Revealing the Patriarchal Sides of Climate Change Adaptation through Intersectionality: a Case Study from Nicaragua

Citation:

Gonda, Noémi. 2017. “Revealing the Patriarchal Sides of Climate Change Adaptation through Intersectionality: a Case Study from Nicaragua.” In Understanding Climate Change through Gender Relations, edited by Susan Buckingham and Virginie Le Masson, 173-190. London: Routledge.

Author: Noémi Gonda

Abstract:

Nicaragua is the third most climate change-affected country in the world and its government identifies climate change adaptation as one of its key priorities. Since the early 2010s, this national priority is translated into measures that support rural populations to adapt to climate change impacts. This chapter explains how a discursive construction of nature as 'our own Mother' in post-neoliberal Nicaragua has contributed to giving women a primary place in climate change discourses and projects while the mainstream masculinist and science-oriented discourse is underlying the way climate change adaptation interventions are conceived. It also presents an argument that feminist scholars and practitioners need to engage more systematically with gendered climate change politics, in particular by mobilizing the intersectional perspective that simultaneously addresses the multifaceted oppressions climate change politics may reproduce, even though they include 'gender concerns'.

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Masculinism Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Nicaragua

Year: 2017