2020
For decades before the 2020s, feminist climate justice campaigns have foregrounded structural inequalities—colonial land theft, capitalist extractivism, and state-backed environmental violence. Across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, feminist groups have demanded just transitions that centre care economies, land sovereignty, and women’s knowledge as environmental stewards.
From La Via Campesina to Indigenous women defending the Amazon, and anti-extractivist movements across the Andes and Sahel, these struggles link climate resilience to gender, racial, and intergenerational justice. In contrast to technocratic and market-driven solutions promoted by global North institutions, Global South feminist movements critique the digital-industrial “green transition” when it reproduces extractive logics—such as lithium and deep-sea mining, or land grabs for solar farms. They call instead for climate reparations, democratic governance of resources, and the decolonisation of environmental policymaking
In the Pacific, where exploratory licenses of deep seabed mining are most concentrated, women-led coalitions have mobilised against mining plans that ignore Indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, and gendered impacts on food security and health. Feminist critiques draw attention to how “green” development narratives can obscure the violence of extraction and environmental degradation, reinforcing patriarchal and racialised hierarchies.
By rooting climate justice in anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist frameworks, feminist actors redefine what a liveable and just future can look like—one in which survival is not reduced to resilience, but built on justice, autonomy, and care.
