Climate Change Is Intersectional

The concept of intersectionality first gained ground in the Combahee River Collective statement of 1977, discussing the interplay between Blackness, feminism, and lesbianism (Combahee River Collective 1977).

It was introduced into the academic mainstream when Dr Kimberle Crenshaw argued that “the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism”, and that it creates a new, different, and compounded type of experience requiring a new mode of discourse (Crenshaw 1989: 140). Crenshaw uses the analogy of a traffic intersection to demonstrate that discrimination may flow in multiple directions and people who are located at the intersection of various discriminated identities may be injured by vehicles travelling from any direction, or indeed all directions (Crenshaw 1989: 149).

Applied to climate change, intersectionality recognises the ways in which individuals experience, adapt to, and/or perpetuate climate change, by reason of their positions and identities within the webs of power in their societies and environments.

An intersectional analysis enhances the ways in which climate change are conceived and recognized by examining extant relationships of power and established practices (Kaijser and Kronsell 2014: 419). In its production of unconventional or non-mainstream strands of knowledge integral to the design of climate policy, intersectional research calls attention to new connections and standpoints, support solidarity between those whose interests are not considered in current climate debates (Kaijser and Kronsell 2014: 419). Intersectionality can also serve as a tool for studying the material and normative manifestations of power structures in the climate agenda and energy sector, such as differences in transportation habits and consumption trends across gender and class (Kaijser and Kronsell 2014: 426, 427). Amorim-Maia et al (2022: 4) propose that, by studying the overlapping types of social and economic grievances which contribute to urban climate vulnerability, one can drive adaptation design with more tangibility, cohesiveness and fairness.

Classifications of socio-economic status become relevant in discussing the capacity to remove oneself from an impending environmental hazard and to adapt to one's new milieu, as well as generally in the positive correlation between income and emission levels (Kaijser and Kronsell 2014: 422). Other categories of social difference or oppression as noted in the literature include gender, ethnic hierarchy, and indigeneity (Vinyeta et al 2015: 2).

In conducting intersectional analyses, there must be emphasis not only on the social categories which are receiving attention in the formulation of climate strategy, but also those categories which are invisible in this discourse, with due regard for the subjective, fluid, and context-specific nature of these categorisations (Kaijser and Kronsell 2014: 422).

References:

Amorim-Maia, A.T., I. Anguelovski, E. Chu, and J. Connolly. (2022). ‘Intersectional climate justice: A conceptual pathway for bridging adaptation planning, transformative action, and social equity’. Urban Climate 41 (2022) 101053.

Combahee River Collective. (1977). ‘The Combahee River Collective Statement’. April 1977. https://americanstudies.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Keyword%20Coalition_Readings.pdf

Crenshaw, K. (1989). ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics’. University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 1989: Iss. 1, Article 8. http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8

Kaijser, A. and A. Kronsell (2014). ‘Climate change through the lens of intersectionality’. Environmental Politics, 2014. Vol. 23, No. 3, 417–433, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2013.835203

Vinyeta, K., K. Powys Whyte, and K. Lynn. (2015). ‘Climate change through an intersectional lens: gendered vulnerability and resilience in indigenous communities in the United States’. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-923. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest.