Fighting for Climate Justice
Climate change won’t spare anyone, but it will hit certain groups harder than others. Meet two people leading the charge for marginalized communities.
SHENZHEN, CHINA — Imagine that you live on a small island in the Pacific Ocean. It’s a delightful tropical paradise — that is, until your home is obliterated by a terrifying cyclone. Like the rest of your community, you are temporarily without clean drinking water, without food, without electricity, and without other essential societal infrastructures.
Now imagine that, on top of the other worries that you suddenly have, you’re also a member of a marginalized community.
The disastrous effects of climate change will impact all of us, but that impact will be exponentially worse for certain communities, including indigenous people and members of the LGBTIQ community.
Two talents who are competing in the #UNLEASH2019 Climate Action track represent those groups specifically, and are actively working to change that equation.
Diwigdi “Diwi” Valiente, 30, from Panama, is ethnically Guna, the indigenous people who live on the islands just off Panama and in slivers of the coastal regions of Panama and Colombia — a transnational area known as Guna Yala.
“Guna Yala is the first indigenous territory in Latin America to be displaced by climate change,” said Valiente. “Because of rising sea levels, the islands of Guna Yala [known outside the region as the San Blas Islands] will disappear. It’s not a matter of if — those islands will be gone in 20 years.”
Sitting in the magical Bonsai Garden of Shenzhen’s Fairy Lake Botanical Garden, which the UNLEASH SDG13 Climate Action track is calling home base for the week, Valiente emphasizes the importance of giving indigenous people a voice at the table when it comes to fighting climate change.
“Right now there is a distinct lack of participation in the [environmental] policy-making process by indigenous people around the world,” he said. “We have to make sure indigenous people are seen as leaders in this area, because they have valuable environmental-management knowledge. That knowledge is at immediate risk of being permanently lost because of climate change.”
Valiente has a unique perspective on the fight against climate change. As a Panamanian, he sees that small countries are paying the price for what larger industrialized countries are doing. And as a Guna, he sees that indigenous people are similarly paying the price for what their governments are not doing to help them.
He also has a bifurcated professional perspective: as a federal administrator, he works for the Panamanian government as a market analyst to determine if multinationals in Panama are paying their fair share of taxes, and as an artist/activist, he has harnessed the power of art to build popular momentum on climate issues. The fruits of his labor in the latter led to successfully banning plastic bags in Panama this year.
“Five years ago, when I started working on climate change, no one cared,” he recalled. “No one. No one would listen, not even NGOs. I got depressed and anxiety, thinking that my grandchildren would not even know what an ‘island’ was.”
And now, Diwi is considering a run for Congress in Panama, on a climate- and indigenous-focused platform.
Halfway across the world from Guna Yala, Tamani Rarama, 27, is fighting a similar battle for the rights of marginalized people, in this case those of the LGBTIQ community.
Rarama, who is a gender-non-conforming activist (pronouns: they, them, their), is, like Valiente, fighting a battle on two fronts: The first is fighting for the rights of a particular marginalized group (in Valiente’s case indigenous people, in Rarama’s case those in the LGBTIQ community), and the second is waging that same battle, but through the particular prism of climate change. In the case of the Guna people of Panama, that means figuring out a future for island residents who will have to leave their homes. And in the case of the LGBTIQ community in Fiji, that means protecting people, who have already been through disaster trauma, from human trauma.
“Often after natural disasters in Fiji,” said Rarama, particularly of ever-increasing cyclones, because of climate change, “the experiences of this particular community is double or triple times the discrimination. The stigmatization — not only do they [members of the LGBTIQ community] have to find their way out of difficult circumstances post-disaster, but also the threats, the stigma. The discrimination is double or triple.”
“We did a research study in 2016,” added Rarama. “Often, LGBTIQ people are blamed to be the causes of the disaster. Fiji is very religion dominated, so they blame people who they see as ‘different’ as the causes of the natural disasters. I’ve lived through several cyclones. It is hard — terrifying. But it’s also hard to come out of these experiences and rebuild lives with limited resources but also limited assistance. Even other communities — you really have to find your way out, not just as an individual but also as a community.” They noted that there was no data on how many LGBTIQ people there are among Fiji’s population of 900,000, “but we know it’s a lot.”
In their work, Rarama, who lives in the capital, Suva, does programs, one of which is on climate, documenting climate-change stories, and of the LGBTIQ community. They are advocating for the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for all young people in Fiji.
“We are talking about many elements of SRHR, including sexually- and gender-diverse people, who are often marginalized groups. But also young peoples’ SRHR needs, especially post-disaster. We are building resilience for young people, both generally and specific to climate.”
An interest in climate change comes naturally to Rarama. “Having lived through the experience of natural disasters and cyclones, that is one reason,” they said. “But also, I love the ocean. We Fijians call ourselves the ‘people of the sea’. Oceans are not something connected to us just for economic resources and sustainability, but they also have a deeper, spiritual connection.”
Rarama and Valiente are both benefiting from being among a cohort of young climate activists and experts at UNLEASH 2019.
“I am so happy to be here in Shenzhen,” said Valiente, “among like-minded people who want to fight climate change.”
“I can feel the passion of the young people that I’m interacting with,” said Rarama, “and it’s the same passion that we have, trying to drive change in their own communities at different levels, programs and initiatives to create that change or at a policy-decision-making level. I’ll definitely be taking back the knowledge that I’ve gained from talking to people here from different regions, as well as the network contacts, strengthening the partnerships that are fostered here.”
