Zarina Ahmad is a feminist climate change and race equality activist, based in Scotland & England. She has worked with a range of organisations in the UK. For over ten years, Zarina has worked to involve minority ethnic women in knowledge building and policy influencing around climate change agendas in Scotland and England, challenging assumptions in government that ‘ethnic minority communities aren’t interested’. Zarina pushes environmental groups to take an intersectional perspective, and she pushes women’s and intersectional organisations to engage with climate change.
In her own activism, Zarina facilitates minority ethnic women in generating climate change solutions using participative approaches and an intersectional analysis, and building on existing multi-generational and cultural knowledge on sustainability and global justice within their communities[1]. This type of work is hardly facilitated or researched, as most funding is project-focused, is linked to ‘ready-made policy solutions’ and does not ensure that community knowledge is used. In contrast, Zarina has long standing experience in engaging with communities that white dominated organisations have difficulty reaching and she is deeply committed both to building the capacities of other activists and to elevating the status attributed to knowledge present in minority ethnic communities which has led to Zarina’s PhD at University of Manchester. Zarina has also run a leadership academy for minority ethnic women, building the confidence and skills of minority ethnic women to engage with climate change debates using creative methods such as visual art and creative computer simulations.
With all this, Zarina makes a unique contribution to knowledge, capacity building and policy influencing on climate change agendas in and beyond Scotland.
