Both Savitri Persaud and Kevin De Silva are students at the University of Toronto. They recently helped coordinate and organize “Climate Justice Now!” 2009.
Savitri is co-president of the Women and Gender Studies Students Union and Kevin is an executive member of the Caribbean Studies Students Union.
By Savitri Persaud and Kevin De Silva
We are both university students in Toronto, and both of us are of Guyanese background. In a culture often susceptible to apathy, unawareness, and even despair, politicization, especially amongst younger students becomes imperative in order to attempt to combat many of the seemingly overwhelming maladies of the present period. However difficult, the importance of the struggle towards the construction of a more engaged, critical and spirited collective consciousness cannot be understated. We believe that younger individuals, and in our case students tied in some way to the Caribbean have a responsibility, regardless of their knowledge or acceptance of it, to immerse themselves in the issues most pertinent to their communities.
The “Caribbean” and “Climate Justice” as terms may at a glance seem unrelated, irrelevant. Yet, the inspirational work of many student activists in Toronto and their organization of the event “Climate Justice Now!” shows that the two are intimately tied to one another. In order to ensure not only the social stability of the Caribbean, but its economic development in the future, environmental issues have to be at the fore of any serious political agenda.
It has been nearly thirteen years since initial talks surrounding the creation of the Kyoto Protocol have surfaced, and almost five years since the rules themselves have become, theoretically at least, binding on its signers. Today, as the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is underway, the discourse that sprung from Kyoto – which animated diplomatic talks over a decade ago – still haunts marginalized communities and international polities generally. Put at its baldest, the discourse still overlooks and shuns a majority of the world’s population. Key facts which were left out of this discourse are twofold: First, “developed” nations, primarily within the sphere of the G20, bear a historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions leading to dangerous, and possibly irreversible climate change. Second, the regions most affected by this reality are the ones most marginalized contemporarily from that very discourse; they are places already vulnerable due to geographical variables (i.e. coastal regions) as well as a lack of economic and political clout on the world stage. This issue therefore is not only of the “environment” understood abstractly, but also of empowering the disempowered, and of creating and fostering political action in areas that are viewed incorrectly and unfairly as “peripheral.”
One such political space that has felt the ramifications of this limited discourse is the Caribbean; as a region of small islands and coastal states, these nations are most susceptible to the severe impacts of climate change. In anticipation for the new round of talks currently underway in Copenhagen, the Caribbean Studies Students Union (CARSSU) and the Women and Gender Studies Students Union (WGSSU) at the University of Toronto held an event, “Climate Justice Now!” on November 19th, 2009. The event brought much needed attention and awareness to social justice issues with respect to Copenhagen and the human, environmental, and economic effects of climate change within a specific Caribbean and Canadian context, remaining mindful of global implications. This event sparked a new series of discourses that challenged the prevailing one; as well, it provided a space of interaction and networking in the building and development of a more cohesive climate justice movement. The goal of the event was clear: to bring attention surely, but to also simultaneously empower and create a movement which represents a broader, more numerous, and more authentic set of voices which at the present moment, are being unscrupulously stifled.
This movement must necessarily include the voices of women given that the effects of climate change disproportionately affect women in the global South. Women become shock absorbers when social, political, and economic problems are further augmented by climate change. Take for example the floods in Guyana in 2005. The Red Thread video, “Organizing for Survival: Grassroots Women of the Flood”, demonstrates that in the wake of the destructive floods, women had to assume the responsibilities of caring for family members who became ill as a result of the effects of raw sewage causing water borne diseases; instructing their children who were unable to attend school; and finding alternative ways of providing shelter and food for their families after losing their homes and means of subsistence such as livestock and garden plots. As highlighted in the video, women were instrumental in organizing the survival of their families and communities. These organizing efforts assisted women in collecting much needed food and supplies. They focused on immediate issues like how to treat the water in order to make it safe for drinking and bathing and how women could effectively sanitize their homes after the floodwaters subsided. Valuing of losses from the floods was also critical, and in workshops and conversations the women came up with estimates that were different from official responses because the kinds of caring work that women did and the materials they used to carry out this work were not being counted or taken into consideration. Red Thread also organized a speakout that was held in Georgetown, in which Guyanese women affected by the floods came together to share their experiences and to create a list of demands to the government and the international community.
Women in Guyana and other Southern nations feel the effects of climate change more sharply. Nidhi Tandon, Founder and Director of Networked Intelligence for Development (NID) based in Toronto, runs grassroots training workshops for women’s organizations in East and West Africa and in the Caribbean, enabling women to organize and articulate their priorities around their sustainable development agenda. Tandon believes that climate change heightens the effects felt by women:
“Climate change serves to make things more acute. In other words they may have had to manage droughts, or pest infestations, or floods, or hurricane damage in the past, but with the change in weather, these issues become more acute, perhaps more intense, and also (as with hurricanes) more frequent, so there is less time in between to re-group. This has an effect too, of making women more aware of the need for protecting their resources, whether natural or financial, or human.”
In order to combat the acuteness associated with climate change, women need to organize and collectively make demands, holding their elected leaders accountable, just as Red Thread did during the floods.
While Copenhagen is one avenue to voice these concerns, women must start to do so locally. Women need to be actively involved in decision-making processes on all levels because as Tandon emphasizes, “Studies show that women are not driven by the short term profit bottom line – their bottom line is long term sustainability, health and conservation.” The voices of women in these debates – locally, nationally, and internationally – are crucial for the survival of grassroots communities and nations.
Moreover, what can we all do to mitigate the effects of climate change? Tandon puts it simply in a statement that emphasizes the environmental tenets of reusing, reducing, and recycling: “Be deliberately conscious about not buying anything new for a whole year!” Collectively, we need to slow down the production/consumption cycle; thus, reducing our carbon footprint.
