Dismantle discrimination, let climate and gender activism become truly intersectional

By Vishal Manve 

June 2022 marked the 52nd anniversary of Pride month, which began after the Stonewall Riots of 1969. While the genesis of the Pride Month was steeped in homophobia, harassment, and violence as police raided a gay club Stonewall Inn in the West Village, the bravery of a diverse crowd of LGBT individuals fighting back, carrying on the six-day protests and demonstrations is a stark reminder of the ongoing struggle for equity, safety, and visibility. 

Five decades later and the fight for equal rights is far from over as politics, policies, and culture wars supersede crucial conversations about the role LGBTIQ community members champion as individuals and changemakers. 

In 2018, India’s Supreme Court unanimously decriminalized homosexuality, and Justice Dhananjaya Chandrachud likened the denial of an individual’s sexual orientation to denial of their right to privacy. This moment symbolized decades of struggle by India’s LGBT community to seek legal protections for the right to live, without police harassment, and social ostracization. 

Similarly, in 2020, The U.S. Supreme Court extended protections to millions of LGBT workers nationwide with a Federal civil rights law that protected gay, lesbian, and transgender workers. Similar stories of successes and failures are rampant globally, as governments scrutinize the community through legal, policy, and social mechanisms, often creating unconducive environments for the community to thrive. 

Multiple reports and analyses show that LGBTQ individuals, despite serious concerns about climate change, science, and medicine, face harassment and career obstacles in STEM. These were the findings of a 2021 survey involving 25,000 researchers. Previous reports from 2019 had similar dire outcomes about LGBTQ individuals in STEM wanting to quit. 

These trends should concern us all. Members of LGBTQ+ community express higher concern for environmental issues, over 20 percent higher than other groups, according to Earning The Green Stripe report by The Proud Diplomat. These statistics and the community’s activism highlight the urgent need for joint advocacy in climate and gender spaces, allowing women and LGBTIQ+ individuals to lead organizations and movements beyond the ambit of major corporations with investments in fossil fuels. 

In the climate space, scientists, for decades, have alerted the world of the climate crisis, despite political opposition, misinformation campaigns, and a hostile socio-political structure that emphasized development over equity. But, as we prepare for the COP27 in Egypt in November of this year, we are acutely aware of the impact of anthropogenic activities on our ecosystems. Statistical modeling and quantitative analysis shows the curvature of temperature rise and its direct causal impact on wildfire, oceans, and drastic changes in our weather. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports have alerted us of the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and also the related greenhouse gas emission pathways. 

Additionally, in July 2021, thousands of scientists signed a paper that warned about the impact of ignoring climate change that could result in “untold suffering” for humanity. This calls back to 1989, when TIME Magazine featured Earth as “The Planet of the Year” with the caption “Endangered Earth.” This was meant to facilitate policy interventions, and highlight the urgency of addressing climate change, but as scientists continue to warn, Earth’s vitals have only worsened in recent decades. 

This resulted in TIME revisiting its 1989 cover and doing another climate edition in 2019, 30 years after the first edition. We are living in an era that is prosperous by GDP metrics but poorer by air quality standards, as greenhouse gas emissions peak and glacial ice thickness slumps. 

But it's not all doom and gloom. Since the 2000s, conversations about mitigating climate change have resulted in the establishment of climate-specific organizations like Global Call for Climate Action, 350.org (led by Bill McKibben), and advocacy groups led by youth groups like Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, etc. to name a few. The whole world was stunned into silence (and called to action?) when Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister Simon Kofe stood knee-deep in seawater to illustrate how the low-lying island nation was on the frontlines of facing the climate change crisis in 2021. 

And, as IPCC notes, vulnerable and marginalized groups experience the greatest impacts of climate change. In a report for Down To Earth, Anuj Behal writes about how the LGBTQIA+ community faces social vulnerability, violence, and exploitation, and is a “hidden victim of climate change”. 

For instance, over 40 percent of homeless youth in the U.S. identify as part of the LGBTQI+ community, and gender-based violence, facilitated by climate-linked disasters, is shown to have a direct impact on LGBT individuals, especially the trans community. Yet, the community is routinely excluded from relief and recovery measures. 

The LGBTQ+ movement represents a wide-array of individuals from different races, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds. Despite the mass of rainbow flags, clothing, and marches during Pride month, community members continue to face barriers to ascend to leadership roles. Climate change is an LGBTQ issue and vice versa. Both movements have decades of history of countering propaganda, social inequities, and working towards a fairer, just, and equal world based on the protection of our planet and the social fabric that constitutes our society. There is no planet B for the planet or our society. 

It is crucial to facilitate women, and LGBTIQA+ individuals into taking leadership roles around climate and gender advocacy, thereby shaping a greener and equitable world.∎

Vishal Manve is a MALD candidate at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.