Climate Change

Most regions in the world have been – to some extent – affected by climate change, and Southeast Asian countries are no exception. Within the group of people who are affected,  recognition needs to be accentuated on the disproportionate impact of climate change along gender lines. It is essential for the region to further enhance their collaborative climate actions to respond to the need of a gender transformational change that will increase women’s resiliency toward the risk of climate change.

Most of food production in Africa is shouldered by small scale farmers and the majority of farmers are women. Alarmed by the effects of climate change on her family’s farm Ayakha Melithafa from South Africa’s Western Cape joined an environmental school club and engages now in a national and an international youth movements for climate justice.

The climate crisis is the result of relations of power and exploitation, between the Global North and the Global South as well as between people and nature. A decolonial approach in climate activism stands for a radical break with colonial principles of economic, political and social systems – including industrial agriculture and landgrabbing. A conversation with Ruth Nyambura, climate activist from Kenya.

For centuries, resources have been extracted from the African continent without adequate payment or compensation. With colonialism, Khoikhoi and San, the first inhabitants of Southern Africa, lost their land and many lost their lives. During decades of Apartheid they were racially discriminated and still have to fight for political and economic inclusion in the post-Apartheid era. We spoke to the Khoikhoi lawyer Lesle Jansen about her fight for the community and for the legal acknowledgement of the cultural heritage of Indigenous people.

Is the European Green Deal gender blind? How can the EU deal with the danger of a backlash on gender equality in the face of pandemic and the subsequent economic crisis? Which ways forward are there to better connect the feminist and climate movements?

March is often celebrated as International Women’s Month with March 8 officially declared as International Women’s Day to shine the light on the different issues and inequalities women around the world face. This year’s theme is aptly described as “An equal world is an enabled world”, a fitting line to describe the various inequalities that women experience around the world and the need for us to acknowledge and work towards dismantling the structures of inequalities that exist. 

Mother Nature is once again the subject of the male gaze but this time the impact may be even more oppressive. This article expands the feminist concept of ‘male gaze’ towards nature and critiques geoengineering as being an inherently male/masculine technology that is a product of and a means to further capitalistic agenda.