The past couple of years have witnessed a strong political backlash against net zero targets and climate change policies. This is often most pronounced in rural and peripheral areas outside of the major cities. In the UK, support for Reform has grown rapidly, allowing them to capture several councils in the May 2025 local government elections, including County Durham in North East England. Yet, despite this backlash, a recent workshop held in Newcastle upon Tyne demonstrates that the North East boasts a diverse range of organisations and community groups engaged in environmentally sustainable and socially just activities.
Imagining a sustainable and just North East
Workshop participants were asked to think about what a just sustainability transition would look like for the region. In addition to widespread access to nature and green space, they highlighted two key themes. The first is concerned with the devolution of power and increased democratic engagement. This involves meaningful collaboration between grassroots community organisations and local government and a sense that the wider community is represented in democratic decision making, helping to depolarise politics.
The second focuses on economic and social outcomes. In this respect, a just and sustainable North East would be based on the operation of a sharing and circular economy whereby local wealth is retained within the region. This model of development would use more holistic measures that account for wellbeing and nature, not just GVA and growth. The region would have well-funded and effective public services, with fairly distributed resources and reduced inequality.
It is striking that the ‘just’ aspect of transition in term of fairness and inclusion is more prominent than the environmental one relating to the achievement of sustainability and the mitigation of climate change. This reflects that fact that is often easier to imagine what social justice would look like in relation to addressing local needs and alleviating inequality than it is to see the benefits of climate action, which often appear rather abstract and global in scale.
What is the region good at?
The North East has a long tradition of collective action and social justice that continues today. Participants were asked to think about the opportunities that exist in the region and what assets and practices could be built on in the fight to achieve the vision set out above. Some of the regional strengths included a diverse geography with great natural assets. Proud, generous, resilient, caring people and a thriving and diverse VCSE sector with good infrastructure and support. People talked about their hope that the recently devolved North East Combined Authority (NECA) will be able to improve local decision making and community involvement.
Well-connected communities with strong local institutions and practices are resilient in face of adverse conditions and inequalities. There was a recognition among participants that communities in the region have many of the historical and cultural building blocks they need to become stronger and more resilient, though there are powerful barriers preventing this from happening.
What the main barriers to progress?
The centralisation of the UK and the North East’s physical distance from London has long been seen as a barrier to local needs being understood and adequately represented in national policy decisions. Closer to home, the fragmented geography of the region and the siloed working of local government has led to a lack of holistic decision-making and an inability to properly respond to the interlinked crises. It was also noted that the new combined authority has yet to demonstrate its value. There was concern among some that NECA may just become another layer of bureaucracy creating more, rather than less, distance between local people and decision makers.
All of these concerns sit in the wider political landscape of decades of austerity, short-term funding and entrenched structural inequalities which are particularly acute in the North East. The rise of the far right and Reform UK are a serious threat. These forces are being fed by the social divisions, exacerbated by media landscape fuelled on sensationalism, click-bait and outrage. After many years of a worsening economic and political realities, the volunteer base is experiencing burnout and fragility, weaking our ability to resist social and environmental unrest.
These barriers are familiar and faced by many localities in the UK and beyond. Local action is essential to address injustices that result from these systemic issues, though the systems themselves will require transformation at a local, national and international level.
Conclusions
The local participants recognised that the transformations required to create a just, sustainable future will need to happen on various scales and in many different areas of life. All need to be joined up. Our economic systems must be circular, generative and ensure that the basic needs of people are met in a way that respects planetary boundaries. Our political systems must devolve power to local people and increase democratic engagement across the board. Culturally, they require stories, narratives and engagement practices that heal divisions, bring people together and value evidence and emotion. These sorts of transformations cannot be realised purely by local action, though this is where it must start; in real places, with local people and through open and hopeful communication.
