Yorkshire climate change stories to be shared as part of campaign to empower communities in Hull and beyond

Starting with places which are at high risk of flooding, including Hull and the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, people are being asked to share their story of how climate change will affect them.

Hull was the location for Rights Community Action’s inaugural project, Shorelines, where a series of murals were created with the community to illustrate the East Yorkshire port city’s vulnerability to flooding.

The new campaign launched last month on International Human Solidarity Day (December 20) and Anira Khokhar, project manager for the #WeAreHere, said “it is more important than ever that we, as a people and as communities, share our thoughts on how climate change is affecting us all.

“As an active member of the community, I have seen and heard how people suffer here at home, in the United Kingdom and in Pakistan."

In Pakistan, more than 1,700 have been reported dead after widespread flooding which started in June last year during the monsoon season. The country’s government said the figure for losses and rebuilding stood at more than $30bn, the BBC reported in November.

Anira says: "The anguish of what the future holds for all of us, our families and our homes is the common ground for unity.

"It is therefore essential for us to understand the impacts of our actions and to work collectively.”

Rights Community Action and Glimpse will be providing free legal and planning advice and creating public artworks that help the communities tell their story, not just in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire but in areas such as coastal Suffolk and Taunton Deane.

They have started meeting with local people, connecting with organisations, running creative sessions and listening to communities’ concerns.

The #WeAreHere project has launched amid the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, which is passing its way through the House of Lords scrutiny process.

Rights Community Actions says the bill reduces public involvement in planning and centralises planning policy.

Naomi Luhde-Thompson, director of the organisation, says: “WeAreHere is about more of us being heard, and especially those of us facing the most severe impacts of climate change that are our inevitable future. Government has to start making it possible for people and communities to decide what action should be taken on climate change, instead of making it impossible by taking power away from people through centralising planning.”

However, a Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesman said: “This is a fundamental misinterpretation of the Bill.

“The Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill will give communities greater say in local plans, more opportunity to shape their area and stronger grounds to resist unwanted development.”

Rights Community Action’s Shorelines mural project has in recent years highlighted how Hull could be affected by floods because of climate change.

Hundreds of millions of pounds are being spent on bolstering defences around Yorkshire after the devastating floods caused by Storm Eva in December 2015 and the deluges which damaged thousands of properties when a month’s worth of rainfall fell in 24 hours, in November 2019.

In just one example, the £400m Connected by Water Action Plan, designed to protect more than 17,000 homes, businesses and infrastructure across South Yorkshire, was launched last year.

Rights Community Action is a coalition of campaigners, lawyers, planners, facilitators, writers and scientists, "united by a shared commitment to tackle the Climate Emergency – with people and for people, and the environment”.

Glimpse, meanwhile, is a “global collective for creative people who want to use their skills for good”, which works with non-governmental organisations and and runs its own campaigns with “creativity and community at the heart”.

For more information about the work of Rights Community Action, visit: www.rightscommunityaction.co.uk