We Can’t Achieve Climate Justice Without Gender Justice: A Response to the Glasgow Talks

Op-ed by Jeanette Sequeira and Coraina de la Plaza, Ms. Magazine, 21 November 2021–With the international climate talks beginning in Glasgow, many are weary of the deceptive and failing policy agendas that governments and big polluters are pushing. The narrative around the climate continues to be dominated by governments and corporate lobbies, rather than by frontline communities and civil society.

The climate strategies being devised often avoid urgent action, as explained in a recent report that showed how these strategies don’t respond to the needs and wellbeing of the most affected and underrepresented groups, particularly Indigenous and rural women, who hold the least responsible for the crisis, and in fact have the most effective solutions to offer.

The lack of political will to tackle the root causes of the climate crisis or remove the systemic barriers that stand in the way of effective action is rapidly driving us to the point of no return. This is blatantly clear with the popular ‘Net Zero’ pledges by governments and polluting industries. Upon closer look, it is evident that they actually serve to block meaningful action. Market-based schemes that place market values on nature, reforestation schemes with monoculture plantations, so-called nature-based solutions and large-scale bioenergy are more examples of failing approaches. Led by a misogynist and until recently climate-denying presidency, COP 26 is a vivid example of how this narrative is being pushed onto the global climate agenda disguised as truly transformative climate action.

 

Continue reading at Ms. Magazine

17 Nov, 2021
Posted in News, GFC in the news