Women warriors for planet earth

Dr Gabrielle Hosein

WITH Earth Day just passed on April 22, there is one lesson. Women are fighting back.

On April 19, women of Red Thread in Guyana spoke about multiracial, grassroots Caribbean women’s organising against oil extractivism and its impact on life, species and nature in our beloved region.

As they put it, “The oil conglomerate ExxonMobil has established a foothold in Guyana. What does this mean for the environment, the economy, politics and society?”

We should all be asking these questions.

Take note of their courage while facing backlash and death threats. Women across the Americas (and activists across the world) have been assassinated for resisting extractivism, whether for mining, oil and gas production, industrial livestock farming, logging, mono-agriculture and even the building of dams.

Extractivism refers to overexploitation of natural resources, which destroys rivers, oceans, groundwater, soil, coasts, forests, climate balance, human health and life, biodiversity, livelihoods and communities.

It refers to a belief system that puts wealth above life and nature, and to use of power (and bribery and corruption) to secure resource extraction regardless of social and ecological costs, whether forced displacement and migration or increased social conflict and violence. It is as brutal as colonialism and has its roots there. In the Caribbean, colonial history should teach us that people can be killed by the millions as long as there’s profit.

Extractivism is a "necropolitics." "Necro" refers to death and "politics" to the use of political, administrative and economic power to determine how people will live and die.

This is what is happening to us as we watch ourselves buffeted between hurricanes, flood and drought. For Red Thread women, it’s a necroilpolitics, pelting the planet into a crisis that is accelerating in timing, unpredictability and impact.

Exclusions resulting from poverty, race, gender, disability, family size, dependence on public transport and health care, age, educational level and sexuality most affect those marginalised, making it hardest for them to survive. Even when they have reason to be afraid, this is why women fearlessly fight.

Women’s resistance is just one strand in the weave of gender, extractivism and climate change. Extractivism also creates conditions for women’s sexual and economic exploitation, for example in mining communities. It increases ill-health, for example cancers and respiratory diseases, which further adds to women’s responsibilities for the aged, young and unwell.

When families are displaced by climate disasters, women, girls and children are the most unsafe, and have inadequate access to resources or land ownership for resettlement and recovery. They, and those from LBGTQI communities, are least represented in corporate boardrooms and government cabinets when decisions are made.

In Jamaica, there’s longstanding resistance, also long led by women, against extractivism in Cockpit Country. Gorgeously biodiverse, Cockpit Country is historic home to Jamaica’s Maroons. It is the largest remaining natural forest in Jamaica, supplying 40 per cent of Jamaica’s freshwater needs.

The government has opened Cockpit Country to the company Noranda for bauxite mining. People instead want its protection. On May 4 at 6pm Jamaica time and 7pm TT time, you can listen to a webinar about these protests. Register at: https://tinyurl.com/PeopleLeadLeadersFollow2.

This past week, the Breadfruit Collective and the Climate Conscious Podcast held their second Caribbean Women for Climate Justice conference, focusing on themes such as women’s gender sensitive "leadhership" for climate resilience.

It was a brilliant show of regional vision, analysis and organising by a younger generation of feminists. For Christine Samwaroo, 30 years old and a founder of the collective, gender justice and climate justice are inseparable struggles, and “those most impacted are also our most important advocates.”

Caribbean women are allied with our sisters in Latin America, challenging logging and mining as it has decimated forests, rivers and communities. For example, in October 2014 in Ecuador, the Declaration of the Meeting of Women against Extractivism and Climate Change stated, “We do not want the development alternatives that have signified the extinction of cultures and peoples; this is a development of death, of destruction, based on exploitation, primarily of oil and minerals. This development has no future. We know this because we have already lived with it for more than 500 years.”

They proposed renewed efforts at food sovereignty, water sovereignty and energy sovereignty.

Such earth and gender justice organising by girls, women and LBGTI folk is multiplied across our hemisphere, taking risks for our very future.

If we fail to hear, Mother Earth herself will rebel. Like Caribbean women, her purpose was never to be exploited to death for unsustainable accumulation of obscene wealth.