The extremely high temperatures of these last weeks warn of an uncertain and hopeless future. Even so, neither officials nor politicians or politicians speak about it. Global warming and its effects are clear in our daily lives.
The destruction in the electricity offices are proof that social patience has a limit and exhaustion is complete. And although the militancy against climate change exists by itself, the feminist movements are partners in the same fight: to fundamentally change how we relate to everything else..
To understand the points in common between these two views of seeing the world, I chatted with Agustina Grassoenvironmental journalist and university professor and with the activist Connie isla. What about pollution, land and women? Why are we the most affected when it comes to talking about global warming?
“The climate crisis and gender inequality are totally related. Without going any further, one of the points of the past 8M of the feminist groups was the request for approval in the Congress of the Wetlands Law, more than pending debt of the environmental agenda in a country with more than 600,000 km² of wetlands (21.5% of the surface of Argentina)”, says Grasso.
The burning of land for planting is an urgent problem that no official has yet formally alluded to. The International Convention on Wetlandsthe Ramsar Convention -to which Argentina adhered in 1991-, estimated that since 1970 35% of wetlands had been lost worldwide. Since that year, the region that has had the most loss and degradation of wetlands has been Latin America and the Caribbean, with a decrease of 58%.
In the last 2 years there have been 15 projects of a law to protect these spaces in Congress, many of them hand in hand with feminist movements. “One of its key and direct consequences are these heat waves. Wetlands store more carbon than any other ecosystem”, indicates Agustina and adds: “Ecofeminism is seen in the practices of many women and dissidents, in their struggles for the defense of territories, health, and against all those extractive activities that defenestrate the rights of nature and have an impact on the crisis of the planet”.
For her part, Connie maintains: “Women and dissidents have incredible strength and this is evident in the last decades of history where feminist movements rose up against a lot of realities. So just as climate change is a totally effervescent fight and feminism too, it is no coincidence. Nor are they struggles that are led by women. I am not talking about fighting a war, because the men are there, our fight proposes a fight free of violence. It is not just another fight, it appeals to reflection and obviously to urgency”.
THE EARTH OUR DEFENSE
For centuries both the soil and our bodies were, and continue to be, territories of conquest. We saw it in the fight for the Legal abortion safe and free but also in the global resistance when it comes to accessing this very basic and fundamental right.
In turn, it is the women and dissidents who historically worked the soil and took care of the crops while. The defense of housing spaces, the care of the pachamama in the original societies was and is carried out by women. “There are many environmental references that raise the flags of defense of natural resources in their territories. According to international figures, 60% of the struggles are led by women leaders. A great example was bertha caceres: indigenous woman, defender of Human Rights in Honduras. She raised her voice for the rights of the Lenca people and in March 2016, they murdered her in her own house, ”says Agustina.
“Although it affects us all, women and dissidents as subjects of law and also with ethical awareness and reasoning organize ourselves and stand up against climate change. Also against systematic violence and the mismanagement of garbage, the indiscriminate felling of trees and forced migrations”, adds Isla.
THE MOST HARMED BEFORE ECODESIDY
The United Nations notes that 80% of people displaced by climate change are women. “There are various scientific studies that explain that natural disasters claim more lives of women than men due to socioeconomic factors. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean It states that women are poorer than men. In Argentina they earn, on average, 29% less in the formal sector and 35.6% less in the informal sector. Given this panorama, they are the ones who are most affected by the climate crisis, for example, in terms of access to water, agriculture, natural disasters, energy and health.. And not to mention that women, being, in general, devoted to care tasks, are usually the first to detect the health consequences of socio-environmental problems ”, explains Grasso.
With these proven inequalities on the table, women and dissidents have low participation in decision-making processes in the different spheres of power. “Due to my work, many times I get to know the stories of women and children up close as victims of socio-environmental problems and many times, they already know what solutions to follow. But they don’t have the resources to get by. Ecofeminism itself states that these impoverished areas are ‘sacrificial territories’, where the barrier of environmental rights was breached and suffer the direct consequences of the consumption system.”, he adds.
From 2015 to date, Argentine society has learned many things regarding structural inequalities. Even so, and in a slow but concrete way, the struggle of the feminist movements is diluted between the global crisis, the post-pandemic and the subtle naturalization of violence. Argentina understood that we live in a macho world but, apparently, the changes, if they come, will do so little by little.
Just as we get used to that harsh reality little by little, Does the same thing happen with pollution? Are we destined to look at it from the outside with no hope of real change? “In this system, both women, dissidents, and nature are devastated and exploited. Both in feminisms and in environmental struggles, it is women who lead the claims to defend our bodies, territories, and our health”, the journalist maintains.
ARGENTINA RESISTS
In the world the scenario is complex. The HIM indicates that the consequences of global warming are high temperatures, more powerful storms, increased droughts, rising ocean levels and warming water, the disappearance of species, food shortages and, to top it off, more risks for health, increased poverty and the desperate displacement of entire populations to survive.
Human rights are the flag in our territory and although in many places the laws are not complied with, there are. But for that, the movements and activism had to have a leading role and the defense of our lands, banners of struggle. “There are many examples in our country: of the Mothers of Ituzaingó against agrochemicals in Córdoba, the Mothers of Water in Mendoza, the Matanza-Riachuelo cause led by a woman, or in the 90s with the Assemblies of Nonogasta in La Rioja for the tanneries that were organized by women, who were the first to see how pollution affected people’s health, we realize that it is key to protect ourselves from domestic and system violence,” Agustina details.
The crisis is deep and it shows. Public policies are insufficient and the heat unbearable. In turn, the UN indicates that the pandemic delayed the closure of gender inequalities by more than a decade, which already had a sad estimated date: 300 years. AND It also warns that in 2050, access to water and other natural resources will be very scarce.
“In the middle of 2020, the world stopped due to a pandemic that showed us in the face how we should rethink ourselves at an environmental, climate, energy, water and food level; and both feminism and environmentalism are part of the rethinking of the bases of this model”, maintains the activist.
What is left to do? Is this the beginning of the end of all the good that the planet has to offer? “Since the pandemic, words such as food sovereignty, holistic agriculture, enough deforestation, end of climate change, energy sovereignty, water care and environmental justice began to emerge with more force. But the large generators of garbage, the large industries and the agro-export models, during and after the pandemic, continue to have the same. We must generate a paradigm shift from the roots. I don’t know if we can reverse it, but I do think that at least we can prevent it from going deeper”, ends Augustine.
