“Climate justice affirms the need for solutions that address women´s rights.”
– Bali Principles of Climate Justice
Tomorrow is International Women’s Day, which means that it is the perfect opportunity for Three Course Discourse. This is where we get together with others and share a three course meal served with a themed discussion. Tomorrow’s theme: women!
So why have I decided to talk about women´s rights and International Women´s Day on a climate change blog? To answer this, I am going to reference Sharmeen Khan´s article, The Whiteness of Green. She talks about how the environmental movement is dominated mainly by white people of privilege and how they can alienate those who have additional struggles such as racial oppression. Khan clearly explains that if environmentalists do not develop an anti-oppressive lens when looking at the environment, their movement will be battling with other movements also fighting for justice.
“Environmentalists need to be taken to task for a vision that lacks a coherent analysis or practice of anti-oppression, because as long as environmentalists are . . . not in a place where social justice can be assumed . . . those of us dedicated to social justice and anti-racism will struggle against environmentalists to make our concerns heard.”
And this is one reason why us climate justice activists need to talk about women—so that we recognize that we cannot divide movements that are fighting for a world in which all people´s rights are respected.
Now you can do this any way you like, but I like to have a different topic of conversation for each course. Thus we end our evening with three courses, and three discussion topics. I would start off with a soup or salad and discuss how climate change is disproportionately affecting women? Then I would move onto the main course. I love rice dishes. When I have served everyone some rice and vegetable stir-fry, I would ask everyone what needs to happen to ensure that we are addressing both women’s rights and issues of climate justice? For desert, I would make sure everyone had a big piece of chocolate cake so that we could all then discuss concrete and practical ways in which we, as individuals, can bring the climate justice movement and the women´s movement together to make our voices stronger–in order to end it on a pro-active note.
Bon appetite
This fits with what I have been thinking on the right to an International vote which the U.N. Charter of Human Rights can supply. My thoughts are it could work for a World Constitution plus include the right to a climate without manmade Global Warming.
Further my thoughts are that every library in the nation with political books can be turned into a democratic tool kit .
This could be a concern of many which needs to be addressed.
The issue of library fines for keeping out too long books which are political could be resolved by calling for using all as toolkits.
I am thinking perhaps others want to ask the Human Rights Charter be put to use for a set of Free Shopping places.
The U.N. Conventon on Right of Child also works.
I am so pleased to see that Women’s day is always a timely reminder of the situation of women in a man-made world. I have been studying a fascinating, but very discreet in the mainstream public space, movement in the last few years: Ecofeminism.
So as a starter I’ll just mention how this field provides a framework for understanding how and why the state of the planet and the condition of women are both linked to the same evil, namely a patriarchal and capitalist society. The Women’s Environmental Network just released a report called Gender and the Climate Change Agenda, you can obtain it for free from their website (http://www.wen.org.uk/news/) but it makes a case for involving women a lot more in the movement since they are the ones most concerned and affected by climate change. Many scholars and activists are working in the ecofeminist space and a quick search will enlighten anyone interested! I will only mention the works of Ariel Salleh in Australia, well worth reading closely.
The main course will have to be democracy for me. Not the illusion of democracy we have in our so-called civilised countries but the real one, the one directly derived from the etymology of the word itself, “the rule of the common people” (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=democracy&searchmode=none). The climate movement is nothing but another representation of our lack of real democracy with organisations that end up being closer to corporations than free and progressive public spaces. another good reading is the recently released report from Rising Tide (http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org). Defining real democracy is probably something we (as a global people) need to do but it will have to be the first step. Otherwise whatever effort will be used against us in reproducing oppressive systems.
I’ll replace the dessert with cheeses if you don’t mind as I think the time for sweetness is not yet visible to us. More bitter bites for us to chew before we get there. Individuals are not the key here. We need to let go of the individualism that rules our thinking in Western societies. Some indigenous cultures have a lot to teach us for that matter. I worked in Kakadu National Park for a short while and I learnt a bit about how Aboriginal people have been thinking about their position in the world, at least before we came and spoiled the party. Their notion of time and space is different, there is no linear approach or dichotomic opposing views. Theirs is closer to some of the teachings coming from our quantum physics. The past and present and future somehow all happen in the same unit of time and everything is ruled according to cyclic rhythm. As human beings they are not separated from their environment and vice versa but they ARE the environment and vice versa. Everything is connected. When a being dies, be it human, animal or plant, the whole universe can feel and respond to it. If anything I think individuals should look at their relationship to themselves and to the world. Are we in line with our values? What are our true values by the way? How do we see and think about us in relation to the rest of the world, to the Other? Unless we find the peace in ourselves that we are living according to our true nature, we will be in a constant battle, within ourselves and therefore with everyone/everything else.
All this leaves me hungry for more, more involvement, more love, more humanity perhaps?
Looking forward to have dessert with you all one day!