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Every weekday morning, youngsters from Asian families in Burnley would meet up before heading to school. It was the seventies, an era when the National Front were gaining strength, and they were the offspring of south Asian workers who had moved to Britain a decade earlier to fill labour shortages.

Included in this group was the young Asad, who had relocated to the northern town with his family from Pakistan at the age of four. “We would all walk together,” he remembers, “since it wasn't safe to walk alone. Younger children at the center, teenagers around the edge, as there was a threat of violence on the way.”

The situation was equally bad at school. Students would perform Nazi salutes and yell abusive language at them. They shared extremist publications without concealment at school. The black and brown pupils day after day, at break times, we secured ourselves into a classroom, due to the risk of assault.”

“So I started talking to everybody,” says Rehman. Together, they chose to challenge the teachers who had failed to protect them by jointly deciding not to attend. “and we will say this is because the schools were unsafe for us.” It was Rehman’s first taste of activism. As he joined national equality efforts emerging across the country, it defined his views on society.

“We took steps to safeguard our community which taught me that abiding lesson remaining with me: our strength multiplies when we are a ‘we’ rather than individually. You need organisations to coordinate efforts and a common purpose to hold you together.”

This summer, he took on the role of CEO of the green organization this major campaigning network. For decades, the symbolic image of global warming was the polar bear on melting ice. Now, discussing the climate crisis without mentioning systemic unfairness is now all but unthinkable. Rehman positioned himself as a leader of this transformation.

“This role appealed to me due to the enormous challenge out there,” he shared with the media on the sidelines an environmental protest near government offices weeks ago. “It’s an interconnected crisis of climate, economic disparity, of financial structures which are biased elite interests. Essentially an equity issue.

“And there is only one organisation has consistently focused on equity – environmental justice and climate justice – namely this charity.”

Boasting over a quarter-million members and 233 local action groups, Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland (operates separately in Scotland) represents Britain's largest green activist community. Over the past year, it spent significant funds on campaigns from judicial reviews on official regulations to local campaigns opposing chemical use in park playgrounds.

But it has – albeit undeservedly – earned a reputation as relatively moderate versus other groups. More bake sales and petitions rather than direct action.

The selection of an advocate for economic justice with his background could be an effort to shed that image.

And it is not the beginning he has worked there with the charity.

Post-education, Rehman continued advocating for equality, working with an anti-racism group in the era when the far right was still a force in the capital.

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

But not content than just responding to everyday prejudice and government policies collaborating with activists, worked to frame equality work on a human rights level. This led him to the human rights organization, where over the next decade he worked with developing world advocates to push for a fundamental shift of the definition of basic rights. “At that time, they weren't active on inequality matters. they concentrated solely on on civil and political rights,” he states.

As the conclusion of the 1990s, his activism at the organization introduced him to various worldwide activist networks. Then they had coalesced into the counter-globalisation movement challenging free-market policies. The insights he gained from them influenced his ongoing activism.

“I visited collaborating with activists, and everybody you spoke to mentioned the climate crisis, agricultural challenges, forcing migrations,” he recalls. “I thought! Everything we have fought for through activism might be lost because of environmental collapse. This issue we're facing, it’s called climate – and yet few addressed it in those terms.”

This led Rehman to his first job at the environmental charity years ago. Back then, most environmental organisations discussed global warming as a distant threat.

“The organization stood out as the sole green group that separated with what I’d call other green organizations. pioneering creating climate equity activism,” he declares.

Rehman worked to include perspectives of affected communities during negotiations. These efforts rarely gain widespread approval. Once, he remembers, after a meeting between UK government representatives with activist organizations, a politician called his chief executive insisting he stop his strong advocacy. He didn't reveal who made the call.

“People just felt: ‘Who is this person challenge conventions?’ Consider, the environment is a nice thing, discussion is possible. [But] I viewed it as combating discrimination, defending rights … about power structures.”

Fairness perspectives found acceptance in climate and environmental campaigning. However, the opposite occurred. organizations focused on equality engaging with climate and environmental issues.

This led to the anti-poverty campaign the trade union-backed {