6 Climate Change and Environmental Justice

Question 1

What is the most significant predictor of a person living near a contaminated site?

Answer 1

Race

Question 2

How much of population living near toxic waste sites are people of colour?

Answer 2

56%

Question 3

What % of people of colour’s claims against polluters are denied?

Answer 3

95%

Question 4

What is environmental justice?

Answer 4

Fair and equal distribution of social and material advantages, meaningful participation in decision making processes, acknowledgement of social, cultural and political differences

Question 5

What are the rights all people are entitled to?

Answer 5

Life, bodily health, emotion, senses and control over ones environment

Question 6

What is intersectionality?

Answer 6

Acknowledgement that bodies of different ages, races, abilities and genders are impacted by their environment in different ways and how they interact with each other

Question 7

When did intersectionality begin?

Answer 7

With the Black Feminism movement in the US during the end of the 20th century

Question 8

What are the factors of inequality?

Answer 8

Race, age, gender, (dis)ability, sexual orientation, religion, class, marital status, economic well being, head of household

Question 9

Intersectionality and climate change?

Answer 9

Extreme climatic events exacerbate existing marginalisation in a general trend - but there are layers of vulnerability (intersectionality)

Question 10

Which parts of the population are impacted worst by climate change?

Answer 10

Elderly, homeless, ethnic minorities, poor

Children under 15 most likely to die from env factors

Question 11

What do these vulnerabilities mean for people in day to day life?

Answer 11

Affects their access to water, forestland, credit, education, healthcare, freedoms

Question 12

What does coastal flooding in Gujarat India mean for farmers?

Answer 12

Salt is leaching into the soil and underground aquifers

Flooding threatens local lives

Question 13

Who is worst impacted by this threat?

Answer 13

Women - lack education of how to deal with salt in soil, and have no clear land titles
Lots of them can’t swim, and are not included in meeting about evacuation
Don’t have access to mobile phones so don’t benefit form the text alert early warning system

Question 14

Who is impacted by the 2016/2017 Dakota Access Pipeline?

Answer 14

17 million people live on the Missouri River
Pipeline threatens water supply
Threatens to destroy native burial grounds of the local indigenous tribes

Question 15

Protests to the pipeline?

Answer 15

Pipeline went through Standing Rock Indian Reserve, the 6th largest Native American reserve in the US, home to a number of indigenous tribes
>400 tribes protested here for 6 months

Question 16

Outcome?

Answer 16

Pipeline was built anyway - operational from May 2017

Question 17

Why was the flint river so polluted?

Answer 17

Motors dumping pollution in the flint river
Run-off from road salts built up in the pipes
Pipes themselves were made of lead and the water itself contained 8x normal levels of chlorides and lots of other corrosives

Question 18

What was the social impact?

Answer 18

Locals contained a high proportion of people of colour and people from lower classes 
9000 children (a generation) were exposed to lead poisoning
The swith coincided with an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease (a severe form of pneumonia) that killed 12 and sickened at least 87 people between June 2014 and October 2015

Question 19

What are the barriers to girls education globally, but especially in developing countries?

Answer 19

The low values of girls education
Higher value of child labour/ domestic work/ bride wealth
Early sexual engagement , sexual abuse and teenage pregnancy
Early and forced marriage
Period poverty
Poorly equipped institutions and inadequate facilities

Question 20

Statistics marriage?

Answer 20

11% of girls drop out of school due to early marriage

1/2 of girls are married by 18

Question 21

Statistics pregnancy?

Answer 21

34% of girls drop of out school due to early pregnancy

Question 22

What are the household reasons of girls oppression in Uganda?

Answer 22

Unequal division of labour within household
Bride wealth payments turn girls in commodities
Lack of voice in decision making in the family
Violence related trauma

Question 23

What are the educational reasons?

Answer 23

Gender biased ideologies
Teenage pregnancy and early marriage
Gender insensitive school environment
HIV and AIDs

Question 24

What are the economic reasons?

Answer 24

Exclusion of girls in ownership of/control over assets
Diminished agency and increased dependence on men
Parental underinvestment in girls education
Limited ops for vocational training
Limited access to credit

Question 25

What are the psychological reasons?

Answer 25

Women fear for their lives, bodies, children, freedom
Many suffer from trauma that has gone untreated
Formal counselling services rare

Question 26

What are the political reasons?

Answer 26

Adolescents and girls are not recognised or permitted to participate

Question 27

What key measures are required in education?

Answer 27

Investment in girl friendly infrastructure e.g. separate latrines and provision of sanitation and menstrual facilities
Elimination of gender stereotypes in school texts
Investment in females teachers and mentors
Incentives for parents to send girls to school e.g. take home rations, provision of uniforms
Policies and programme to facilitate the education of pregnant girls and young mothers

Question 28

What is the problem with climate policy at the moment?

Answer 28

They have been informed by western ideas of science and development
They have been lead by masculine interests and decided by white, educated, middle aged men, e.g. even within the UN
Policy is currently reinforcing vulnerability

Question 29

What should happen with environmental policy in the near future?

Answer 29

Girls should be stakeholders and agents of change

There should be a recognition of gender in policy

Question 30

What progress has been made in policy?

Answer 30

The sustainable development goals 1, 5 and 13 reference the problems, if not how they interact
COP24 in Poland Dec 2018 involved discussion of a gender action plan