Ecofeminism and Climate Change Mitigation

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - Topic: International development, grade: 1,3, University of Frankfurt (Main), language: English, abstract: The following paper elaborates the unequal affectedness of men and women by anthropogenic climate change and shows how specific male and female consumer- and behavioral patterns change the outcome of assigning individual shares of the climate catastrophe. In a preliminary step, gender-neutral conventional climate change mitigation principles will be presented as developed by Darrel Moellendorf, professor of International Political Theory and Philosophy at Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, in his essay 'Treaty Norms and Climate Change Mitigation' (2009). Afterwards, the central characteristics of the ecofeminist movement will be introduced and furthermore discussed how attempts in climate change mitigation could look like out of a gender-egalitarian perspective. In a third step, a try will be made to reconcile Moellendorfs principles and ecofeminist outlooks and to draft a gender-inclusive approach to facing environmental degradation. Finally, I will show that any climate change mitigation strategy that ignores social inequalities or structural violence repercussions is incomprehensive and cannot count as a fair and anti-hegemonic proceeding. It recently has been acknowledged that women and men in both the global North and South contribute unequally to the negative impact of anthropogenic climate change. Not only does the Western populations' share of global harmful CO2 emissions amount to 80% of the overall emissions, but there is also strong evidence that women and men's energy consumption and consumer behavior differ considerably when it comes to determining individual per capita emissions. Furthermore, women are often attributed greater burdens and responsibilities in mitigating climate change although women and children are those who suffer the most from it.