{"id":1241,"date":"2020-04-28T20:56:15","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T18:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.convivialthinking.org\/?p=1241"},"modified":"2020-04-28T21:01:45","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T19:01:45","slug":"covid-19-racism-and-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/2020\/04\/28\/covid-19-racism-and-climate-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"[COVID-19] Every breath you take: COVID-19, Racism and the Climate Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Portia Roelofs<\/em><\/p>\n

Last year, I wrote an article<\/a> arguing that air travel was *the* issue that showcased the deadly intersection of race, climate change and inequality. Indeed, as COVID-19<\/a> struck, I thought I\u2019d been proven right.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We were able to see who the British government was willing to endanger or protect in a pandemic by looking at who it was willing to put on a plane. When lockdown was declared on 23rd March, the Government was still planning to deport people to Jamaica<\/a> but refusing to repatriate hundreds of British citizens stuck in Pakistan<\/a>. Along with all the usual inequalities embodied by air travel – visa refusals, subsidies to tax-evaders etc – planes are political.<\/p>\n

Due to COVID-19, 50-70% of flights are grounded. Emissions from planes have been cut by a third<\/a>. Even as we all stay home BAME folk are at greater risk of dying from the disease. And the climate crisis is part of the story, even without the planes.<\/p>\n

First of all, the list of lockdown housing inequalities shaped by race and class<\/a> is well known: we see it in who has access to a garden, who lives in overcrowded accommodation, who is pushed by low pay into poor quality rental housing. But, faced with a deadly respiratory virus, its especially cruel that structural racial inequality shapes the quality of the air that we breathe.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve known for over a decade that people of colour \u2013 termed \u2018BAME\u2019 black, Asian and minority ethnic<\/a> – in the UK are exposed to on average 17% more air pollution than white folks. This rises to 28% for people who identify as Black British African. A 2009 study<\/a> found that:<\/p>\n

‘in both urban and rural areas White-British are consistently exposed to lower concentrations of PM10 as compared with all other ethnic groups.’<\/em><\/p>\n

Only last year Lewisham Council gave planning permission<\/a> to a housing development in an air pollution hotspot that was so deadly, future residents were advised not to open their windows. In 2013, also in Lewisham, a 9-year old girl died<\/a> after 3 years of seizures and 27 visits to hospital for asthma attacks.<\/p>\n

Her name was Ella Kissi-Debrah.<\/p>\n

She lived with her family 25 metres from the South Circular Road. Guess what the number one piece of advice is for asthmatics<\/a> to avoid air pollution? The South Circular has illegally high levels<\/a> of air pollution, including nitrogen dioxide (NO2).<\/p>\n

NO2 is most dangerous<\/a> for \u201cunborn babies, newborns and young children.\u201d Exposure to high levels of NO2 as a child can lead to lung problems for life. The risk of lung inflammation persists even when pollution levels temporarily drop, as they have in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

In both the UK and the US, people of colour face a heightened exposure to air pollution and its long-term health effects. As the New Scientist<\/a> put it: ethnic minorities produce less pollution but are exposed to more.<\/p>\n

Racism intersects with poverty and a market forces. In 2016 a King\u2019s College London study<\/a> concluded: \u201cpoor families end up living in cheaper housing which is often in close proximity to busy roads\u201d.<\/p>\n

This is all to say that, we already know that air pollution kills. We already know that, as Black Lives Matter UK<\/a> puts it, the climate crisis is a racist crisis. On top of all this, new research suggests that COVID-19 turbo-charges these inequalities.<\/p>\n

Remember nitrogen dioxide? A study by German scientists published on 20th<\/sup> April<\/a> suggests that:<\/p>\n

\u201clong-term exposure to this pollutant may be one of the most important contributors to fatality caused by the COVID-19 virus’.<\/em><\/p>\n

Obviously there are multiple mechanisms by which racism translates into the shocking rate of BAME deaths from COVID-19. More research is needed to confirm or deny the exact causal claims about NO2 and COVID-19. All I’m saying is that the tragedy currently unfolding should be no surprise given that we live in a country where people of colour on low incomes are forced to raise their children breathing air that will make them sicker for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n

Since the 1970s, successive Westminster governments have built an economic system where the most basic aspects of human life are allocated by market forces. You want clean air, a decent place to live, green space? Better not be poor. Better not be black.<\/p>\n

Air pollution and housing is just one example. Kate Bayliss and Giulio Mattioli show how privatisation of water, energy and local buses<\/a> in England has ‘promoted the needs of investors, and the ‘market’, over the population.’<\/p>\n

I started out believing that the link between climate crisis, racism and inequality was best seen in jet-trails in the skies above us. But COVID-19 reminds us that it is there in our private moments: in our homes where we now shelter, when we open a window to let in the breeze.<\/p>\n

Dr Portia Roelofs<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0a Junior Research Fellow in Politics and Political Thought at the University of Oxford<\/a>. She has published in the\u00a0Journal of Modern\u00a0African Studies<\/a>,\u00a0Governance<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Journal of\u00a0African Cultural Studies<\/a>. Currently, she\u00a0is\u00a0working on a book titled,\u00a0What Nigeria can teach us about good governance. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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