This book explores the role of feminist activists in The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and highlights the progress they have made in mainstreaming gender as a key issue in global climate governance. It is now commonplace for gender to be framed as a political issue in global climate politics within academic scholarship, but there is typically a lack of robust empirical analysis of existing advocacy approaches. Filling this lacuna, Joanna Flavell interrogates the political strategies of the Women and Gender Constituency (WGC) in the UNFCCC (The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Through a conceptual framework that integrates climate change with intersectional critical inquiry and political practice, Flavell analyses hundreds of historical documents, coupled with interviews and observations from two UNFCCC conferences. This research uncovers a so-far untold story about the history of the UNFCCC that foregrounds gender and feminist advocacy, highlighting the importance of the WGC in shaping dominant narratives of global climate governance through a series of rhetorical and procedural strategies. Overall, the book draws important conclusions around power in global climate governance and opens up new avenues for advancing a feminist green politics. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental justice, climate politics and governance, environmental activism, and gender studies more broadly.An electronic version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched (KU). KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 9781003306474. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org.
Joanna Flavell is a Fellow an ecofeminist scholar researching and teaching in environmental politics, with a special interesting in activism in global climate politics. Joanna’s 2020 paper ‘The embodied politics of climate change: analysing the gendered division of environmental labour in the UK’ was published in Environmental Politics and was shortlisted for the best paper award 2020.
Table of Contents List of AcronymsList of TablesList of FiguresAcknowledgements1 - IntroductionWhy ‘Gender and Climate Change’? The UNFCCC as a Site of InquiryOverview of the Book2 - Enduring Debates in Feminist Climate PraxisTheorising Feminist Climate ActivismEnduring DebatesDilemmas of Rhetorical StrategyRadical Outsiders versus Pragmatic InsidersQuestions of Power Dynamics and HierarchiesThe Activist - Academic DivideConclusion3 - Ecofeminist Intersectionality: Inquiry and PraxisEcofeminist Intersectionality as Critical InquirySocial InequalitiesIntersecting power relationsContextualityRelationalityComplexityEcological JusticeTransversal Politics as Ecofeminist Intersectional PraxisSolidarity PoliticsEpistemic CommunitiesFlexible DialogueConclusion4 - From Zero Gender to GAP: Foregrounding gender in UNFCCC historyPhase 1: Zero Gender -1992 – 2007Early Days: 1992 – 2002Getting Organised: 2003 – 2005Gaining Momentum: 2006 – 2007Phase two: Mainstreaming Gender into the UNFCCC - 2007 - 2013Getting Noticed: 2007 – 2009Feminist Leadership: 2010 – 2013Phase 3: Gender Action Plan - 2014 – 2021Towards Implementation: 2014 – 2015Extending the Lima Work Programme on Gender: 2016The Gender Action Plan: 2017 - 2021Conclusion5 – Political Strategies Mobilised by the Women and Gender ConstituencyRhetorical StrategiesGender Equality and Empowerment of WomenUniversalising lived experienceEquating Gender with WomenIntersectionality in Baby StepsProcedural StrategiesIdentifying entry points for gender aspects into the climate change debateRaising awareness and disseminating informationBuilding women’s capacity and joint strategizingDeveloping a future research agendaConclusion6 – Lessons for Ecofeminist Intersectional PraxisLessons from the WGC for Intersectional Inquiry and PraxisLesson One: There are No Easy SolutionsLesson Two: Prevalent domains of power have hindered intersectional praxis in the UNFCCCLesson Three: Intersectional inquiry and practice cannot be separatedTowards an Ecofeminist Transversal PoliticsOption One: Fold and WithdrawOption Two: ‘Business as Usual’Option Three: Ecofeminist Transversal PoliticsConclusion7 - Conclusion: New Directions for Ecofeminist Intersectional PraxisOriginal ContributionsCodaAppendix 1 - MethodologyIntroductionCollecting Data: Gathering Data, Conducting Interviews and ObservationGathering DataElite InterviewsDirect ObservationInterpretation and Analysis of DocumentsInternal Validity and Limitations of the ResearchBibliographyIndex