Climate and Gender: inclusive action on climate change
The impacts of climate change will affect everyone. The way that impact is experienced by different groups, different regions, and different income brackets will vary dramatically, but the life-changing consequences of a warming planet will touch upon everyone. So why is it that some groups are not being included in developing approaches to address climate change and mitigate for its effects?
Dr Katie McQuaid, from the University of Leeds, and Eric Ndawula, of Lifeline Youth Empowerment Center in Uganda, spoke to us about the nexus between climate and gender, and what this has meant for their work.
Dr Katie McQuaid, from the School of Geography, spoke about Gender, Generation & Climate Change (GENERATE), which looks to create an intersectional, feminist, decolonial approach to better understand how experiences, impacts and responses to climate change are shaped by gender, sexuality and age.
Highlighting the disproportionate impact of climate change on socio-economically vulnerable and marginalised populations, Dr McQuaid explained that discussions around climate and gender almost exclusively focus on women and girls. While attempting to be inclusive, this can often exclude the varied and nuanced experiences of LGBTQ+ people, leaving them out of the decision-making process.
Dr McQuaid said: “Often when we see people talking about gender and climate, gender equals women and girls. We know women are underrepresented in policy making, we know that the poorest people and those in policy are feeling the worst effects of climate change, but there’s emerging research looking at the exclusion of LGBTQ+ people from relief, recovery and healthcare in the aftermath of different climate-related disasters, and little is known about how discrimination and exclusion are shaping impacts on climate resilience.
“We know there are some significant asymmetries of knowledge production in the gender and climate field, both in terms of gender and who’s represented, but also in terms of global north and global south. This is driven by language, the language in which this knowledge is produced and disseminated, but also the terms of debate itself — gender is a very loaded term, as is climate change itself. There’s also the exclusion or objectification of indigenous knowledge, and STEM verses social sciences verses the arts — how models are created, and used, and who is engaged with them.”
Dr McQuaid shared some of the creative work produced by workshop participants, including poetry and sketches, which helped express their individual experiences and intersectional viewpoints of climate-related disasters. She also showcased work by transgender activists in Jakarta and photographers in Uganda to help create visual impact around the experience of climate change among underrepresented communities.
Dr McQuaid continued: “We wanted to ask who tells stories about climate change? How do we frame a lot of these stories in ways that don’t echo and represent the victimhood frames that we often see around women and girls in the global south? How do we think about gender beyond women and girls?
“That’s certainly not to exclude or diminish the focus we have on women and girls, but to recognise the partiality of disaggregated data. We need to think beyond this binary to address differential impacts on women — how age, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, religion, incarceration, citizenship status shape the experiences of and responses to climate change. There’s also how these differentials impact on men, LGBTQ+ and non-binary people. There needs to be a really strong focus on power relations.”
Eric Ndawula, Executive Director of Lifeline Youth Empowerment Centre, spoke about their work with the GENERATE project as well as their activism work in Uganda relating to climate change and how this is experienced by different intersectional communities and individuals.
Eric explained that homophobia is still pervasive through society in Uganda, where same-sex relationships are still illegal. Due to this, there is no data that indicates the size of the LGBTQ community in the country, and therefore these communities are consistently excluded from participatory interventions on climate change and the environment.
“When we talk about interventions on the environment and climate by the government, there’s been a clear exclusion of LGBTQ people, and other gender and sexual minorities. This creates visible inequities in the solutions that have been created.
“And of course, because of the already existing homophobia and transphobia, there has not been any deliberate work done by researchers or the government to see LGBTQ people included in the solution, or even conversation about climate change and the environment they’re in.”
Eric spoke about how employing community engaged research allows for better informed research outcomes. They said: “It is fundamental to community-based organisations that they have a credible, legitimate and intimate understanding of the assets, concerns and activities of their communities. When we look at how the GENERATE project was designed in the UK, but also where they collected data from Indonesia and Uganda, they look at how to engage on the ground via organisations which have a close proximity with a community, so they are able to create trust and be able to get more understanding of the issues.
“So we worked together with the GENERATE project team to offer the dimensions that were, perhaps, not thought of when designing the project itself. It also helped with understanding of the challenges, such as the language barrier where they may not be able to express themselves in a language they do not use to understand themselves. By helping with translation, we’re then getting the most out of the information from people who cannot express themselves in English, so they’re able to share their experiences confidently.”
Speaking on the importance of an intersectional approach to climate change solutions, Eric said: “When you’re in a society where you’re told you’re not enough, where your existence is not even recognised, you find yourself in a situation where the interventions that are being created are not including you.”
“As we better understand and make the critical intersections between gender, sexuality, social equity and climate change, we take more inclusive actions and leave no one behind in climate and environment solutions.”
This event was the first in a series hosted by Horizons Institute, Priestley International Centre for Climate, and the University of Leeds COP27 Taskforce, investigating the intersection between climate change and a range of other topics, in order to build a community of nexus experts and cultivate important new research collaborations.
