics the right to use these stories as examples of crisis in their essays?
Conversely, is it better to avoid utilising these stories? For the millions suffering from the direct impacts of climate change, surely we have a duty to report and educate the world on their plight, from a space where we have the capacity to write and research.
I am reminded of the words of sahibzada mayed on the ethics of academia: “the urge to (over)research is often just the underlying desire to control and extract”. How much are we satisfying the interests of the researcher over doing justice to the issues that we write about? Can this research be an unselfish endeavour, one that is entirely detached from the researcher and instead accurately depicts the plight of marginalised people across the world? This challenging hierarchy is one that academics must continually face, and act upon. As the world falls further into chaos and disarray, this question of lived experience as research, and, therefore, consumable content, becomes all the more crucial.
The production and dissemination of environmental research remains exclusionary at its crux. We must continue to highlight not only the existence of these inequalities, but methods and opportunities to dismantle them.
Environmental education is a space of constant contradiction, but it is a necessary minefield to traverse. Without it, we cannot hope to support people in making more sustainable decisions, connecting their everyday lives to climate breakdown, or, crucially, to hold governments and corporations accountable for their unashamed contribution to environmental destruction. So, with my loudest and most passionate voice, I shall continue to advocate for a climate justice and environmental education that is intersectional to the core, in the hope of a better future for us all.
Emily Pink (she/her) is a disabled climate communicator and lover of literature. Having spent much of her schooling in hospital, she feels deeply about the transformational power education can have for people and planet. Learning is how we can connect with one another, and develop empathy for realities that are not our own. She loves nothing more than spending time in nature and, of course, learning as much as she can.
So Now What Do I Do?
LEARN SOMETHING
Join ‘Everything is Sh*t - A Wellness Workshop’ by the Working Class Climate Alliance on the 22nd June at 15h CEST.
The Just Tech Fellowship is open for applications until the 28th June.
Apply for the Artivism & Amplifiers Fellowship by the 1st July.
DO SOMETHING
Belgium: Join the Feminist Futures Festival on the 25th June!
Belgium: Sign the petition to prevent the Trump/US Embassy party on the 28th June.
The Future Generation Art Prize is open for submissions until the 28th June.
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