Climate and Environment

Biologically, women are more likely to be adversely affected by the toxins in plastics. Traditional roles, inequality, and a throwaway culture further amplify these harmful effects, especially in Asia.

Most of food production in Africa is shouldered by small scale farmers and the majority of farmers are women. Alarmed by the effects of climate change on her family’s farm Ayakha Melithafa from South Africa’s Western Cape joined an environmental school club and engages now in a national and an international youth movements for climate justice.

For centuries, resources have been extracted from the African continent without adequate payment or compensation. With colonialism, Khoikhoi and San, the first inhabitants of Southern Africa, lost their land and many lost their lives. During decades of Apartheid they were racially discriminated and still have to fight for political and economic inclusion in the post-Apartheid era. We spoke to the Khoikhoi lawyer Lesle Jansen about her fight for the community and for the legal acknowledgement of the cultural heritage of Indigenous people.

The climate crisis is the result of relations of power and exploitation, between the Global North and the Global South as well as between people and nature. A decolonial approach in climate activism stands for a radical break with colonial principles of economic, political and social systems – including industrial agriculture and landgrabbing. A conversation with Ruth Nyambura, climate activist from Kenya.

Is the European Green Deal gender blind? How can the EU deal with the danger of a backlash on gender equality in the face of pandemic and the subsequent economic crisis? Which ways forward are there to better connect the feminist and climate movements?

Equal power for women, a life with less violence and more justice are the goals that were set 25 years ago at the 4th World Conference on Women and in the Beijing Platform for Action. So far, gender equality has never been achieved.