Colonial erasures in gender and climate change solutions

Abstract

Despite deliberate moves to integrate gender with climate change solutions, efforts do not go far enough to account for coloniality, thus falling short of achieving feminist, just and transformative ends. Coloniality is a political blind spot and a systematic amnesia in climate policies and actions, despite being a key driver of climate change manifested through various forms of extractivism, economic growth, and hegemonic Eurocentric knowledge production. As a corrective and a pathway toward realizing a post/decolonial feminist climate praxis, I will disclose the colonial underpinnings in (i) a persistent gender binary and women‐centered approaches; (ii) white feminist epistemic privileging; and (iii) acquiescing to masculine Enlightenment‐inspired techno‐managerialism. Furthermore, disclosures of colonial erasures entail a foundational re‐evaluation of the climate change narrative from an isolated form of natural crisis to a phenomenon embedded in complex histories of colonialism, extractivism, and capitalist exploitation that threatens the intrinsic interdependence of nature and society and planetary survival. As a result, a post/decolonial feminist climate praxis then asks that we foster and restore this interdependence by institutionalizing an ethics of socioecological care, acknowledging epistemic diversity through embodied knowledge, and carrying out intersectional justice.

This article is categorized under:

Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Climate Change and Global Justice