Throughout the week that Hurricane Beryl passed through the Caribbean, I was lucky enough to not be there at the time. However a whole network of family, friends, and colleagues were and are still situated across the affected islands. While I anticipated news, following weather and footage trackers of Beryl’s devastation, the question that kept turning around in my head was: if this is the first hurricane of the season, and it is at such a high category for so soon in the season - what will come next? How much can we effectively rebuild before the next one comes?
In the Caribbean, we keep witnessing and suffering first-hand the increasingly dangerous effects of a global climate crisis. It remains glaringly evident that, where those that hold substantial wealth and economic, political power talk of small, performative, ultimately ineffective policies to “fight” climate change, they are either truly or willfully ignorant of just what fighting for climate justice means.
At this point? Both forms of ignorance are insufficient. These worsening climate disasters are “foreign capital”and are products of a crisis whose stakeholders and investors often do not experience the consequences. The depth of the crises we have been and are facing at an alarmingly growing rate reveal truths that feminists, anti-colonial activists and thinkers, and people affected have known for years: fighting for climate justice is fighting for gender justice, racial justice, all intersecting forms of social justice.
Early Season: Hurricane Beryl
Hurricane Beryl crossed most of the Eastern Caribbean islands to Jamaica before hitting mainland Mexico, with a lasting level of devastation and damage. Beside the very real environmental and material damage wrecked by this hurricane, and every extreme case of weather that is becoming all too frequent in our archipelago, the human damage, in loss of life, injury, and loss of facilities. Unfortunately, loss of basic facilities means that marginalised groups of people will be more humanly affected than others. Increasing rates of food and social insecurity, the effects of pollutants and polluting atmospheres in what we breathe and consume will most affect menstrual health, maternal health, and the sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of all, and disproportionately so those of marginalised populations [McMullen et al 2024]. When an exacerbating global crisis is marked with worsening disasters, we realise that “Climate related emergencies cause major disruptions in access to health services and life-saving commodities, including contraception. The challenge climate change poses around access to SRHR services will be keenly felt by those who already face discrimination and marginalisation… and in areas where access to services may already be limited” [Ibid].
Intersecting Social Justices
What we understand by organising as movements for climate justice, as opposed to fighting climate change, or climate breakdown, is the intentional, informed and politicised approach [Baptiste 2016].
For instance, Feminitt Caribbean is dedicated to advancing gender justice in Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean through public education and advocacy [Feminitt Caribbean]. We are a feminist movement organising for gender justice, that also means fighting misogyny, patriarchy, queerphobia, with the goal of enacting transformative change. Climate justice movements are fighting climate change, and the crises this causes with the scope of transformation.
Hurricane Beryl, and every single climate-related disaster that has affected the Caribbean in recent years highlights the need for policy change and social transformation to counter the effects of these crises, to be able to survive them, and to live in such a way that does not threaten our world. Most importantly, the recent disasters highlight that this social transformation cannot just be focused on the environment, or just on the studies and recommendations of climate scientists. Returning to that balance of material and land damage alongside human damage that I referred to above, the consequences of climate change wrecks them all. In a blog by the Global Fund for Women (GFW) this is clearly outlined: “Climate change in the Caribbean will impact water availability, lead to coastal erosion and sea level rise, and put marine resources at risk. And we know that the climate crisis intersects with other gender and human rights crises” [GFW]. The material and land damage irritates already existing issues in the Caribbean, as it variably does everywhere. The GFW blog continues, arguing that, “beyond acute disasters, the changing Caribbean climate is affecting the daily livelihoods of women and gender-diverse people, serving as a multiplier for existing inequities” [Ibid]. Again, the vulnerability that certain populations face will be far more than others, increasing the rates of gender-based violence (GBV), period poverty, menstrual health inequity, among several others factors.
If the communities we are part of, or who we are and who surround us are threatened in ways different to others, then collectively we need to act accordingly. Similarly, if we’re seeking to enact climate justice, we need to re-shape how we organise for change with actions to enact gender justice [Loach 2024]. And if the way we act is determined by the same corporations, institutions, as well as framed within the same capitalist, neo-colonial and patriarchal systems, then the results will only repeat the same gender-based violences, climate disasters, among others [Ibid].
So, what?
The climate of the earth is worsening, it presents very real, very immediate and unequal consequences for our lives, families, communities, livelihoods.
In the Caribbean, several initiatives exist and are organising to combat this now, and seek better for socially and ecologically sustainable futures. The Caribbean Climate Justice Alliance’s agenda details how people at all levels can take action for climate justice, what that involves, and most importantly, how these actions can be taken together [CANARI 2023]. Feminitt Caribbean has several resources at hand for those seeking information, and action points for gender justice [Feminitt Caribbean 2024]. Recently, the International Centre for Advocates Against Discrimination (ICAAD), published a brief putting forward legal definitions for climate displaced persons and communities [Common Dreams 2024]. In the same lens, several media have outlined the case for climate reparations, and demanded that effective action be taken based on similar promises signed at the Paris Agreement in 2015, and further defined during the COP26 in 2021 [The Guardian 2024]. These briefs, reports, movements and localised actions are all incredibly valuable, and indispensable for needed social transformation, however they need to enter the executive levels of power - local, regional, global - in order for us to begin to see change that reduces the harm we may face.
Following Hurricane Irma, the executive government ordered the mass evacuation of all its Barbudan residents to Antigua before the passage of another hurricane, scheduled days after [Intersect Antigua]. Instead, an environmentalist who refused to leave witnessed government and corporate interests taking precedence over an island that, historically, was communally owned by all its residents [Ibid]. In an Intersect Antigua blog on the subject, Sarah-Anne Gresham argued that “the roaring hurricane served as a convenient excuse to begin development projects aligning with the government’s long standing desire for privatisation for capitalist accumulation” [Ibid]. It is damning, and completely counterproductive when local and regional governance works against community interest, feeding into the very structures that have produced and sustained the climate crisis and its unequal consequences on marginalised populations [Ibid].
Hurricane Beryl is unfortunately only the first of the season. Re-building efforts are well underway in the most affected islands – for a list of resources to support aid relief efforts, please see below – including a relief effort by Is There Not A Cause (ITNAC) missions, with which Feminitt Caribbean sent menstrual and hygiene products to aid rehabilitation of affected populations. Grenada, Carriacou, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Petit Martinique, Tobago, Jamaica all need various forms of relief following this devastation. The disproportionate impact on climate change on the welfare and health of certain populations (through rising rates of SIDS, NCDs, and more) are a consistent reminder that there is a need for climate reparations. Those who intentionally continue to exploit and generate wastelands at a high human and social cost for most need to do the work of repair. Moreover, there is an urgent need for climate change education brought through a more intersectional and holistic lens, so that our leaders, governments, policymakers and those with the fiscal weight do not enable the very culprits of climate change, and seek to transition from feeding into such destructive systems. The Global Fund for Women also emphasises the need for better, more flexible feminist funding for those movements organising on the ground. Finally, we – Feminitt Caribbean – are committed to keep fighting back, with a passionate politics of care [hooks 2000]. As part of a widespread movement across the Caribbean, we are committed to continuing to build resilient collectives for transformative change.
Aid relief sources:
Further reading:
April Karen BAPTISTE and Kevon Rhiney (07/2016), ‘Climate Justice and the Caribbean: An Introduction’, Geoforum vol.73, ,pp.17-21
Feminitt CARIBBEAN (May 2024), The Role of Menstrual Health Education: Learning from the Menstrual Equity Movement in the Anglophone Caribbean, Port of Spain Trinidad and Tobago
Jessica CORBETT (03/07/2024), ‘Groundbreaking Report Calls for Protecting Rights of Climate Refugees’, Common Dreams
Natricia DUNCAN (01/07/2024), ‘Hurricane Beryl: Caribbean leader calls out rich countries for climate failures as ‘horrendous’ storm makes landfall’, The Guardian
Editorial (03/07/2024), ‘The Guardian View on Hurricane Beryl: The West can’t sit this out’, The Guardian
Wesley GIBBINGS (03/07/2024), ‘Hurricane Beryl: A Reminder of the Caribbean’s Perpetual Survival Mode’, Climate Tracker
Sarah-Anne GRESHAM, ‘Decolonising Neo-Ecologies in in Barbuda, Part I’, Intersect Antigua 01/11,
Mikaela LOACH, It’s Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform the World, Penguin Random House 2024
Global Fund for Women (2024), ‘Feminist Organising for Climate Justice in the Caribbean’, GFW
bell hooks (2000), Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, Pluto Press
Robyn MAYNARD and Leanne BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON (2022), Rehearsals for Living, Haymarket Books
Heather McMULLEN and Natasha O’Sullivan, ‘Taking Stock: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Climate Commitments’, A Latin America and the Caribbean Review, United Nations Population Fund May 2024
Matthew SCHERER, Hansdeep Singh, Erin Thomas, Jesse Dunietz, Jaspreet Singh, Juliann Aukema, Conan Hines, Sara Lobo (June 2024), Right to Life with Dignity for Climate Displaced Persons: Proposing a Legal Standard Based on International Human Rights Norms & Local and Indigenous Peoples’ Perspectives, International Centre for Advocates Against Discrimination
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