By – Prisha Gakhar
Abstract
The gender-climate change nexus has become an increasingly popular talking point in environmental justice debates, but the theoretical tenets of ecofeminism continue to be poorly understood in popular discourse. This article explores ecofeminism as an approach to thinking about climate justice from the standpoint of contemporary environmental law. The recent controversy around actor Dia Mirza’s statement that “patriarchy is the cause of climate change” serves as a starting point for the discussion, and argues that the public backlash showed a wider unfamiliarity with ecofeminist thought rather than an engagement with its underlying principles.
Introduction
Actor and environmental activist Dia Mirza started a social media uproar last month when she blamed patriarchy for climate change in a podcast interview. The remark drew widespread criticism, and was dismissed as ideological rhetoric and assertions that climate change is driven by emissions, industry and consumption; not patriarchy. The backlash exposed a deeper problem: the long-standing unawareness of ecofeminism, a body of scholarship mainly stating that the domination of women and the exploitation of nature are rooted in the same structures of hierarchy and control. In this context, this article lays down the foundational bearings of ecofeminism and asks whether Indian environmental law adequately reflects its insights. Although there is a long history of what may be described as ecofeminist environmental movements in India, the country’s legal framework is still not sufficiently sensitive to the gendered nature of environmental harm. The article qualitatively draws upon the works of Val Plumwood, Vandana Shiva and Karen Warren, analyses key Indian environmental movements and evaluates constitutional jurisprudence and statutory frameworks from an ecofeminist perspective to determine their contribution to climate justice.
Understanding Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism (a term coined by French feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne) emerged as an interdisciplinary movement connecting feminist theory and environmental justice around the late twentieth century. The framework broadens environmental discourse into the arena of wider systems of political power, economic organisation and social hierarchy beyond a purely technical/scientific rendering of ecological degradation.
Val Plumwood, who is often referred to as one of the most prominent ecofeminist theorists, states that Western philosophy operates on the basis of some dualisms that are also hierarchical in nature (e.g., humans versus nature, reason versus emotion, male versus female) where the latter part of the binary is viewed as ‘inferior.’ In her book titled ‘Feminism and the Mastery of Nature’, she claims that it is these very dualisms that have legitimized the exploitation of environment as well as oppression of women by making them mere objects of control.
Vandana Shiva builds on this framework and links patriarchy, colonialism and capitalist models of development to environmental degradation. She argues, drawing on experience in the Global South, that local ecological knowledge has been replaced in modern society, turning nature and women’s labour into commodities. In ‘Staying Alive’, Shiva shows how ecological degradation is unequally experienced by women, who are responsible for food, water and subsistence livelihoods. Thus, climate justice is not just about cutting emissions but transforming the unequal social structures that decide who pays the price for the environment.
Karen Warren further contributes to these ideas with her notion of the “logic of domination” in ecofeminism. She argues that the hierarchical logic that justifies the domination of nature justifies also the oppression of women and other marginalised groups. Linked to these forms of domination, environmental law narrowly focused on ecological protection risks treating symptoms rather than causes. Thus, ecofeminism conceives of climate justice as an intersection between environmental protection and equality, participation and social justice, asking not only how nature is protected but also whose interests determine the governance of the environment.
The Indian Ecofeminist Traditions: Movements Before Legislation
However, nowhere is ecofeminism more visible, than India, which is not used to fighting for environmental protection through court battles and laws but through movements led by women whose livelihood depended on local ecosystems. Undoubtedly, the most remarkable practice in ecofeminism is the Chipko movement of the 1970 where village women led by Gaura Devi physically embraced the trees to protect them from commercial logging since deforestation endangered not only forests but water resources, fuel supply, food production, and livelihood of the community. Similar movements such as the Appiko Movement and Narmada Bachao Andolan took place raising the same questions when Medha Patkar and other leaders fought against a kind of maldevelopment in India, which sacrificed vulnerable communities for economic development. Indeed, ecofeminism of India echoes Vandana Shiva’s concept of “maldevelopment” suggesting that the destruction of the environment does not concern everyone since it directly affects women in particular as people dependent on natural resources for subsistence. However, they also enshrined Bina Agarwal’s more complex ‘feminist environmentalism’, according to which the bond between women and nature is based on material conditions of work, resource dependency, and access to decisions rather than on biological affinity. Overall, these social movements prove that Indian ecofeminism is not an imported theory but the reality formed in the process of defending forests, water sources, and livelihoods.
Climate Justice and the Law: Is the Law Keeping Up?
Indeed, Indian environmental law has definitely increased constitutional guarantees for the environment; however, it has seldom paid attention to the fundamental problems discussed in ecofeminism. For instance, the Supreme Court, in its judgments in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, Vellore Citizens’ Welfare Forum v. Union of India and Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar, read into Article 21 of the Constitution the right to a safe and healthy environment and took into account principles such as sustainable development, precautionary principle and polluter pays principle. In the same way, the environmental governance was bolstered by legislation like Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 and Forest Rights Act, 2006.But these models remain technocratic, emphasizing pollution control, conservation, and resource management and not the unequal sharing of the burden of the environment. The Forest Rights Act is closest to being an ecofeminist model in terms of acknowledging the rights of the people living in the forests, but even in its execution, the significance of women in the governance and resource management of the forests has often been neglected. In this way, Indian environmental law is concerned with protecting ecosystems while failing to consider who suffers due to their destruction and involvement in the decisions regarding their usage. Therefore, climate justice entails a transformation from conservation to governance that is truly participatory and intersectional. This means that there will be a need to incorporate gender-sensitive climate impact assessment in environmental approvals, to ensure that women, particularly indigenous and rural women, are represented in environmental decision-making, to appreciate traditional ecological knowledge along with scientific knowledge, and to develop adaptation policies that take into consideration the burdens of climate change on women.
Way Forward
For Indian environmental legislation, the next step should be to evolve from the current approach of only conservation-focused provisions to an approach of climate governance, which takes into account the differences arising out of the gendered impact of climate change and other such factors like caste and class. While there have been certain positive changes made in the direction of environmental justice, they are not at all aware of the differential impact of climate change depending upon gender, caste, class, and resource access. In order to make the laws more ecofeminist, it becomes necessary to adopt a more participatory approach to environment decision-making, where women in general and women who belong to indigenous and forest areas are adequately involved in climate adaptation strategies, forest management, and EIA. It would also be essential to incorporate traditional ecological knowledge along with science-based knowledge while formulating climate policies and taking into account the extra burden on women in providing water and food security.
Conclusion
The controversy that Dia Mirza’s statements generated highlights the tendency to misinterpret ecofeminism as an ideological slogan rather than as an established framework for understanding environmental injustice. But the work of Val Plumwood, Vandana Shiva and Karen Warren shows that ecofeminism is ultimately about revealing the systems of domination which exploit both people and nature at the same time. India’s own environmental history, from the Chipko Movement to the Narmada Bachao Andolan, tells us that these ideas have been around in practice for a long time, if only partially reflected in environmental law. With climate change worsening, environmental justice cannot be defined by cleaner air or lower emissions alone. It must be defined also by who’s voices guide environmental governance, and who pays the price for ecological degradation. Environmental law today must therefore move from the protection of nature to ensuring that the quest for sustainability is based on equality, participation and justice. Only then will climate justice mean something more than an aspirational ideal.
About the Author:
Prisha Gakhar is a third-year law student at Jindal Global Law School, with a keen interest in economics, IPR and corporate law.
Image Source : https://feminisminindia.com/2022/07/21/critiquing-ecofeminism-gender-and-intersectionality-in-environment-justice-movements/