A RISING FORM of
ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM ronmental struggles, as they biologically relate to many natural flows and disturbances, resulting in their dominant environmental advocacy. Many push this further to advocate for social and legal protections to safeguard this biological vulnerability such as reproductive freedom and maternal health rights.
Historically and culturally, women have tended to predominantly fulfill roles in agricultural production and household administration, providing the main source of nourishment for families and communities. Currently, women produce 60 to 80 percent of food in the global south and remain critical in collecting and storing water, securing fuel sources, and managing agricultural lands (Owren, 2012). These profound responsibilities have further bonded women to the environment as entire communities depend on women’s collaboration with the natural world. This induces women to often notice environmental problems more quickly and exigently as they interact with the environment in situations of considerable closeness and regularity (Merchant, Ecology 242). To many women, this instills a cogent and personal responsibility to preserve and respect nature. But, some argue that this historical proximity to nature can be interpreted as environmental dependence which often drives women to reach into divergent fields (Blum 9). Both reproductive abilities and enduring labor positions of women provide powerful insight into how an innate closeness to nature manifests in multifarious characteristics, belief systems, and courses of action.
ate this connection asserting that it inculcates characteristics of strength and guardianship resulting in the construction of women as protectors of the environment. This, in many ways, is essentialism which is the view that all entities are defined by a certain set of physiological characteristics. Essentialism in this innocuous manner is used as a tool to bolster the idea of women being uniquely and dynamically related to nature as a way to uplift women’s capacity to interact with the environment.
On the other hand, essentialism has the potential to and currently is employed in our society at a detriment to women and the environment when utilized for repressive purposes. It can be facile to assume that women’s biological relation to nature inherently makes their essence sympathetic to the environment. However, this is a dangerous generalization as essentializing women to blanket characteristics restricts their capacity for change and individuality. It also provokes the question “do women have a special relationship to nature that men cannot share?” that ecofeminist Carolyn Merchant challenges (Merchant, Ecology 243). If, according to this essentialist perspective, all individuals assigned as women at birth have inherent fixed “feminine” characteristics, then men, sexually non-binary, or transgender individuals must inherently lack sympathy and regard for nature. According to environmental philosopher Kenneth Worthy, personal connections to nature in modern times are more profoundly established by occupation, leisure activities, and location rather than by biological sex. Declaring that a woman is one specific thing excludes others and subjects women to an inaccurate, socially-derived notion that restricts their freedom. Reconciling these two seemingly similar but powerfully divergent concepts (essentialism and woman’s “special connection”) has been an enduring polemic.
Do women have a special relationship to nature that men cannot share?
The dichotomy between essentialism and thoughtful understandings of women and nature has long been steeped in misconstruction. On one hand, the interrelatedness of woman and nature “turned upside down becomes the source of women’s empowerment and ecological activism” (Merchant, Radical Ecology 482). Many celebrate
by TIFFANY LIANG
LITIGATION
The phrase environmental activism brings to mind organized strikes with big, colorful posters, campaigns against plastic bags and straws, and activists lobbying Congress and trying to get signatures for petitions. But perhaps what is less noticeable is the climate change battle raging on in courtrooms, on legal pads and through law professionals. It manifests as a rising form of environmental activism — litigation. According to “Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation: 9
Spring 2020 / Perennial
One way to comprehend the “special connection”
2019 Snapshot,” a policy report by Joana Setzer and Rebecca Byrnes, more and more legal battles have been levied as a means to hold governments and corporations environmentally accountable. 28 countries have seen climate-related lawsuits, and more than 75 percent of these cases have been filed in the U.S. The U.S. is perhaps at the epicenter of environmental lawsuits due to its culture of litigation and onslaught of cases against the Trump administra-
tion’s environmental deregulation efforts. One current notable example is California v. Chao, in which California is fighting to retain its ability to set its own emission standards for automobiles, which are more stringent than federal standards. California was granted this right through a waiver under the Clean Air Act, but the Trump administration revoked it. While this lawsuit is still ongoing, the overwhelming majority of such cases against the administration have been won so far.
