How feminism can effect climate justice
Speakers: Ivonne Yañez (Acción Ecológica), Lidy Nacpil (APMDD) and Soumaya Majdoub (VUB)
Language: English
Building a resilient future: a feminist approach towards ecologic justice
Climate justice and gender equality are closely linked. Women and girls in all their diversity bear the brunt of the consequences of climate change, such as drought, floods and other environmental problems and natural disasters.
This situation is often accompanied by an increase in poverty, insecurity and gender-based violence.
In addition, women and girls have taken the lead in social movements for climate and environmental justice. They devise and implement solutions to climate and environmental problems at all levels. Their unique experience, knowledge and skills make responses to climate change more effective and sustainable. Yet they are still too often absent from decision-making circles on climate issues and from positions that are crucial for an equitable transition.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities in this area. Progress in the area of gender equality (for example a greater involvement of women in tackling the climate problems and a climate policy with a gender-transformative approach to social relations) can therefore have a positive effect on climate justice.
In this panel, we challenge theoretical insights on a gender transformative approach with the reality in Asia and South America.
Speakers
Ivonne Yanes
Ivonne Yanez (Ecuador) is founding member of Acción Ecológica, an Ecuadorian environmental organisation in defence of collective and nature rights. She is also founding member of Oilwatch, an oil activities resistance network.
Ivonne has been an active promotor of the Keep the Oil in the Soil campaign for many years. She is the Andean articulator of the Jubilee South Americas Network and part of the Latin American Climate Justice Network. She is an activist in defence of human rights and nature. She has been working on climate change for more than 20 years and more recently on green economy, energy and energy transition.
Lidy Nacpil
Lidy Nacpil fought the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, pioneered struggles against corporate-led globalisation and debt
She is a key leader in the struggle for fair shares, climate justice and reparations of climate debt.
She currently leads the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development and plays an instrumental role in the Campaign to Demand Climate Justice and several other people's movements and networks.
Soumaya Majdoub
Soumaya Majdoub (Belgium) is a researcher at the VUB and the Universitat de Barcelona School of Economics. Her research lies at the intersection of demography, human geography, political economy and ecology, with a focus on the relationship between population growth and pressure, economic development and international migration on the one hand, and the political and public discourse on migration on the other.
She is the author of the essay Consuming like rabbits in which she corrects the dominant narrative about overpopulation and shifts the focus to the core of the (climate) problem: overconsumption and the need for a paradigm shift. She is also the founder of Women In Urbanism.
