Intersecting identities and global climate change

Abstract

This article explores the place of race, class, gender, sexual and national identities and cultures in global climate change. Research on gendered vulnerabilities to disasters suggests that women are more vulnerable than men to many meteorological disasters related to climate change, specifically flooding and drought. This is because of their relative poverty, economic activities (especially subsistence agriculture) and the moral economies governing women's modesty in many cultures. Research on historical and contemporary links between masculinity and the military in environmental politics, polar research and large-scale strategies for managing risk, including from climate change, suggests that men and their perspectives have more influence over climate change policies because of their historical domination of science and government. I expect that masculinist identities, cultures and militarised institutions will tend to favour large-scale remedies, such as geoengineering, minimise mitigation strategies, such as reducing energy use, and emphasise ‘security’ problems of global climate change.

Keywords:

• gender
• masculinity
• climate change
• militarism
• identity

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Natalie Parker, University of Kansas, and Monique Laney, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, for their collegial assistance with the research and ideas in this article.

Notes

1. For overviews of ‘gender and climate change’, see Denton (2002, 2004), Fordham (2003), Byanyima and Martinez-Soliman (2009) and Enarson (2012).

2. For a general discussion of gender and ‘natural disasters’, see Neumayer and Plümper (2007). Not all of Bangladesh is dominated by or bows to strict patriarchy; Kabeer (2000) outlines the transformation in the lives of Bangladeshi women who participated in Bangladesh's ‘New Industrial Policy’ in the 1980s which brought many young women to cities to work, challenging traditions of women's seclusion. In 2011, the Bangladesh government approved the National Women Development Policy, which gives women equal political and economic rights to men; conservative Islamic groups opposed implementation of the policy, first introduced in 1997, then again in 2007 (Islam 2011).

3. Ransby also points out the resiliency of many whose lives were disrupted by Hurricane Katrina, including the support networks and mutual aid responses undertaken by many of New Orleans most vulnerable residents; for a discussion of the ways in which gender shaped the impact of Hurricane Katrina on men and women in New Orleans, see Read (2009).

4. For a list of small island states grappling with sea level rise, see Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) at http://aosis.info/ accessed on 9 January 2012; for a list of Indigenous peoples contending with the warming of the Arctic, see Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) at http://inuitcircumpolar.com/index.php?Lang=En&ID=1, accessed on 9 January 2012.

5. Major contributors to greenhouse gases such as the four biggest emitters – China, the United States, the European Union and Brazil – have not met any previous emissions reduction targets, the first of which was set at the Rio de Janiero ‘Earth Summit’ in 1992 and the most recent in the 2009 ‘Copenhagen Accord’ (United Nations 1997, 2010). Similarly, most of the financial assistance promised by industrial countries to assist poorer nations affected by climate change has not been delivered; see http://www.fedre.org/en/content/developed-world-failing-climate-funds-pledge-says-bangladeshi-minister, accessed on 12 January 2012; http://www.iied.org/climate-change/media/rich-nations-failing-keep-copenhagen-promise-help-poor-nations-adapt-climate-ch, accessed on 12 January 2012.

6. Some of these schemes have been evaluated by natural scientists; for instance, Bala et al. (2008) predict decreased global mean precipitation as a hydrological consequence of geoengineered reductions in solar radiation.