I’ve just had a phone call with my grandma in Jamaica, where I’ve moved for six months. I’m in isolation for the next week or two until I can see her in person, but even being able to FaceTime in the same time zone means I’m closer to her than ever.
I tell Grandma that as soon as her Covid-19 vaccination kicks in and we can see each other in person, we’ll visit Hellshire Beach, where I spent so many evenings in childhood. She tells me that this beach, which is only a ten-minute drive from her home, has almost disappeared. I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s a feeling that is not unfamiliar to me. A question lingers at the back of my mind: How much longer will she be safe?
The last time I was in Jamaica, in January 2020, I was shocked at how little of the white, sandy beachfront remained. Grandma tells me that the water is beginning to engulf the land where the colourful restaurants currently sit on stilts. Some of my first memories, which have tethered me to my homeland, feel as if they are being washed away along with the beach. I began to wonder if my descendants will even be able to visit our ancestral lands.
For those of us who are part of the Caribbean diaspora and many other heritage communities, climate change, and its terrifying impact on the lives of our families, is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when?’
But more needs to be done, and urgently…
Many of us from these communities have fought against various forms of oppression for as long as we can remember. Even having experienced colonial hardship, some of us have managed to make it through. But of all the injustices, of all the insidious effects of oppression, the climate crisis can feel like an insurmountable feat, and it can leave communities like my grandmother’s feeling helpless.
Climate justice also presents us with the opportunity to transform gender justice and to tackle patriarchal violence. As the climate crisis increases insecurity, conflicts are more likely, famines more commonplace, and women and those from marginalised genders all over the world experience more violence. As the wetlands have dried up in rural Uganda, the communities who farm and live on that land are experiencing food scarcity and instability. In these situations, women have often become a commodity. Some families have even been forced to resort to selling off their daughters for marriage in order to survive.
The climate crisis is making this injustice worse, but if we frame our solutions based on an understanding of this injustice, we can not only stop the exacerbation of this oppression, but actually tackle the root causes of it. Not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because more women in leadership in communities has been found to lead to more climate-compatible actions being prioritised.
Therefore, the necessary adaptation measures to droughts in these areas must also include increased access to education for women, domestic-violence protection and other provisions. Framing these actions as climate solutions is absolutely essential.
Synthetic fabrics are the biggest culprit in fashion’s role in climate change.
Many other solutions to the climate crisis also improve racial justice, gender liberation, and tackle classism, because these solutions go to the root of the problem, rather than merely treating the symptoms.
As Audre Lorde, visionary writer and Black feminist, said: ‘We do not have single issue struggles, because we don’t live single issue lives.’ Once we see the climate crisis as a justice issue, the solutions will not only prevent climate breakdown but also make for a better world for all of us.
When we choose to pursue emission-reducing actions which prioritise justice for the most marginalised countries and communities, we combat both the climate crisis and oppression at the same time.
Hilary Graham, a sociologist whose work focuses on the social determinants of health, puts this so clearly: ‘Social inequalities become written on the body as health inequalities.’ So, when we tackle the crisis with the adverse health impacts at the forefront of our minds, we have the opportunity to make an even better, more equitable world for all of us. We have a very real chance of achieving this better future, but only if we join movements and create this change ourselves.
Climate justice offers us a portal. A gateway from this world into the next. Now, if that’s not a rallying call to be part of the movements for climate justice, I’m not sure what is. It was all of this – the hope, the fear, the excitement, the anger at injustice – that made sixteen-year-old me move beyond ‘raising awareness’ and changing my lifestyle choices into movements for climate justice and direct action.
We do have a huge amount of power to radically transform the world, and that power goes beyond individual lifestyle choices and social media posts. That power comes from campaigning and organising together in our communities. Today, climate justice is both what I fight for and what keeps me fighting. If it isn’t already that for you, I’m certain that our further exploration in my book will make it so.
Extracted from It's Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform Our World by Mikaela Loach.
‘Sustainable’ labels can actually mean anything but…
