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Event summary by Bridget Stuart  A week before the US 2020 Presidential Election, we heard from three inspiring experts from within the field of Climate Policy: Maggie Thomas, Julian Brave NoiseCat, and Kate Guy.
Julian Brave NoiseCat, VP of Policy and Strategy at Data for Progress, drew a clear distinction between the two candidates. Donald Trump, who thinks climate change is ‘a hoax’, has repealed Obama administration climate policies and condemned the US to exiting the Paris Agreement on November 4th (the day after the election). Joe Biden, however, was the first Senator to introduce legislation on the greenhouse effect, has committed to 100% clean and carbon pollution free electricity by 2035, pledged to invest $2 trillion in a clean energy economy transition, and specified that 40% of this fund ($800 million) will go directly to the frontline communities being most affected. While, overall, climate is not a top priority issue for voters, it is high up on people’s agendas. This counts against Trump, with all voters trusting Biden significantly more on matters of climate – meaning climate could not only mobilise Biden's base, but could help him to pick up swing voters, younger voters and voters of Latino ethnicity. Maggie Thomas, former Climate Policy Advisor to Senator Elizabeth Warren and Policy Director at Evergreen Action, spoke about her experience working on Governor Jay Inslee’s campaign, which was unique for its strong focus and large team working on climate policy. This campaign, while failing, did bring climate to the fore of other candidates agendas. She said that the 2020 election is a climate election, with the Biden campaign setting out to win the election on climate issues. She also spoke of the crucial importance of federal government climate policy in addressing clean energy, green investments and environmental justice. Kate Guy, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Climate and Security, focused on topics of international action and national security. In this regard, Trump has teamed up with other so-called ‘climate arsonists’, to use Biden's words, to impede global action on climate change, and has turned his back on climate alliances. Biden’s approach is the opposite: he has pledged to re-join the Paris agreement on day 1, hold a summit of the biggest emitters as soon as possible, and use US power to push other countries into further action. Further points made during questions & discussion: · Climate action by the President alone could create real on-the-ground changes. · Climate policy needs to be popular, maximise job creation on a short time scale, maximise emissions reductions, maximise environmental justice. · China’s ambitious climate policy may represent its goal to become a global leader on climate action, ahead of the US. This could act to encourage the US to double-down on actions in a ‘race-to-the-top’ on climate. · Wall Street must be held accountable for its contribution to climate breakdown and be regulated.
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Event summary by Laura Watson  Professor Joni Seager:
Links between gender and climate change can most easily be seen in the differential impacts of climate change. However, the impacts of climate change ripple through society along lines of vulnerability not limited to gender. The impacts of natural disasters are particularly notable, often exacerbating existing social issues; and the recovery from natural disasters also tends to be biased against women. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the connections between the drivers of—and solutions to—climate change and gender. For example, overconsumption, considered a key contributor to climate change, is a gendered behaviour, due to masculine and feminine identities and the consumer habits these identities encourage. Further, around the world, studies have shown that women are more perceptive of climate and environmental issues and potential solutions to climate change, and thus their role in building a sustainable future cannot be overlooked. Lorena Aguilar Revelo: As the impacts of climate change become more significant, and more people become vulnerable to these impacts, women are often portrayed as passive victims. But, in reality, they are often agents of change. There are some links between climate change and gender that we are only just starting to research. For example, sea level rise and its associated rise in water salinity has been linked to an increase in complications during pregnancy for women in affected areas. There may be many more links between climate change and gender that we do not yet know about: this area requires more research. Gender has now become a guiding principle at climate change Conferences Of Parties (COPs), but much more can done to address this constantly evolving issue. Q: Women are often seen as passive victims of environmental degradation, but key figures in environmental movements are often women – why do you think this trend exists? Joni: Joni favours a structural explanation: that crises cause fractures along pre-existing social lines, and those more vulnerable are more likely to perceive these threats to their wellbeing Lorena: Women often see issues more readily, and pay attention to them. It should however be recognised that not all women act in the same way and come into discussions for different reasons. Q: Have you seen governments become more likely to take equality implementation more seriously now its so clearly linked with climate change? Lorena: Gender has to be addressed in any project addressing climate change in order for funding to be given, so it is now an addressed part of climate action. Joni: There has been progress in equality over the decades, but it is fragile and halting. Gender requirements can be seen as a box people have to tick, and gender is often done for the purposes of ticking this box rather than as an issue which needs to be tackled for its own value. Concluding remarks: Joni: Gender is part of the toolkit for action on climate change, and in the face of crisis, it is a part of the toolkit which cannot afford to be left behind. Lorena: No amount of planning can mitigate the impacts of climate change, and there are uncertainties surrounding humanity's capacity to act. To watch the rest of this speaker event, please head to our Youtube channel here. About the speakers: Joni Seager is a feminist geographer and Professor of Global Studies at Bentley University in Boston. She is the author of author of many books on gender equity and global environmental policy, including her award-winning feminist classic 'The Women’s Atlas', 'The State of the Environment Atlas', and 'Earth Follies: Coming to Feminist Terms With the Global Environmental Crisis'. She has been an active consultant with the United Nations on several gender and environmental policy projects, including consulting with the UNEP on integrating gender perspectives into their work on disasters and early warming systems, and with UNESCO and the Division on Economic and Social Affairs on gender in water policy. Lorena Aguilar is the Regional Coordinator of International Cooperation and Research at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO). She previously served as Costa Rica’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship where she participated in the development of the first Decarbonisation Plan for the country and lead the UNFCCC “unconventional 25 Pre-COP”. Until 2018, Lorena was also Global Senior Gender Advisor and Global Director of the Governance and Rights Program of the International Union for Conversation of Nature (IUCN). She has been a pioneer in the creation of international international gender networks such as the Network of Women Minister and Leaders of the Environment and the Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA). Event summary by Celine Barclay  “The least responsible are disproportionately affected by climate change”. It’s taken a while, but the phrase is finally taking a hold in our consciousness and our conversations. Fittingly, OCS’s flagship event tackled the issue of climate justice with two truly inspiring speakers; Mary Robinson and Dr Vandana Shiva. They illuminated the various forms of injustice that have made the climate crisis a legacy of colonial and patriarchal structures. Crucially, the two speakers highlighted the need for a paradigmatic shift in our conception of “development” in order to confront the climate crisis fairly and effectively.
The first speaker, Mary Robinson, served as the first female president of Ireland. She went on to become the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, before setting up her own foundation ‘Climate Justice’ and publishing a book of the same name. Dr Vandana Shiva is a leading human rights activist who founded Navdanya International (an organisation helping farmers protect seeds from the genetic patents of large corporations) and is the leader of the International Forum on Globalisation. She has authored over 20 books in which she defends traditional practices, helping to shift our idea of development in favour of acknowledging the value of small-scale farmers. Mary Robinson took a structured approach by identifying 5 layers of climate injustice: 1) Responsibility: the first layer related to the phrase at the beginning of this post, that climate change disproportionately affects those least responsible for creating the problem, such as indigenous people and the inhabitants of small island states; 2) Gender: women are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of their different social roles, and because they often don’t have access to land rights or insurance. As with all intersecting levels of inequality, women in poorer countries are doubly vulnerable where these factors are concerned; 3) Intergenerational injustice: the injustice that future generations will suffer the consequences of inaction by the generation currently in leadership positions; 4) Pathways to development: industrialised countries historically built their wealth on fossil fuels. Poorer nations are currently attempting to follow the same path of development while also under pressure to transition to renewable energy. Richer countries have failed to provide the financial support for such a transition, leaving industrialising countries caught between fighting poverty on a national scale and fighting climate change on a global scale; 5) Nature: As a firm advocate for the nature-based approach, Mary signalled the injustice against nature that climate change has wrought, threatening as it does the survival of millions of species. It is interesting to note that she personified nature as a female, not only emphasising that the earth is living, as Dr Vadana would do, but also identifying the injustice to the earth in association with the gender dimension she mentioned above. She stressed the need to conserve at least 30% of land and oceans under the Convention on Biodiversity. Mary then gave her assessment of the current state of global action on climate change. She managed to find hope in response to the current Covid-19 crisis, which she credits with teaching us various lessons that can be carried forward in our future approach. Compliance with the lock-down has shown us the collective power of simultaneous changes in our behaviour. Just as we have stayed at home to protect the most vulnerable to the virus, we must shift our behaviour to protect those most vulnerable to climate change. It has also demonstrated the importance of good government, science and compassion. Mary finished by expressing hope that we will take the opportunity to create a new beginning. Covid-19 has taught us to learn what we can do without and to make radical changes to our lifestyle, two lessons that are essential if we are to throw away our ‘throw away culture’ and embrace nature-based solutions. Yes, this will require large scale investment, borrowing from future generations, but only in order to safeguard their future. So Mary is less worried now than she was at the beginning of the year: “Covid has broken the system that wasn’t working anyway”. The unanimity between the two speakers was clear the moment Dr Vadana took her turn to speak. Chuckling warmly, she noted that she had also identified 5 layers of injustice: 1) Picking up where Mary left off, she raised the injustice against nature as part of a history of colonialism and exploitation. The glorification of conquest in colonial times is a model for our relationship with the earth as dead matter to be possessed and exploited. She passionately insisted that we must revoke this mentality and recognise not only that the earth is alive, but that it regulates its own systems. Her speech was incredibly powerful, drawing an analogy between the fossil age and the fossilisation of our minds and hearts that has resulted from extracting fossil fuels. Dr Vadana sees a comparison between mechanisation and industrialisation and the development of a mechanical mind, closed off to human empathy and capable of wreaking such destruction on human communities. Yet we have erroneously believed developing the technologies for extraction demonstrated our intellectual superiority; 2) This led Dr Vandana to speak of the injustice against those who lead ecological ways of living. Vandana grew up in India and related how India was called barbaric in colonial times within a discourse of ‘development that propped up the colonial regime. In the 80s she observed that behind every ecological disaster there seemed to be a loan from the World Bank financing some project in the name of “development”’. When she investigated the loans, she found that ‘under-development’ meant not using plastic or pesticides, and adhering to the hydrological cycle. But it is the promotion of these rationalised “developed” techniques of agriculture which have caused the ecological destruction we see today; 3) This damaging approach to agriculture is itself linked to a third layer of injustice: that the most vulnerable are disproportionately affected. Vandana said drought “is the single biggest crisis” and a result of a false definition of development that, for instance, promotes the use of fertilisers and neglects to replenish organic matter in the soil; 4) Her fourth injustice was the injustice of false solutions. She denounced the ‘voluntary’ approach to emissions reduction commitments characteristic of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. She identified 3 unjust false solutions: geo-engineering, genetic engineering, and the “disease” of offsetting. Geo-engineering falls short because it fails to take into account how the earth functions as a system. Genetic engineering fails to recognise that resilient traits are in the plants and not in the gene that is extracted. Vandana then railed against offsetting which she compared to the Roman Catholic sales of indulgences. Like unrepentant sinners who bribe the church to keep on sinning, rich countries can continue emitting by “offsetting”, a solution that in no way tackles the root of the problem. In fact, after the Kyoto protocol, emissions increased by 15% and the economic inequality between countries increased. Vandana concluded by emphasising that the injustices framing the climate crisis can only be resolved by removing the colonisation paradigm and the concomitant definitions of “productivity” “efficiency” and “development”. Her research shows that when we work with nature and biodiversity, we can produce more food by healing broken carbon and nitrogen cycles. Doing so will end the injustice of labelling ecological ways of living as primitive and be part of a shift from an economy that measures GDP to one that measures happiness. Returning to the repeated theme of earth and life cycles, Vandana identified this as a “shift from the circulation of money to circulation of life.” This was truly a highlight of the term card; it was inspiring to hear from such passionate and experienced speakers. Their long history of collaboration was testament to the central theme of the discussion: the intersectionality of the injustices within the climate crisis which must be addressed. |
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