I am Cornell, Rights Officer at ERCS. I deliver ERCS’s work programme on raising awareness of environmental rights and supporting equitable participation in environmental decision-making. A key focus of my work is supporting marginalised groups and communities living in areas of deprivation.
Rights work and research
Since 2022, we have been working closely with different equality and human rights organisations to make the connections between social and environmental justice issues and tackle them. There are two important projects which I am currently leading on.
- The first is our collaborative work with MECOPP to challenge the environmental injustices faced by the Gypsy/Traveller Community on their residential sites. This work has been a real eye-opener for me in learning about their long-standing complaints on the significant environmental hazards they face and the lack of action. My role is to liaise with the local authority and support the community to be heard and no longer ignored. This work seeks to build an evidence base of environmental issues faced by the Community, increase awareness of environmental rights, and improve local authorities’ accountability. To date, we have worked with two public sites, one in the Highland Council and one in the South Lanarkshire Council.
- The second is an exciting new project we have called Race and the Right to a Healthy Environment. In collaboration with CEMVO, Poverty Alliance and Nourish we are seeking to surface the lived experiences and impacts of lack of access to healthy and sustainably produced food, and to multifunctional, nature-rich greenspace. We held a workshop on the 22nd of August where we heard from 36 passionate individuals from different ethnic minority backgrounds on their experiences and opinions. 22 of these individuals were eager to be involved further and have volunteered to coproduce an easy read report with the team to summarise the findings of the day.
These findings will be presented to a roundtable of experts and decision-makers. Afterwards a report will be produced outlining the priorities of Minority Ethnic Communities in Scotland.
Outside of these projects, we continue collaborating with equality and human rights organisers for example we enter our third year supporting Friends of Romano Lav with their Catalyst Program to raise awareness of environmental rights for young Roma people in Govanhill.
Environmental Justice Network
It’s been a great pleasure to support the Environmental Justice Network, a group of environmental campaigners from around Scotland who are pushing for environmental justice. My motivation is always boosted after our bimonthly meetings. I feel privileged to share their stories through the Voices for Justice blogs.
They have been together for over a year now and heavily contribute to ERCS’s work including speaking at our first Environmental Rights Summit in September 2023, speaking at our 101 webinars and handing in our petition on an enforceable right to a healthy environment to the Scottish Government.
Resources
If you want to find out more about environmental problems in Scotland, you can check out our FAQs. We are also interested to cover topics that you may want to know more about or that you think should be shared. We would love to hear from you.
If you are interested in my work or want to reach out to me you can find the details on our rights flyer.
I am excited to see what the next few months and years bring to our rights work at ERCS.
Cornell Hanxomphou
Rights Officer
