Queer Climate Futures

Ecofeminist Activist Narratives and the Climate Justice Movement

About the Project

This research examines how the contemporary generation of feminist and queer climate justice activists conceptualizes the connection between heteropatriarchy and the climate crisis. Using frameworks from feminist theory and the environmental humanities, this research helps us better understand the role of queer and feminist activism in shaping the past and future of the climate justice movement. This digital humanities project also creates the first archive of oral history interviews with feminist and queer activists in the climate justice movement. As marginalized groups are already coping with climate change, women and LGBTQ+ people can be a resource for generating solutions to the climate crisis and crafting more resilient and equitable societies.

The climate justice movement, which emerged in the 2000s, has sought to address the impact of climate change on marginalized communities. Women and LGBTQ+ people are often part of frontline communities as those who are most at risk to the effects of climate change are also often those least responsible for global emissions. Natural disasters such as droughts, floods, and storms kill women at fourteen times the rate of men, and an estimated 80% of climate refugees are women and girls.1 Following natural disasters, LGBTQ+ people often face discriminatory immigration policies and exclusion from relief efforts, emergency shelters, and official death records. LGBTQ+ families are also at heightened risk of separation. Sexual violence, sex trafficking, and intimate partner violence increase during extreme weather events, and women climate migrants experience some of the highest rates of sexual violence.2 Gender-based violence has also been used against women environmental activists to reinforce male domination and resource-control.3

The climate justice movement has led to a resurgence of interest in ecofeminist philosophy with new forms of attention to transphobia, homophobia, and racism. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, feminist thinkers and activists increasingly recognized the connections between the oppression of women and the destruction of nature.4 The philosophy and social movement of ecofeminism describes the exploitation of women and control of nature as rooted in patriarchy. Building on the legacy of ecofeminism, queer, and feminist activists who have been involved with the climate justice movement in the 2000s and 2010s often use the framework of gender justice to describe how women and LGBTQ+ people are among the groups most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Gender justice is a movement to end patriarchy, transphobia, and homophobia that recognizes gender oppression as tied to classism, racism, and ableism. Using activist narratives collected through oral history interviews, this project explores how ecofeminism has been reconstituted through present day social movements.

Research Questions: Through our oral history interviews, we seek to answer:

  • How do queer and feminist climate justice activists conceive of the connection between heteropatriarchy and the climate crisis?
  • How do these activists theorize the intersection between feminism and the lived experiences of women and LGBTQ+ people? 

In our analysis of these interviews, we will analyze the relationship between activists’ underlying philosophy and the way earlier generations of ecofeminists conceptualized the connection between women and nature. Furthermore, we will consider how the LGBTQ+ experience has shaped how feminists in the climate movement theorize queer and feminist approaches to environmentalism.

Ultimately, we contribute novel understandings of how the climate justice movement has shaped and been shaped by ecofeminism.

References

  1. Nellemann, C., Verma, R., and Hislop, L. (eds). “Women at the Frontline of Climate Change: Gender Risks and Hopes.” 2011. United National Environmental Programme. Accessed December 12, 2023. https://www.grida.no/publications/198.
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  2. Ibid. ↩︎
  3. Tran, Dalena, and Ksenija Hanaček. 2023. “A Global Analysis of Violence against Women Defenders in Environmental Conflicts.” Nature Sustainability 6 (9): 1045–53.
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  4. Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London; New York: Routledge, 1993.
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