Inspirational mum leads battle to end air pollution that killed her daughter
I have the solutions, but no one in government wants to hear them
WHEN Rosamund Kissi-Debrah takes to the stage at this Sunday’s Mothers’ Climate March, she will do so for her daughter.
Ella died in 2013 at the age of just nine, after three years of seizures and 28 visits to hospital for asthma attacks.
Last week, after years of tireless fighting, Rosamund won a new inquest for her daughter after new evidence emerged over a connection to air pollution.
This inspirational former teacher from South East London now has a message for all of us. “I’m just a single mum from Lewisham fighting against all these powerful interests,” she says. “My campaigning started to get justice for Ella, but I also want to tell people how urgent this is.
“Climate change is happening now. Air pollution is killing people now. We have to do something about it this second.”
Air pollution is linked to 40,000 early deaths a year in the UK. This week, data from the London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory revealed 2.6 million children go to school in areas where levels of toxic particles exceed the World Health Organisation’s recommended limit.
Ella’s family live near one of London’s busiest roads. “Now we know the air my daughter was breathing was killing her,” Rosamund says. “I have to try to stop that happening to other children.”
Since the first inquest, she has discovered the terrible truth that 27 out of 28 of the times Ella was hospitalised coincided with very high spikes in pollution in her neighbourhood.
This time round, she wants the coroner to record ‘air pollution’ as a contributory factor in her death. “If that happens, she will be the first child in the world,” Rosamund says. The Mothers’ Climate March – which takes place on International Mother’s Day – has been inspired by the global schoolchildren protests led by Greta Thunberg. “If my Ells had still been alive, she would have been more or less the same age as Greta,” Rosamund says. “They would have had a lot in common. Ells was a bit of a tomboy and very focused like Greta. Young people are smart – they have always got it. So I’m not surprised to see leadership coming from young people.”
Ella’s legacy may be to “change the law for people in London, the UK and even the world”, her mum says. Greta’s has been to lead the climate change debate into the mainstream, suffering crude attacks from trolls along the way.
“As a former secondary school head of year, I do worry about Greta,” Rosamund says. “Social media is so brutal. You have to ask what would possess grown men to attack a 16-year-old with autism online. If she was one of my students I’d have gone straight to the police to report them for bullying.”
Shamefully, Rosamund has had her own share of attacks. “The deniers often want to tell me how or why my
daughter died. I say to them, ‘You know what, speak to her pathologist’,” she says. “Or they say ‘I blame the parents’ and want to know why we didn’t move house. During the period she was ill, Ella was in a coma four times and hospitalised 27 times – we didn’t have time to be moving house. And at that time, we didn’t know what was causing it.”
Ella was a gifted child, physically, mentally and musically, with a big smile. She dreamed of being an RAF pilot and was on her way to playing for Millwall FC despite her life-threatening asthma.
Now, through her charity, the Ella Roberta Family Foundation, Rosamund is fighting for clean air for her surviving 12-year-old twins, Ella’s classmates and kids across the globe. “When I look at the type of people who do environmental campaigning there aren’t that many people who look and sound like me,” she admits. “I understand when people are trying to put food on the table, they often feel like they can’t take on air pollution as well.
“But all the data shows people from deprived areas are the worst affected, whether it’s here or the US. They are more likely to live close to busy roads and to have old diesel cars because they can’t afford anything else.”
She speaks quietly, and from experience. “When a child dies, whether from knife crime or asthma, it does affect the whole school. It has the same emotional impact.”
Rosamund has had strong support from London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who wrote to the Attorney General in support of Ella’s case. The Mayor recently introduced an Ultra-Low Emissions Zone in London, and suffers from adult onset asthma himself. But Rosamund says she is yet to see Environment Secretary Michael Gove, despite asking for meetings.
“I have the solutions – it just seems no one in government wants to hear them,” she says. “But Michael Gove knows I want to see him, and I’m a positive person so I think he’s going to see me in the end.”
Among other things, she wants to ask him for a diesel scrappage scheme, and a ban on building new schools and housing developments in highly polluted areas. “I know he’s got the money because they found £500m for a no-deal Brexit,” she says.
Rosamund is Britain’s Greta Thunberg, the activist for our times. “As a teacher, I always wanted to improve the lives of young people,” she says. “I’m not able to teach since my daughter’s death – so this is what I can do for young people now.”