TRANSCRIPT

The Green Alliance Podcast | Why inclusive policy matters: an interview with Hirra Khan Adeogun, Possible

SPEAKERS

Hirra Khan Adeogun, Sophie O’Connell

 

Sophie O’Connell 

Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast. We’re the charity and think tank that’s all about achieving ambitious leadership for the environment. I’m Sophie, Policy Advisor at Green Alliance. In this episode, I speak with Hirra Khan Adeogun from the organisation Possible. We discuss the importance of NGOs and think tanks undertaking public engagement around their policymaking, and the benefits and challenges that this can bring. Welcome, Hirra, thank you so much for joining.

Hirra Khan Adeogun 

Hi Sophie. Thanks for having me.

Sophie O’Connell 

First of all, it would be great to hear from you about your position at Possible and give a bit of an overview of the work that you do at Possible, not just limited to transport, but all your policy areas.

Hirra Khan Adeogun 

Yeah so Possible is a UK based charity and the way we see ourselves is we speed up climate action, and we inspire people to play their role in the creation of this zero carbon Britain that we know we need to build. And we need to see. We’re a really positive organisation – a lot of our campaigns are, yes, focused, we don’t do “no’s”, we do solutions and ‘yeses’. But we also do a lot of bold, innovative work. So frequent flyer levy is kind of an example of something that my co director Leo kind of pioneered and came up with. But we’re also really grounded – we do things like Fixing Factory, which is, it kind of does what it says on the tin, you’ve got broken appliances, bring them down to the fixing factory, and we’ll have people on hand who can help you fix your item. And the thing that I’m most closely linked to is the car free cities work we’ve done which is all about sustainable urban transport, and how that touches on people’s lives. I think all of the areas we work on, it’s the stuff that people can directly get involved with and affect. And we know that when it comes to lifestyles, we work across the four areas that are key to reducing carbon. So we’ve got this strand called Getting Around, that’s where all the transport kind of work sits. There’s the strand called Getting Away, which is about how we go on holidays. And we have things like the frequent flyer levy and Climate Perks that sits under that. We’ve got a strand on Where We Live, which is all about homes and the way we heat our homes and the transition to basically having warmer homes and what that involves. And then finally, there’s What We Eat and Buy. And that’s where things like Fixing Factory and ‘Badvertising’ and we’ve got a new project coming up called Menu Flipping, that’s where all of that sits. And I guess the only other thing that would be relevant for me to say here is that we’ve got two key audiences. So as you know, we work across and with the general public. Key audiences are the Access Audience, and we describe that as people who are typically excluded from climate conversations. And I think there’s an acknowledgement that over the past few decades, climate conversations have been led by a very niche and narrow group of people. And we want to expand that out. And then there’s what we call the excess audience. And they are typically the people with the power and the privilege and they are the highest carbon emitters in the UK at the moment. And that’s where things like frequent flyer levy or event Climate Perks, they’re targeted at those people,

Sophie O’Connell 

Both Green Alliance and Possible are aligned in kind of our mission to change climate policy, but Green Alliance’s audience is much more focused towards a political audience and changing via the policymakers. Whereas Possible has that connection more with the public. So you’re more naturally aligned, I suppose to participatory research methods and kind of getting people involved in your policymaking. So what would you say from your experience are the most important reasons for the public to be involved in policymaking in think tanks and NGOs, particularly on issues like climate change, which are going to affect all of us, if not already are.

Hirra Khan Adeogun 

You can come up with an amazing, you know, policy. But if politicians don’t think it’s popular, they’re not going to implement it. If they think that there’s a political cost to them doing so, very few politicians will kind of stick their heads on the line, really, and go for it. And so what we do is help amplify those voices of the people on the ground who are calling for the solutions. But also, what we do is present how these solutions will actually mean a better life for everyone. And so it’s the kind of convincing or not even convincing because I think everyone wants warmer homes and safer streets and better public transport – all of that. That’s the kind of world people want to live in. But I think it’s about showcasing to the public and bringing them on board basically saying that, you know, this is a problem you’re dealing with, here’s a solution and also being like this will help make you better. I think the other line that’s often used in sort of campaigning is ‘nothing about us without us.’ And so that’s, you know, if you’re talking about transport, and you’re talking about disabled people, and you’re not disabled yourself, and you’ve not spoken to any disabled people, what would you know what it’s like? How could you so I think a lot of the work is about where are the gaps in your knowledge and plugging that. And of course, there’s stuff that will work in theory, but it won’t work in practice for a million reasons. You know, if you’re sitting in an ivory tower, you’re not going to be familiar with. And I don’t mean that by Green Alliance at all being sitting in an ivory tower, I just mean, like, that’s the importance of getting on the ground and getting that feedback.

Sophie O’Connell 

One thing we struggle with is, particularly in polling, if you polled people on a potential policy solution, people will say, oh, yes, well, I’ll get the bus if there’s better lighting, or if there are more buses or if it’s cheaper. But it can be actually a very different result in practice. You can do all those things, and it doesn’t mean people are necessarily going to get the bus. And with the more light touch, kind of involvement of people, sometimes, you’re kind of going off hypotheticals, which like you said, don’t happen in practice. Also something that you mentioned the ‘not about us, without us’; that came up in my conversation with Transport For All as well. And they were saying how so many different disabilities needs conflict in others. So it’s really important to get like a cross section. And not just think about kind of wheelchair access, but other needs as well.

Hirra Khan Adeogun 

Something that was really interesting there that you just said, and I think it comes up in a lot of these climate conversations we’re gonna be having this consistently going forward, is that there’s this assumption that some magic policy exists that will work for everyone everywhere at all times. And the reality is, that’s just simply not true. So we do need to be realistic about it. What I think getting people involved helps you do is: one, complexify the situation so you have a real understanding of the context you’re working in. But two: I think it adds that level of humanity and brings to life the real problems at the heart of it, it doesn’t become an abstract, oh, you know, who cares that this small percentage of people will be affected? It’s like, well, no, that’s actually pretty disastrous for some people, depending on the policy you’re talking about. So I think it’s really, really important. We bring in the voices of the winners and the losers of any given policy, and really try to wrestle with what’s the fairest and most equitable way of resolving this.

Sophie O’Connell 

And I think we’ve seen that with recent politics, where some other I guess, a vocal minority can really kind of hijack a whole narrative about a policy. Think tanks and other NGOs won’t have all the knowledge, they don’t have the local expertise that people have. If we’re suggesting low traffic neighbourhoods, the people on the ground and that live in that neighbourhood, know which roads are less used, and which ones are kind of crucial. So just moving on, it would be great to hear a bit more about the car from cities programme that you work on. And I was wondering if you could talk a bit about how you’ve engaged and worked with communities there, and what kind of barriers there were to do that effective engagement? Yeah, so

Hirra Khan Adeogun 

I think the starting point for Possible is, before I joined, Possible, was a predominantly London centric organisation, that didn’t really do work outside of London. I mean, we worked in certain areas, but like, all the staff sort of lived in London, and then kind of COVID hit, but then the car-free cities programme meant we wanted to do work in different cities. And I think the key thing there was to hire people who were already doing this work, who were already embedded in the communities we wanted to work in. And a lot of those people came from a community organising background. They’ve got all the networks on the ground so let’s give them a salary to do the work that we know needs to be done. So I think that’s sort of first and foremost, who are you hiring and what is their expertise? Now, these weren’t professional campaigners by and large, there’s a little bit of a motley crew when you look at it, but they were fantastic at doing that community engagement work that we wanted to do. I think some other examples is again, never assuming that people will want to come to events that you’re holding, or have the conversation that you want to have. So a lot of this was we might want to talk about something. And we have to go to where the people are to talk about it. Let’s not hire out some random hall somewhere and expect people to turn up. A lot of the kind of events and engagements that we did do ended up being outside schools, in mosques, in churches, in community halls. There was a community kitchen in Birmingham that I’m thinking of, there’s all sorts of like, what are the venues and who is used to the venue and where are the people you want to engage? Fit it in around their day to day lives, don’t expect people to go out of their way to talk to you about something that at the moment might feel quite tangential to everything else they have going on. A lot of the time, we did pay people to participate based on the fact that yeah, people are busy, they’ve got jobs, they’ve got kids, they’ve got family, why on earth would they spend two, three hours of their time talking to you. And I think that was a really important aspect of the work that we did do. And I know that’s a struggle for people to hear – resources are limited across the board – but time is valuable. The other thing we kind of thought about and it’s relatively new, for Possible is not just paying people to turn up and participate, but paying for the extra things people might have on their list. So for example, that’s paying for carers. If they’ve got kids, they’re going to have to get a child minder to look after their kids, a babysitter, pay them some money to be able to cover the time for that, or if they’re an adult carer, paying for a carer to come along and look after family whilst they’re doing this workshop with you. It’s basically thinking about every barrier that could stop people participating, and finding a way to remedy that, or mitigate that. We were sort of intentionally using a purposive sample frame for every time we did a workshop or a group. So we knew we wanted this very stratified representation across the board to include things like gender, ethnicity, disabilities, or caring groups. And that just meant we had all of these different voices. When we did our going car-free project, we had disabled people taking part, we had mostly parents taking part it was, you know, everyone from all sorts of different backgrounds. Those were intentional decisions, it meant recruitment took a little bit longer, because the low hanging fruit’s quite easy, it’s harder to make sure you really have that diverse representation. At Possible, we’ve had this series of anti oppression training, so everyone’s using the right kind of language. And it’s a welcoming environment, facilitation training, and making sure that people are equipped. So if you’re inviting people to your space, are you yourself equipped to hold that space? Just a bit more on the engagement. Is there an instance where – I’m sure there are loads – where you’ve done engagement, and it’s really changed what you had thought the policy outcome was going to look like originally? So how has that kind of shaped any recommendations or policy? Or do you go in without preconceived ideas and be really open to any suggestions? Yeah I mean, there’s loads into this. Some of it, yes. So, for example, in our going car-free, we wanted to run a sort of bus campaign in Birmingham and in Leeds, and then we ran the going car-free project. And then what came out of that is actually the buses were shockingly bad for most people. And then at that point, I just felt like we can’t really justify running a campaign encouraging people to use the bus when actually the bus networks are so bad like that in my head was the wrong approach and the wrong thing to do. So I think in the end, what we did end up doing was campaigning for bus franchising in Birmingham, helping that conversation progress in Birmingham, but we didn’t run a you know, ‘everyone leave your car behind, get on the bus’, because it’s not going to work for most people. You’re setting people up for failure in that sense. Another example, I guess was LTN’s. And it’s probably it might surprise people. So Possible is a very pro LTN organisation. We’ve done loads of research on why LTN’s are great, all the benefits that LTN can do. But I think a more complex picture emerged, the more this conversation went on. And therefore my stance on LTN’s is now they’re great, I think all the research backs up that they’re great. But ultimately, it’s a very small and very cheap thing that you can put in to protect your minor roads from traffic. But if this is turning into a much more contentious issue, there are bigger wins to be made through other policy avenues. And for me, that is things like councils are stretched, local authorities are really, really stretched when it comes to their budgets. Parking and how you charge for parking seems like such an obvious thing you can do that will have such a big impact when it comes to carbon emissions. So for example, if you start introducing some kind of carbon, you know, ensuring that people that have larger cars, higher emitting cars are paying more through your parking permits. That is a no brainer to me. And so I think that the thing about LTN, I haven’t changed my mind on where LTN’s are, I think I’ve just, it’s been a change in perspective as to if this is such a hostile thing, what are the other policies that will could potentially get us greater wins in the long term?

Sophie O’Connell 

I guess the narrative around it has become so negative that it almost outweighs the benefit in some way. Because it’s quite a small impact on a small global area, not to say that that’s not important. People are very entitled to safer, quieter, cleaner residential roads. But if there are bigger ones to be made, then put our efforts there, I guess.

Hirra Khan Adeogun 

And you know, a lot of people were just shocked, I think at how quickly it went in. So this is the other thing that I say –  we’ve had LTN’s for about 60 years, we’ve got about 60 years worth of evidence that these things work. The difference here is that they were put in for some people feeling like it was overnight, and then people got very, very angry. So I would say, okay, hit pause on this, we can come back to this in a couple of, like you can do the proper full consultation process, go at a more sustainable pace, if you will. But in the meantime, there are greater wins to be had, I think.

Sophie O’Connell 

Yeah, I think that’s a lesson to be learned and applied to lots of other policy areas, like the need for renewables, and that we need real proper consultation there and local communities don’t feel like it’s being imposed on them, make sure that the consultation is really thorough. Also, just for listeners, LTN is low traffic neighbourhoods. So I know it’s hard to narrow down, but are you able to put into kind of three points that you’d like listeners to take away from this discussion about the importance of public participation in policymaking?

Hirra Khan Adeogun 

I mean, this is going to sound a little bit contradictory to what I’ve just said now, but I think it is important to remember that consultations are not referendums, and they shouldn’t be treated as such. And also political leaders do need to lead. So I think particularly when it comes to the climate crisis, as I said, the way policy works, I’m never going to find this magic policy that works for everyone, everywhere. So what you want to be doing is ensuring you’ve properly consulted, heard a range of views, a broad range of views. And then you’re going to need to find consensus. And that’s not the same as finding agreement, or everyone being 100% on board, it’s what can everyone live with, or what is a sensible compromise to be made here. And I think the other thing is to basically go where people are, don’t expect people to come to you go where they are, hear what they have to say, meet them where they are. But ultimately, the climate crisis is impending. It’s increasing, it’s on an exponential level. So we’re running out of time. And the longer we keep this up, the more drastic the changes we need are going to be made. And the public knows that. But I think it needs to see its leaders acting as if we are in fact in a climate crisis. So part of this is it’s a mirror, right? So public participation can’t be in isolation. And I say this as someone who lives in Tower Hamlets, and I see what’s going on where the leader is basically saying, I’m going to where the people are. And I’m like, but where are you taking them? Like, you’ve gone to where they are, but are you leading them anywhere? And if so, where? Where is the vision here? I’m not sure if that’s what you wanted me to say, though?

Sophie O’Connell 

No, it is. I think there’s such importance on, like you said, leaders to lead and lead by example, and say, we need to do this, but also make the argument that there’s so many benefits to be had. And sometimes that might be compromise for some people. But also, I think on what you said about consensus rather than agreement. I wonder if that’s kind of more difficult in the current political climate and in the era of social media, and misinformation and things kind of going viral. But it seems to sort of derail conversations, but it feels like with leaders having a vision and demonstrating the benefits of these policies that it should work out in theory.

Hirra Khan Adeogun 

Yeah, politics is all about power, right? And when we’re talking about community, that’s not a term that is neutral in and of itself, because who is in the community and who is outside of the community, right, and who counts as a constituent and who doesn’t. So, for example, cyclists are considered a particular constituent, motorists are considered a particular constituent, in a way that public transport users aren’t and have been so ignored. Bus users have been so ignored for so long. So when it comes to public participation, some of this is about seeing who has been ignored in policy debate for so long, and maybe turning up in those spaces and amplifying the voices of those who’ve been unheard for so so long. Yeah definitely, rather than it being the same voices and going to the same places to hear what people think. Yeah, exactly.

Sophie O’Connell 

Well, thanks Hirra. I think we’ll draw to a close there but so much insightful information from you and your work at Possible.

Hirra Khan Adeogun 

Thanks Sophie!

Sophie O’Connell 

Thanks for listening to this Green Alliance podcast. Keep checking in as we continue to bring you specialist interviews and highlights from our events here on your podcast feed. You can subscribe to the Green Alliance podcast on your favourite podcast app, and can follow us @greenallianceuk on Twitter and Instagram. And the Green Alliance LinkedIn. See you next time.