Ethics & the Environment

Abstract:

This article critically considers how existing social power relations are reified in the stories we’re using to tell stories about gender and climate change. Throughout, I draw on Donna Haraway’s argument that “it matters what stories make worlds, which worlds make stories” (2016, 12) to explore some of the theoretical possibilities for re-storying gender and climate change offered by feminist and critical scholars. I work through two contextual examples: i) United Nations and associated governmental policy on ‘gender mainstreaming’ in our climate responses; and ii) climate change legislation and Indigenous women’s voices on environmental relationships in Aotearoa New Zealand and the South Pacific. I argue that alongside our need for urgent climate action, we must also disrupt the social power relations reified through hierarchical binaries in our climate change texts, such as Global North/Global South, masculine/feminine, and developing/developed, if we are to ethically and relationally respond to our climate crises.