Yenbou Salima
Member of the European Parliament, Committee on Culture and Education
France
Biography
Originally from Aulnay-sous-Bois, Salima Yenbou is passionate about education and training. She started out as a teacher, then became a school principal and, until 2019, deputy headmaster of a professional high school and teacher trainer. Involved in the associative world from a very young age, she became involved in politics and was elected Member of the European Parliament in 2019. Her project for a multicultural, ecological, inclusive Europe, open to the world and protective of human rights and freedoms is at the heart of her work in Brussels and Strasbourg.
Organisation
European Parliament
EU Institutions
Speaker session
Break-out session 2:
Environmental racism and climate justice
Environmental racism is a form of systemic, structural racism whereby racialised communities are disproportionately burdened with health hazards through policies and practices that force them to live in proximity to sources of toxic waste such as sewage works, mines, landfills, power stations, major roads and emitters of airborne particulate matter. As a result, these communities suffer greater rates of health problems. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed these underlying inequalities and exclusion, and their potentially dire health consequences.
A recent report highlights the severe and systemic environmental racism which Roma communities across Europe face. Roma communities often live on polluted wastelands and lack running water or sanitation in their homes as a result of “environmental racism”, a report has concluded. At the same time, several other persons or communities who have sought refuge in EU countries because of climate change in their home countries in Africa or in the Middle East are now impacted by racism.
The aim of the break-out session is to examine, how the issue of environmental racism can be effectively addressed by means of the European Green Deal.
Moderator: Vera Winthagen, JRC 01, European Commission
Scene setting: Arnold Kreilhuber, Head of the International Environmental Law Unit in the Division of Environmental Law and Conventions of the United Nations Environment Programme
- Teresa Aristegui, DG ENER B1, European Commission
- Ufuk Kâhya, Member of the Committee of Regions, Alderman of Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands
- Gabriela Hrabanova, ERGO Network
- Archana Ramanujam, ENAR
- Linda Greta Zsiga, Romani activist
- Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, World Health Organisation Advocate for Health and Air and Quality and co-founder of the Ella Roberta Family Foundation
Adoo Kissi Debrah Rosamund
World Health Organisation Advocate for Health and Air and Quality, BreatheLife champion
London | United Kingdom
Biography
Rosamund became a clean air advocate after her 9-year-old daughter, Ella, died in 2013 from asthma. Rosamund spent several years campaigning for a second coroner's inquest into Ella's death to determine whether it was linked to air pollution. In a landmark decision in December 2020, the coroner ruled it was. Ella is now the first person in the world to have air pollution listed as a cause of death on her death certificate. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association and was named among You Magazine's 21 Most Extraordinary Women of 2021, British Vogue's 25 Extraordinary Women of 2021, The Times' Green Power List 2021 and BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour's Power List 2020.
Organisation
Speaker session
Break-out session 2:
Environmental racism and climate justice
Environmental racism is a form of systemic, structural racism whereby racialised communities are disproportionately burdened with health hazards through policies and practices that force them to live in proximity to sources of toxic waste such as sewage works, mines, landfills, power stations, major roads and emitters of airborne particulate matter. As a result, these communities suffer greater rates of health problems. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed these underlying inequalities and exclusion, and their potentially dire health consequences.
A recent report highlights the severe and systemic environmental racism which Roma communities across Europe face. Roma communities often live on polluted wastelands and lack running water or sanitation in their homes as a result of “environmental racism”, a report has concluded. At the same time, several other persons or communities who have sought refuge in EU countries because of climate change in their home countries in Africa or in the Middle East are now impacted by racism.
The aim of the break-out session is to examine, how the issue of environmental racism can be effectively addressed by means of the European Green Deal.
Moderator: Vera Winthagen, JRC 01, European Commission
Scene setting: Arnold Kreilhuber, Head of the International Environmental Law Unit in the Division of Environmental Law and Conventions of the United Nations Environment Programme
- Teresa Aristegui, DG ENER B1, European Commission
- Ufuk Kâhya, Member of the Committee of Regions, Alderman of Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands
- Gabriela Hrabanova, ERGO Network
- Archana Ramanujam, ENAR
- Linda Greta Zsiga, Romani activist
- Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, World Health Organisation Advocate for Health and Air and Quality and co-founder of the Ella Roberta Family Foundation
Aristegui Teresa
Legal and policy officer
Biography
Teresa Aristegui joined the Commission as a legal and policy officer in 2019 where she works at DG ENER’s unit in charge of local initiatives, consumers and just transition. Teresa broadly assists the Directorate by providing legal advice on a variety of retail market issues and more specifically supports her unit in the development of the energy poverty initiatives in the framework of the EU’s Green Deal commitment to ensure a just energy transition.
Speaker session
Break-out session 2:
Environmental racism and climate justice
Environmental racism is a form of systemic, structural racism whereby racialised communities are disproportionately burdened with health hazards through policies and practices that force them to live in proximity to sources of toxic waste such as sewage works, mines, landfills, power stations, major roads and emitters of airborne particulate matter. As a result, these communities suffer greater rates of health problems. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed these underlying inequalities and exclusion, and their potentially dire health consequences.
A recent report highlights the severe and systemic environmental racism which Roma communities across Europe face. Roma communities often live on polluted wastelands and lack running water or sanitation in their homes as a result of “environmental racism”, a report has concluded. At the same time, several other persons or communities who have sought refuge in EU countries because of climate change in their home countries in Africa or in the Middle East are now impacted by racism.
The aim of the break-out session is to examine, how the issue of environmental racism can be effectively addressed by means of the European Green Deal.
Moderator: Vera Winthagen, JRC 01, European Commission
Scene setting: Arnold Kreilhuber, Head of the International Environmental Law Unit in the Division of Environmental Law and Conventions of the United Nations Environment Programme
- Teresa Aristegui, DG ENER B1, European Commission
- Ufuk Kâhya, Member of the Committee of Regions, Alderman of Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands
- Gabriela Hrabanova, ERGO Network
- Archana Ramanujam, ENAR
- Linda Greta Zsiga, Romani activist
- Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, World Health Organisation Advocate for Health and Air and Quality and co-founder of the Ella Roberta Family Foundation