Environmental Law and Feminism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cinnamon P. Carlarne
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
The Law ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender

This article explores the important but poorly understood relationship between environmental law and legal feminism. The modern legal movements to curb environmental degradation and gender-based discrimination are still young. For environmentalism, the focus is on constraining unbridled ecosystem destruction. For feminism, the focus is on discovering and unraveling the systems that subordinate women. Little has been done, however, to cultivate or respond to these movements’ linkages. The onset of climate change and the maturing of climate law, however, are bringing renewed attention to this underexplored relationship. The article explores how the evolution of ecofeminism, the environmental justice movement, and the climate justice movement are advancing thinking at the intersection of environmental law and feminism and the law. In particular, it suggests that as both fields increasingly seek to situate ongoing challenges within larger structures of power and inequality, they draw closer together, creating opportunities for intellectual exchange and coalition building.

scholarly journals Climate change and gender-based health disparities

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. e44-e45
Author(s):  
Kim van Daalen ◽  
Laura Jung ◽  
Roopa Dhatt ◽  
Alexandra L Phelan
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Health Disparities ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender

scholarly journals Assessing the Livelihood Vulnerability of Rural Indigenous Households to Climate Changes in Central Nepal, Himalaya

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 2977 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nani Maiya Sujakhu ◽  
Sailesh Ranjitkar ◽  
Jun He ◽  
Dietrich Schmidt-Vogt ◽  
Yufang Su ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Vulnerability Index ◽  
Financial Assets ◽  
Nepal Himalaya ◽  
Mountain Communities ◽  
Farming Communities ◽  
Central Nepal ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Ethnicity And Gender

Climate change and related hazards affect the livelihoods of people and their vulnerability to shocks and stresses. Though research on the linkages between a changing climate and vulnerability has been increasing, only a few studies have examined the caste/ethnicity and gender dimensions of livelihood vulnerability. In this study, we attempt to explore how cultural and gender-related aspects influence livelihood vulnerability in indigenous farming mountain communities of the Nepal Himalaya in the context of climate change. We applied the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) to estimate household (social group and gender-based) vulnerability in farming communities in the Melamchi River Valley, Nepal. The results identified female-headed families, and those belonging to disadvantaged social groups as more vulnerable and in need of being preferentially targeted by policy measures. Higher exposure to climatic extremes and related hazards, dependency on natural resources, lack of financial assets, and weak social networking were identified as components that determine overall vulnerability. The study also visualizes complex adaptation pathways and analyzes the influence of gender and ethnicity on the capacities of households and communities to adapt to climate change.

Occupation in Natural Environments; Health Equity and Environmental Justice

2021 ◽  
pp. 000841742110400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Whalley Hammell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Occupational Therapy ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Occupational Engagement ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
Key Issues

Background. Occupations undertaken in natural environments can positively impact physical and mental health, improve cognitive functioning, contribute spiritual and cultural benefits, and increase belonging, self-worth, and the meaningfulness of occupations. However, occupational opportunities in healthy natural spaces are inequitably distributed; and the deleterious effects of climate change and environmental degradation are borne disproportionately by socioeconomically disadvantaged people. Purposes. To highlight evidence that occupational engagement in nature is a determinant of health, foreground environmental injustices and identify some implications for occupational therapy. Key issues. Cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural research and critical environmental justice scholarship indicate that healthy nature is an inequitably distributed determinant of occupation, wellbeing, and human health. This merits critical attention from occupational therapy. Implications. By researching, identifying, and addressing occupational and health inequities arising from environmental degradation, climate change and inequitable access to health-promoting natural environments occupational therapists could contribute valuable, occupational perspectives to initiatives addressing human rights and environmental justice.

scholarly journals Eco-terrorists Facing Armageddon: The Defence of Necessity and Legal Normativity in the Context of Environmental Crisis

2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-364
Author(s):  
Hugo Tremblay
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Ecological Changes ◽  
Illegal Acts ◽  
The Law ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
Legal Normativity

The invocation of necessity as a defence for acts of civil disobedience has raised questions about the rule of law and legal certainty. The rise of radical environmental activism in the context of climate change warrants an inquiry into the scope and limitations of the defence in Canada. This paper argues that the defence of necessity significantly increases legal flexibility in Canadian environmental law. To some extent, the defence may thus enhance the law’s resilience to socio-ecological changes. However, the defence could also render the law flexible to such an extent that positive norms might lose their prescriptive value in certain circumstances. In particular, as the link connecting human activity, climate change, and consequent damage to the environment becomes clearer, there is a greater likelihood of environmental activists successfully invoking necessity to defend illegal acts aimed at curbing environmental degradation. In other words, necessity may offer a defence against the enforcement of legal frameworks de facto authorizing catastrophic environmental destruction. The prescriptive value of those legal frameworks could be critically diminished, and the resilience of the law as a normative framework may be threatened.

Role of Climate Change in Exacerbating Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Women: A New Challenge for International Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Bharat H. Desai ◽  
Moumita Mandal
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
Political Security ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender

The advent of climate change era has been affirmed by various global processes including 21 May 2019 recognition by the Anthropocene Working Group of ‘human impact’ in bringing profound alterations on planet earth. It has emerged as the predominant ‘world problematique’. Though entire populations are affected by climate change, women and girls suffer the most. Due to their traditional roles, women are heavily dependent on natural resources. As already seen, as a consequence of natural disasters and during Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21, women have faced heightened real-life challenges specially being vulnerable to different forms of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). They suffer from a lack of protection, privacy, and mental trauma. Women are exposed to SGBV due to weak or absence of social, economic, political security and the culture of widespread impunity to the perpetrators. There is double victimization of women both as human beings and because of their gender. Effect of SGBV is highly injurious and perpetual. A close study of four main areas of international law does not yield any international legal instrument that deals with SGBV against women during and after the climate change induced disasters. This is more ominous when growing evidence suggests role of climate change in exacerbation of SGBV against women and girls. Even texts of the three specific climate change treaties (1992 UNFCCC, 1997 Kyoto Protocol and 2005 Paris Agreement) do not address this issue. It has been given attention only through the decisions of the Conference of the Parties in recent years. Due to serious psychological and bodily harm SGBV causes to women, it needs to be explicitly factored in respective international legal instruments on climate change and disasters. Amidst ignorance, denials and lack of adequate attention as regards impact of climate change in exacerbating SGBV against women and girls from the scholars and decision-makers in the field, this study makes a modest effort to deduce and analyze –from scattered initiatives, scholarly literature in different areas, existing international legal instruments and intergovernmental processes –the growing causal relationship between climate change and SGBV against women and girls so as to suggest a way out for our better common future. It is a new challenge to international law that needs to be duly addressed in a timely manner.

Criminal justice responses to climate change

2018 ◽  
pp. 117-138
Author(s):  
Rob White
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
State Power ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Court Cases

This chapter addresses how criminal justice institutions are responding to climate change. This entails description of court cases intended to bolster the reduction of carbon emissions and the overall role of climate change litigation in the pursuit of climate justice. The chapter argues that an action plan against climate change must include activities and responses that involve the law and legal change, environmental law enforcement activities, courts and adjudication processes, and direct social action. Ultimately, however, this will also require action in and around the exercise of state power as well — since the carbon vandal more often than not acts with direct and indirect state support, through government policy decisions and via laws and courts that are skewed in pro-business directions. The place and role of the criminologist in pursuit of climate justice, therefore, can never be politically neutral.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document