“It is now more dangerous to be a woman than tobe a soldier in modern conflict,” says Major GeneralPatrick Cammaert, a former United Nations peace-keeping operation commander in Africa.
1
And to be apoor woman, even outside the theater of war, is to beat risk for starvation and displacement.Of the approximately 50 million people displacedfrom their homelands, about 80 percent are womenand children.
2
Of the 1.3 billion people living on lessthan $1 a day, 70 percent are women. Among thechronically hungry people in the world, 60 percent are women. Climate change will only exacerbate thesenumbers. Although rarely responsible for the conflicts or thegreenhouse gas emissions creating this global climatecrisis, women are the first to feel the impacts—whetherthrough sexual violence at the hands of male soldiers(including women in the military themselves), or dis-placement (along with children) by war and occupa-tion. Women also are often left alone to head house-holds when their husbands, fathers, and brothers arekilled in combat. And the very normalization of mili-tarism and violence in our communities supportsdomestic violence.
The Cycle of War and Consumption
The resource wars foreseen in the Pentagon’s muchballyhooed study of climate change are already under- way in Iraq and Afghanistan.
3
“The U.S. military is thegreatest user of oil in the world,” says Gwyn Kirk of Women for Genuine Security. “They’re fighting a warin Iraq so that they can carry on using oil.”This self-reinforcing cycle of militaristic acquisitionand inequitable use of natural resources aggravatesgreen house gas emissions, causing greater climateinstability and a further depletion of resources, whichin turn leads to more wars of acquisition and evengreater climate instability.Since former President Bush declared the War onTerror eight years ago, military spending and the conse-quent greenhouse emissions have surpassed all previouslevels. In 2000, the United States military spent justunder $300 billion; in 2008, it spent over $700 billion.
4
For 2004, military fuel consumption increased 27percent over the average annual peacetime usage of 100million barrels.
5
In just three weeks of combat in Iraq,the Army burned 40 million gallons of fuel—or almosttwo million gallons per day—an amount equivalent tothe combined gasoline consumption of all Allied armiesduring the four years of World War I.
Women: Most Affected but Least Responsible
During these years of the so-called War on Terror,over 50 percent of the national budget priorities havebeen given to the military, while education and healthcare are given just over six percent.
6
One tangible sideeffect of taking away resources from healthcare andeducation—industries dominated by women in oursociety—has been the displacement of women fromviable employment.“The oppression of women is a key piece in the hier-archy of the military,” says Kirk. “It parallels racial hier-archy, and the hierarchy of people abusing the environ-ment. Colonization, militarism, and racism interlock and what links them together is this hierarchy of power, respect, and value.”
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By Maryam Roberts
War, Climate Change, and Women
ar, militarism, and climate change are destroying countless communities worldwide and women, particularly womenof color in the Global South, are paying the highest price.
W
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Racial and Gender Justice
In Syria, where more than 1.2 million Iraqi refugeesnow live as a result of the United States occupation of Iraq, the women and girls who bear the brunt of sup-porting their families are forced to turn to prostitutionto make a living.
7
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the largestclimate-spawned disaster to hit the United States,180,000 people in Louisiana lost their livelihood. Of these, 103,000 were women. Health, education, andhospitality, all women-dominated industries, were hithardest. Also, households headed by low-income singlemothers in New Orleans has dropped from 18,000 in2005 to 3,000, indicating a significant displacement of these women and their children.
8
Every time war and climate change erode the livesand rights of women, they further damage the fabric of our families, our culture, and our societies.
No Conclusion without Inclusion of Gender Justice
To effectively end the compounded impacts of climate change and militarism on women domestically and globally, it is imperative that we view the issuethrough a gender and racial justice lens and look to women’s everyday lives for inspiration.“Justice has a history [of] recognizing that womenbring their forces to the table, and they bring their ownsolutions,” noted Michael Dorsey, assistant professor inDartmouth College’s Faculty of Science, at the UnitedNations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC) in Poland last year. “…justice isn’t techni-cal, justice is not in the realm of experts only, it’s in therealm of everyday activities of women on the ground.”
9
Another delegate to the UNFCCC, climate changeactivist Rose Mary Enie, who represented Ghana andCameroon, pointed out that in Africa today, three
Lisa Gray Garcia, a.k.a. Tiny
In the wake of endless corporatemedia reports on whether or not climatechange is real and how many polar icecaps are melting, a 48-page classifiedreport created by Homeland Security wasreleased last year at a special house sub-committee hearing chaired by Representa-tive Anna Eschu on the "security impactof global climate change."This briefing confirmed what many of us poor people already suspected: climatechange is likely to result in the ratchetingup of a police state to “control” us, thecrowded masses, as we riot for food,water, and land.It’s no mystery, what will happen toour poor in a future crisis. Look at what’salready happened to low-income commu-nities in the past. From Haiti to NewOrleans—in extreme cold, we havefrozen to death; in extreme heat anddrought, we’ve died of thirst, hunger, andexposure—with no more crops, livestock,or land.A forecast of the what’s to come canbe seen in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s infamous jail for immigrants. “Poor people havebeen dying of thirst with no access towater or air conditioning in the heat,”reports Michael Woodard, poverty scholarand Poor News Network correspondent.In essence, that’s the risk that climatechange poses. Poor people can’t just moveto higher ground, purchase importedfoods, or upgrade their roofing, windows,and foundation to keep from being dis-placed by the next hurricane.“We are forced to live in poor neigh-borhoods near poisonous industries thatalready are killing us. If you add increasedheat and decrease of land to the sicksoup—we wont last long in a globalwarming reality,” says Ingrid De Leon,with
Voces de Immigrantes en Resistencia
.The surprising thing is, we alreadyknow a lot about how to reorganize oureconomies for moving from “surviving” to“thriving.” Indigenous and poor peoplehave long known that sharing resourceswith each other, practicing interdepend-ence, and building real community are thebest route to independence.POOR is an indigenous and poor people-led organization of revolutionary poets, art-makers, multimedia producers, educators,and poverty scholars (as we call ourselves)who see the urgent need to be producingand educating so we can stop being talkedabout, researched, reported on, criminal-ized, and legislated against.We have launched an equity campaignfor a project we call “homefulness,” asweat-equity cohousing model for landlessfamilies, which includes a communitygarden for localizing and producing our ownhealthy food, and several micro-businessprojects to build sustainable economicsupport for all of us. So far we have estab-lished a social justice and arts café, a family-friendly project-based school, and a commu-nity media teaching and production center.My mother, Mama Dee as she wascalled, died from complications of hersmog-related asthma and heart condition.As I was growing up she and I talked con-stantly about how to get away from thepoisonous environments where we wereforced to live—near power plants, free-ways, and factories. In the end, Mama Deesuccumbed to the illnesses our povertycaused. But her spirit of resistance lives onin our community and in the mobilizationsto work for climate justice across theplanet.
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Lisa Gray-Garcia a.k.a. Tiny is a de-colonized Taina poverty scholar, the single mother of her son Tiburcio, the daughter of Dee, and coeditor of
POOR Magazine
.
Vces f
C l i m a t e J u s t i c e
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million people lack access to clean and safe water. Now climate change is adding to their existing problems.Enie was part of the delegation from Gender CC—anetwork of women from the most impacted areas of theGlobal South who are working to ensure a gender per-spective to climate justice.
10
“Most of the women in rural communities dependon water from a river or stream,” explained Enie.“With the droughts that are happening in some parts of Africa today, the rivers are [dry]. These women have to walk longer distance[s]. So you can imagine how muchtime is wasted by these women just [to] get water forcooking… for taking their bath… for washing theirclothes. The woman is the caretaker of the home, soyou can imagine what impact climate change has madeon the woman.”
11
Obviously, the problem cannot be resolved by focus-ing on the symptoms—drought and hurricanes, warand displacement—of climate change and militarism. We need to tackle the causes, which require a drasticshift in our patterns of resource consumption. And thatcannot happen unless women are given a place at thetable and a voice in the proceedings.
Copenhagen 2009 through a Feminist Lens
The United Nations Climate Change Conference inCopenhagen in December 2009 must keep social justice and gender equity at its core. Without consider-ation of those two issues, any strategies for resistanceand survival will be meaningless.It was a point Sharmind Neelormi of Bangladesh was trying to make at the UNFCCC in Poland, whenshe said, “We are trying to integrate more intensely thegender aspects of climate change into the policy. Weare trying to lobby our parties, our government nego-tiators, and the UNFCCC process to be much moresensitive on gender issues.”
12
Gender CC was a step in that direction. As co-founder Ulrike Roehr explains, “We try to provide aspace where we [can connect] to each other, and discussand share all our thoughts, and try to enable people tocreate a new community and make a shift in communi-cating [with] each other. Our vision is to have a lively and colorful network.”
13
Closer to home, in the Bay Area, members of Mobi-lization for Climate Justice West—a coalition of 35organizations— which subscribe to the core principlesof climate justice. David Solnit, a volunteer organizersays “That means making space for the most impactedfolks, domestically and globally, and looking to localand people-based solutions rather than corporate andmarket-based solutions.”
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Endnotes
1.Worsnip, P. “U.N. categorizes rape as a war tactic.” Reuters. 2008.http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnN19485901.html.2“The World of Refugee Women at a Glance.”
Refugees Magazine.
Issue 126.United Nations High Commission for Refugees. 2002. http://www.unhcr.org/3.“National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.” Military Advisory Board.The CNA Corporation. 2007.4.Sharp, Travis. “Growth in U.S. Defense Spending Over the Last Decade.” Centerfor Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. February 26, 2009. http://www.armscon-trolcenter.org5.Martinot, Steve. “Militarism and Global Warming.”
Synthesis/Regeneration.
Win-ter 2007. http://www.greens.org/s-r/42/42-06.html6.Hellman, Christopher and Sharp, Travis. “The FY 2009 Pentagon Spending Re-quest—Discretionary.” The Center for Arms Conrol and Non-Proliferation. Febru-ary 4, 2008. http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/7.Zoepf, Katherine. “Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn to Sex Trade in Syria.”
New York Times,
May 29, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/8.Ginn, Dana, et al. “Looking Both Ways: Women’s Lives at the Crossroads of Re-productive Justice and Climate Justice.” Asian Communities for Reproductive Jus-tice, 2009, p. 5.9.Van Meygaarden, Jacqueline. “Gender Justice in Times of a Changing Climate.”Gender CC, 2008. www.gendercc.net/policy/conferences/cop14.htm10.Ibid.11.“Women’s Voices on Climate Change.” Gender CC. 2008.http://www.gendercc.net/network/who-we-are/12.Van Meygaarden, “Gender Justice.”13.Ibid.
Maryam Roberts is the former Peace and Solidarity program director at the Women of Color Resource Center in Oakland, California.
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Photo:Gender CC ac-tivists held a brief-ing in Poznan,Poland where theypresented propos-als for the integra-tion of gender intothe UNFCCCprocess©2008www.gendercc.net
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