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Each school day, children from the south Asian community in this Lancashire town would assemble prior to going to school. This was the seventies, a period when extremist organizations were mobilising, and these youngsters were the sons and daughters of immigrant laborers who had come to Britain a decade earlier to fill labour shortages.

One of these children was the young Asad, who had relocated to the northern town with his family from Pakistan as a small child. “We walked in groups,” he recalls, “as there were risks to walk alone. Younger children at the center, older children around the edge, because we’d be attacked on the way.”

Conditions were just as difficult at school. Pupils would perform Nazi salutes and yell abusive language at them. They shared Bulldog publicly in corridors. Students of color regularly, as soon as the dinner bell would go, we secured ourselves into a classroom, because we would be attacked.”

“I initiated conversations to everybody,” Rehman states. As a group, they chose to challenge the teachers who had failed to protect them by jointly deciding not to attend. “stating it was due to the schools were unsafe for us.” This became Rehman’s early introduction of activism. As he joined national equality efforts emerging across the country, it shaped his activist perspective.

“We started to protect our community helping me understand that abiding lesson which I've carried: we are much more powerful when we are a ‘we’ compared to acting alone. Groups are necessary to coordinate efforts and you need a vision that binds you.”

Recently, he took on the role of head of the conservation group Friends of the Earth. Over many years, the familiar face of global warming was the iconic bear drifting on an ice floe. Today, discussing environmental issues without mentioning systemic unfairness has become all but unthinkable. Rehman positioned himself in the vanguard of this shift.

“I accepted this position because of the enormous challenge out there,” he shared with journalists on the sidelines a climate justice protest in central London weeks ago. “It’s an interconnected crisis of climate, [of] inequality, of financial structures which are biased the wealthy. Essentially an equity issue.

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

Having numerous backers and 233 local action groups, This environmental network (Scotland has its own) is the UK’s biggest environmental campaigning network. Over the past year, it allocated over ten million pounds on activism ranging from legal actions on official regulations grassroots efforts changing municipal practices across urban areas.

But it has – albeit undeservedly – earned a reputation as a less radical organisation versus other groups. Known for fundraising and appeals than road blockades and occupations.

The appointment of someone focused on inequality with his background may represent an effort to redefine itself.

This isn't his initial stint he's been involved with the organization.

Post-education, he maintained advocating for equality, engaged with an anti-racism group during a period while extremist groups was still a force in east London.

“We organized protests, and it was doing casework, and it was rooted in the community,” he explains. “And I learned local mobilization.”

Yet seeking more than just responding to everyday prejudice and government policies collaborating with activists, aimed to elevate the fight against racism as a fundamental right. This led him to Amnesty UK, during ten years he worked with international campaigners to demand a fundamental shift regarding the interpretation of basic rights. “At that time, they weren't active on economic and social rights. their work was limited to political freedoms,” he notes.

Towards the close of that decade, Rehman’s work with Amnesty had brought him into contact to various global equity groups. Then they came together in opposition to neoliberalism against neoliberalism. The insights he gained from these connections shaped his future work.

“I visited meeting campaigners, all those mentioned the severity of environmental issues, agricultural challenges, how it was displacing people,” he explains. “And I was like! Every gain through activism might be lost due to climate change. This challenge that is happening, known as global warming – however few addressed it with urgency.”

Which directed him to begin working with Friends of the Earth years ago. Then, most environmental organisations framed environmental issues as a distant threat.

“The organization represented the unique green group which diverged away from the rest of the environment movement. helping establish of what we now call environmental justice campaigning,” he declares.

Rehman worked to include perspectives of the developing world into discussions. These efforts rarely earn him friends. On one occasion, he shares, following discussions between UK government representatives and green groups, a minister phoned the leadership demanding he call off his strong advocacy. He would not be drawn who made the call.

“There was a sense: ‘Why does he challenge conventions?’ Understand, green issues are important, we can all agree and talk. [But] I saw it as combating discrimination, advocating for freedoms … a deeply political fight.”

Equity frameworks were increasingly becoming accepted among activists. However, the opposite occurred. with justice-oriented groups increasingly tackling ecological challenges.

And so it was the anti-poverty campaign the trade union-backed {