Climate change discourse is dominated by middle-class white men – it must be intersectional

Earth Day falls every 22 April, and it’s the perfect opportunity to address one of the biggest elephants in the room when it comes to environmental activism, writes Hannah Jackson: not all voices are treated with the same respect

Many in the fishing hamlet of Kochi, Kerala state, India, are living with fears of weather events exacerbated by climate change (The Associated Press)

Research from the United Nations has found that 80 per cent of those who have been displaced by climate change are women. This doesn’t mean the leading voices in tackling it are women, though. Earth Day, which falls today (22 April) with the theme “Invest In Our Planet”, provides a critical chance to look at the dearth of attention placed on women and marginalised communities within climate discourse. While the day is an opportunity to engage in crucial discussions about the future of our planet, it must also be a wake-up call to reflect on our response to the climate emergency and ensure our approach does not exclude those individuals who bear the most brutal repercussions of this crisis.

But what exactly does this kind of intersectionality mean? Intersectionality, a term coined by black feminists in the 1970s, is a framework used to analyse how different aspects of our identity intersect each other. This includes gender identity, race, ability, class and sexuality. The premise is that systems of oppression like racism and capitalism do not occur in isolation, but facilitate one another.  For example, the climate crisis disproportionately affects women by leaving them more exposed to domestic abuse and intensifying existing gender inequalities, but this analysis does not account for disabled or queer women, whose situation will be even worse.

Intersectionality and climate change are inextricably linked and we must consider how different communities are affected. People of colour, for example, are more likely to live in areas with the most toxic air. Similarly, members of the LGBT+ community experience social stigma and housing insecurity, making them more vulnerable to environmental disasters.

If comments from Dr Alix Dietzel, a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bristol, are anything to go by, part of the problem may lie in the lack of diversity among those at the upper echolons of climate change discussions. Dr Dietzel says that climate change discourse is currently “dominated by middle-class white men” and that people of colour or working-class people are “rarely part of decision making”.

At official climate change negotiations, every country is invited to come and discuss the state of global climate action, however the richer economies often override the proposals made by less powerful states, she says. These wealthier countries also have larger teams and don’t face as many accessibility issues such as travelling and paying for translators.

In 2021, Dietzel published a report about the inclusivity of climate change discussions, which revealed that white men made up 40 per cent of participants in meetings and spoke 64 per cent of the time. Comparably, women of colour made up 14 per cent of participants in meetings and spoke a meagre two per cent of the time.

Zack Polanski, Deputy Leader of the Green Party, says communities are not consulted about climate change in the way they should be. “It’s notification, not consultation. The people in power decide what is going to happen and tell people, they don’t include people in the conversation.”

Not only are marginalised communities excluded from climate change discourse, but our responses to the crisis are inaccessible and unattainable for many groups in society. Bike lanes and low emission zones, for example, make life very difficult for disabled people and are often introduced without their consultation. Dietzel argues our infrastructure is “built for able-bodied men”. She adds that people with disabilities often need specially adapted housing, making it more difficult for them to move away from affected areas. The same problem exists for people on low incomes, who are often unable to purchase electric vehicles and install air conditioning, two recurrent suggestions for tackling climate change.

“One of the most common solutions is insulating your home, so you can tackle the climate crisis and reduce your energy bills, but if you’re a renter you don’t have this option, so you’re paying extra bills that were not even your problem or your fault,” Polanski explains. “There are systemic injustices around the climate and ecological emergency that come back to political representation.”

Fishermen bring in their day’s catch in the Chellanam area of Kochi, Kerala state, India, in March (The Associated Press)

Daze Aghaji, a climate justice activist, also believes that our current response to the climate crisis is problematic. She says the problem is that “we see everything within silos”. By not using the climate crisis as an opportunity for societal change, we end up leaving some communities out of the conversation and fail to recognise the knowledge and experiences they bring to the table, she adds. “Diversity is what makes politics beautiful,” she says, because it allows people from all different backgrounds to argue contrasting points of view until they reach the policy they need. It’s something she believes we must do more often, especially when it concerns marginalised communities.

Aghaji says that when people think of environmentalism, they often imagine an “environmental utopia”, but we cannot expect everyone to engage in the same practices such as walking and cycling. Aghaji, who couldn’t cycle until she was 22 due to her dyspraxia, believes the climate response is a “project for everyone”. This means that if we are able-bodied and in good health, we must think about how we can “take on the burden” for those who can’t engage in such activities.

But the question remains: how can we make climate change discourse more inclusive? As individuals, we have a duty to engage with and listen to members of marginalised communities when discussing climate change. We must listen to their stories and use platforms to help them share their experiences and knowledge. For Dr Dietzel, Earth Day needs to celebrate community stories. She says it’s often assumed that people from working class backgrounds and disabled people aren’t doing anything about climate change, so the day should be about listening to those groups, as well as scientists and politicians.

Georgie Whitaker, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace UK, believes we have “so much to learn from communities across the world” about our relationship with the planet. “It’s our home – it’s everything to us and so many white cultures have a detached perception of this relationship.”

One way to ensure we are listening to and amplifying the voices of marginalised groups is to use Earth Day as an opportunity to engage with different communities while interacting with nature. This can be difficult because, as Aghaji points out, events like Earth Day risk promoting consumerism, which drag away focus from the true meaning of the movement. “Instead of being encouraged to go outside and spend time with nature, we’re told to pay entry for gardens and purchase sustainable products”, she says. When buying becomes the focus, such events “become part of the system we are trying to dismantle”.

She believes that if we can avoid the consumerist element, Earth Day can be an “amazing chance to bring everyone’s focus onto the planet” and create dialogue between people who may never think about the climate crisis in their everyday lives. “It’s not about finding nature in a way that’s Instagrammable, but experiencing it as it exists.”