The climate crisis is no stranger to us. Having become an unfortunate resident in our day-to-day lives, it is important to consider the relationship between social injustice and the environment to truly assess its impact on all communities.

The term ‘intersectionality’ was first coined by Kimberley Crenshaw to describe how various identities, such as class, race, and gender, intersect with each other in the context of social injustice. This concept can be applied in terms of how we view the impacts of environmentalism.

While we are all impacted by the climate crisis, there are certain groups that are more vulnerable than others, particularly when it comes to climate disasters.

The United Nations Development Programme found that, globally, “women and children are 14 times more likely to die during a disaster.”

This data shows how often women are disproportionately the victims during climate disasters. But why is this the case?

To begin with, women in the Global South have restricted access to resources due to their socioeconomic status. This is referred to as “gender disaster vulnerability,” meaning that these women are disadvantaged when it comes to protecting themselves against climate disasters.

Research shows that “more than 800,000 women lose their lives every year due to insufficient access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene.” Although menstrual hygiene is an essential aspect of women’s health, it remains inadequate for an estimated 500 million women and girls.

What’s more, in places where climate issues are exacerbated, women and girls are forced to travel further to gather resources for the household, increasing their exposure to life-threatening diseases.

On top of this, being responsible for this task more often than their male counterparts means that many young girls are consistently out of education in order to gather resources for their households. The Institute of Development Studies found that “all over the Global South, women and girls walk an average of six kilometers each day to collect water.” By missing out on their education, many women in crisis areas have “restricted access to the economic, cultural and health resources that could otherwise be used to plan and prepare for disaster events.”

To make matters worse, not only are young girls and women missing their education and being made more vulnerable to diseases, they are also disproportionately vulnerable to attack.

Women are made more vulnerable to these attacks because of their circumstances. The pre-existing vulnerabilities faced by women globally are exacerbated in the face of climate disasters.

Greta Baard, author of Ecofeminism and climate change, writes that: “warning information was not sent to women [referring to the 2019 Bangladesh Cyclone], who were largely confined in their homes; women are not trained swimmers; women’s caregiving responsibilities meant that women trying to escape the floods were often holding infants and towing elder family members, while husbands escaped alone; moreover, the increased risk of sexual assaults outside the home made women wait longer to leave, hoping that male relatives would return for them.”

Crenshaw’s definition of intersectionality is highly applicable here; women in climate vulnerable countries are at a higher risk than men, entirely due to their gender.

Researchers have found that gender-based violence typically spikes after a natural disaster, with their vulnerability to violence worsened in the face of a climate crisis. Unfortunately, the true extent of this spike is difficult to ascertain as most areas affected by disaster struggle to record reliable data in the aftermath.

To make matters worse, globally, 108 out of 191 countries and areas face high or very high exposure to floods. These areas are home to 94 percent of the world’s female population.

This visualisation shows that most of the most affected areas have a higher female population. So, although a person’s socioeconomic status has significant bearing, this data shows that location also plays an equally important role in how women are disproportionately vulnerable to climate disasters.

On top of this, it has been found that poorer nations experience “far higher rates of mortality and homelessness in the wake of climate-related events than do wealthy nations.”

This is another type of social injustice that intersects with climate change – class. In particular, the systemic inequalities that exist between the West and the Global South and how this plays a role in a country’s ability to respond to climate disasters.

So why are poorer nations disproportionately vulnerable to the climate crisis?

For starters, research shows that factors such as limited socio-economic development, poor infrastructure, and authoritarian regimes lead to a higher vulnerability to disaster, as these countries simply do not have the resources to respond. This means that the pre-existing social issues in these areas are exacerbated in the wake of disaster – making it even harder for these countries to recover.

That being said, the biggest contributor to climate disaster in the Global South is a lot closer to home – it’s us.

The western world’s overconsumption directly impacts the Global South. This takes many forms, from the exploitation and mining of natural resources for western consumption, to the considerable amount of carbon emissions and waste produced by the Global North. An example of this is the fast fashion industry, wherein countries in the Global South, such as Bangladesh and China are being exploited for resources such as cotton. This overproduction leads to immense clothing waste, which piles up in countries such as Chile – where a pile of clothing waste can be seen from space.

This reveals an unfortunate pattern in how social minorities are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. Class and gender interact with  the climate  crisis in very similar ways, showing how certain social groups are more vulnerable to climate disasters than others. It is inarguable that, in order to assess the true impacts of climate change, one must address environmentalism with an intersectional approach.

Kulsum Shabbir

Creative Editor