Environmental Justice and Climate from a feminist perspective

The World is changing, it’s an undeniable reality!
The change is biting really hard. Dry seasons have become longer and drier, the beautiful ponds and the dancing rivers are drying up fast leaving unpleasant combination of dry sand and ashy rocks. When rains finally show up, it is accompanied by angry roaring destructive floods, what a trying times! For the city dwellers, blue clear sky is becoming a fantasy; it’s all smoggy with a hellish look, it all spells A.S.T.H.M.A.

Our Metrologist are finding it difficult to give correct weather forecast because of the drastic change climate. Winter and summer are all but names that marks nothing, we can experience both the two in a season. The ocean glacier is melting down at fast speed. Wild animals are being extinct because they can’t live in the current condition. Even our domestic animals are dying due to drought and flood. Don’t forget we are recording a high number of death due to starvation and drowning that has been brought by the same drought and flood. The increase of climate refugees is rapidly increasing. No country is safe. We are all potential victims of climate disaster.

These are just a drop of the effects of climate change and air pollution at their lowest!

Okay, allow me to offer my opinion as me. A woman. Not just a woman but a feminist. What perspective does Beline and her likes have towards Environmental Justice and Climate?
Women should be put on the forefront in this great matter of concern. For a long time, climate change and air pollution applied commonly across all gender or rather it was gender neutral; at least that is what people thought. However, with time it became gender sensitive.

In Africa, girls have the lowest probability of getting education that will allow them to pursue careers like being a scientist which will give them opportunity to be part of the engagement on issues on climate change and environment. The reality is that male gender has dominated scientific panels that make decision on matter regarding the subject. In NASA for instance, majority of the staff are male dominated. From a sober ground, do you find it okay?

Let me loop the tradition perspective into this discussion. In our community, women play key role to ensuring that both the family and the community are stable. They typically run the household. For instance, they are responsible to ensure there is clean water and sanitation, food and nutrition, and even in some cases building and construction. When the wells, rivers and ponds which are the primary source of water dries up due to prolonged dry seasons, women are forced to walk long distance sometimes tens of kilometers in such of water; risking starvation, dehydration, exhaustion, and attacks. When the crops dry in the farm or are washed away by floods, and domestic animals die due to starvation caused by famine. Women are forced to look for food that will help sustain the lives of her family.

In cases where a mother gets ill due to breathing polluted air in the streets or from prolonged exposure to fumes from charcoal and firewood from cooking? Not only will the mother suffer but the entire family. This is because of the great role she plays in the house hold.

Women should be directly involved in decision making when it comes to such issues. Our voices should be given great attention on championing against climate change. Demand for clean and affordable cooking fuel, demand for reduction of use of fossil fuels, demand for clean energy because at the end of the day Beline as a woman is at higher risk of the damages caused by poor decisions made in regards to environment policies and practice.