#COP27 WMW Positioning: No CLIMATE JUSTICE without FEMINISM
The negative effects of the climate crisis have started to be felt more and more every day. While glaciers are melting in one part of the world, countries in the other are struggling with high temperatures and drought. 47 percent of the EU lands are facing a ‘warning’ drought. In China, the lowest water level in 157 years was measured in the Yangzi River, which is the largest river in the country due to drought. Only this summer, thousands of hectares of land have been destroyed by fires in different parts of the world, and supply chains failed because of it. While fires broke out in one part of the world, floods and landslides occurred in other parts. Many people lost their lives or were forced to leave their homes due to landslides and floods in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, and Australia. Climate change is also increasingly becoming a factor behind displacement and migration. The consequences of climate change are not only physical but also psychological, economic, and political, and it is engendering further inequalities in our societies. The effects of climate change, however, are felt most acutely by people who are least responsible for causing the problem. Poor countries and populations – women, first and foremost – are increasingly vulnerable to these catastrophes. Poor women in rural areas and indigenous women are more dependent on natural resources for their survival and, in many parts of the world, they are the ones who are responsible for producing subsistence food staples, collecting water, and caring for children and the elderly. Also, climate-induced migration takes place disproportionately in poor countries and affects mostly women. Leaving their homes due to natural disasters or environmental degradation means heightened risks of various forms of violence, including sexual violence for women. Also, the impacts of climate change have disastrous consequences on their health, safety, rights, and their economic situation. All over the world, the climate crisis could exacerbate inequalities in terms of access to healthcare, healthy food, clean water, electricity, and more.
Calling out the guilty to ensure Climate Justice
In the face of this climate crisis, it is important that we think about how we got here. Scientific data prove that the planet’s deterioration is closely linked to the capitalist mode of production and the consumer model that goes hand in hand with it. To achieve climate justice, it is important to emphasize the historic responsibility of industrialized northern countries in our current situation. The main carbon emitters were all colonial powers, namely the U.S., Europe, Canada, and Australia have together accounted for more than half of cumulative global emissions.
Colonial occupations and wars also play a central role in the massive destruction of the planet’s ecology. Wars have numerous repercussions on nature: pollution from arms manufacturers and security system makers, the environmental cost of maintaining armies and preparing for conflicts, the effects of bombs and weapons of war on natural environments, and the list goes on. Despite these facts, countries leading in emission production and consumption deliberately prefer not to talk about the emission rates of their military. For example, The US military’s emission exceeds that of nearly 140 countries, and also it is the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum and, thus, the world’s largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases. In addition to the devastating effects of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine on people, its effects on the climate crisis should also need to be considered. This dangerous relationship between fossil fuels, military missions, and war needs to end.
Instead of talking about these rates, countries started to talk about climate change as a security issue, they started to address the climate crisis as a national security threat. This kind of thinking implies that those who are the most affected by climate change and those who had nothing to do with contributing to the crisis and who are the victims of the climate crisis are now being called “a threat” to countries’ national security. Now, the US, UK, Canada, and Australia spending more than twice as much on arming their borders compared to what they spend on climate finance. That’s why our demand is not only the reducing emissions of the military but also to stop military missions and wars. We should build a world together that tackles our challenges across borders.
We refuse to bear the burden of the climate crisis on our shoulders. Those who created the climate crisis must pay the bill for it!
In this year, the annual UN Climate Change Conference will be held in Egypt from November 6th to 18th, 2022. This will be the 27th conference which is commonly referred to as COP 27. We are all inching closer to a climate catastrophe, but political leaders and major corporations are too immersed in their competition for resources, markets, and geopolitical dominance to take the necessary measures to save our planet. The solution to the climate crisis will not come from those who caused the crisis. The climate crisis cannot be discussed from a perspective that favors the interests of capital. Capitalists, known for their projects realized by usurping our air, water, lands, right to a healthy life, and democratic rights, are responsible for the climate crisis. The results of the order of destruction and exploitation that encompasses all areas of life are obvious.
Our feminist vision of the twofold issue of climate and the environment see the destruction of nature as part of the very organization of capitalism, in its never-ending quest for profit. It is not enough to observe that the impacts of this system are worse for women. Our work is based on the finding that capitalism uses patriarchal structures in its current process of accumulation.
As a result, we do not believe in actions that only aim to reduce the negative impacts of the system of production. Instead, we want to develop our fight to transform the structures that are responsible for unequal relations and power struggles, by combining the perspectives of class, race, sexuality, and gender. Because of this, we are arguing that a feminist approach to climate justice is necessary.
The World March of Women fights for real change: Our plan is based on strengthening the ties between women, and awareness-raising of the concerns shared by all women, particularly locally, in the fight for changes in consumer patterns and the capitalist system’s production model. Our challenge entails uniting women’s struggles, both rural and urban, against environmental inequality, in order to safeguard public services and common goods, protect nature, and fight the privatization of our lives, among others. Fights for food sovereignty, agro-ecological resistance (traditionally led by women), the feminist politicization of the right to control one own body, the construction of women’s autonomy, and the central importance of caring for life and nature all combine to produce political convergences capable of building a new paradigm of sustainable life, based on equality and concern for future generations.
That’s why, as feminists, we are saying that;
There can be no Climate Justice without Feminism.
As a result, we do not believe in actions that only aim to reduce the negative impacts of the system of production. Instead, we want to develop our fight to transform the structures that are responsible for unequal relations and power struggles, by combining the perspectives of class, race, sexuality, and gender. Because of this, we are arguing that a feminist approach to climate justice is necessary. The World March of Women fights for real change: Our plan is based on strengthening the ties between women, and awareness-raising of the concerns shared by all women, particularly locally, in the fight for changes in consumer patterns and the capitalist system’s production model. Our challenge entails uniting women’s struggles, both rural and urban, against environmental inequality, in order to safeguard public services and common goods, protect nature, and fight the privatization of our lives, among others. Fights for food sovereignty, agro-ecological resistance (traditionally led by women), the feminist politicization of the right to control one own body, the construction of women’s autonomy, and the central importance of caring for life and nature all combine to produce political convergences capable of building a new paradigm of sustainable life, based on equality and concern for future generations. That’s why, as feminists, we are saying that; There can be no Climate Justice without Feminism.
