CLIMATE JUSTICE, GENDER AND ACTIVISMS

No later than 13^th February 2023

Contributors are invited to submit manuscripts on the above topic from the point of view either of researchers or activists. Abstracts and contributions must be written in English and in a style accessible to a wide audience. Please submit abstracts to [email protected] or [email protected].

ABOUT AGENDA

Agenda has been at the forefront of feminist publishing in South Africa for the past 35 years and raises debate around women’s rights and gender issues. The journal is designed to promote critical thinking and debate and aims to strengthen the capacity of both men and women to challenge gender discrimination and injustice. The Agenda journal is an IBSS/SAPSE accredited and peer reviewed journal.

GUEST EDITOR:

Dr. Lliane Loots

University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.

Conceptual Rationale:

This issue of AGENDA is interested in critically tracking, via interrogated case studies of gender focused Climate Justice programmes and projects (with a special interest in the South), interviews with activists, policy makers and artists, new critical research and praxis methodology strategies, gendered activisms, that open up discussions of how 21^st century Southern feminisms locate, engage and provoke gendered and intersectional activist interventions into Climate Justice.

Climate change has historically been viewed as a scientific issue – a matter of physical, biological and technical systems. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’sⁱ most recent report, for example, is a vast collection of climate science, threats and solutions. In this paradigm of negotiating the threats of Climate Change, there is a tendency to offer up the development of green technologies as a type of miracle solution panacea for global climate problems. Yet climate change is also a human problem caused by the collective behaviours of people – mostly the wealthy – around the world. Japanese economist Yoichi Kaya summarises this viewpoint in a neat equation known as the Kaya Identityⁱⁱ which offers an understanding that global greenhouse gas emissions are the product not just of energy use and technology, but also human population size and economic activity. As Southern feminists, we understand that both of these – population and the economy – are deeply gendered spheres of operation that speak also to intersections of (amongst other spaces/places that power operates) race, class, sexuality, and disability. So, while science (itself not a gender-neutral terrain) is important for understanding climate change, and technology may be crucial for solving some of the problems, climate activists worry that

overemphasis on science may not fully offer effective climate solutions – intersectional solutions- that put women on the agenda. Thiagarajan Jayaramanⁱⁱⁱ, working on Indian climate policy, offers,

The realization that it is not just global warming that we are dealing with, but global warming in an unequal and unjust world, has yet to sink in. Without equality and equity – in other words, without peace and security – we cannot effectively fight climate change.

The relationship between climate justice and social justice thus become a key negotiating point in confronting contemporary climate change and thus – of necessity – requires input from social and human sciences. In talking about climate change, climate action, advocacy, adaption and even loss and damages, the interrogations of how these are instigated, mitigated, confronted and engaged, become arenas of interrogating social equality – and thus of intersectional gender equality.

Climate activist, Tatiane Eaves^iv, for example, writes in relation to her own climate activism in the USA,

Climate justice relates to Black liberation because Black communities are disproportionately affected by polluted air from fossil fuel power plants, heat waves, wildfires, and storms. Likewise, climate justice is connected to Indigenous sovereignty because pipeline construction on Indigenous land pollutes the water that Indigenous communities rely on. This is unjust. You cannot have climate justice without social justice or Black liberation or Indigenous sovereignty.

In this special issue of AGENDA, as one arena of Southern feminist and African Feminist ecocritical scholarship, activisms and creative practice, interest and intervention into Climate Change, we aim to offer alternate gender mappings, navigations, interrogations, and analyses, as we look into how gender activists, community engagements, creatives and the creative industries, gendered socio economic and political interventions … are responding in creative practices, activist and educational interventions, political and economic lobbying around Climate Change that helps pushing Climate Justice through advocacy around social justice.

We are interested in critical feminist writing that:

1. Theorises contemporary gendered activist, artistic, and educational practice/s in relationship to Climate Change and Climate Justice (with a focus on the South and on specific African Feminist ecocritical thinking and practices).
2. Offers sound interrogated case studies of activists, policy makers, artists in various disciplines who work at the interface of gender activism, climate justice and social
3. Interrogate the gendered connection between Climate Justice and activism, education, community engagement practices, governmental lobbying and policy – with a focus on looking at these processes as social
4. Establish new and ongoing connection between Southern based and African feminist eco- feminist practices around Climate Justice and how they intersect and manifest in art and in creative
5. Trace how youth culture – especially as it effects/affect the Southern based girl-child and young women – are impacted by advocacy in negotiating Climate
6. Critically interrogate practices that produce profitable enterprises from waste-streams (‘waste-to-profit’) through the education, activism and arts.
7. Offers creative and unusual ways – through poetry, visual photography (etc) – to embody this

• https://www.ipcc.ch/ (accessed 12 February 2022)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaya_identity (accessed 12 February 2022)
• https://en.unesco.org/courier/2019-3/climate-and-social-justice (accessed 17 February 2022)
• https://sisterstem.org/2020/09/18/climate-justice-is-social-justice/ (accessed 17 February 2022)

Submission Guidelines for Agenda Journal

The following guidelines are intended to assist authors in preparing their contributions.

General

Agenda invites contributions from feminist and gender scholars, activists, researchers, policy makers, professionals, educators, community workers, students and members of womxn’s organizations and organizations interested in and concerned with gender issues.

Submissions should contribute to developing new thinking and fresh debate on women’s rights and gender

equality in Africa and other developing countries.

Writers need to

• Write in an accessible and understandable style;
• Inform, educate or raise debate;
• Provide analysis and an argument;
• Ensure the introduction encapsulates the contents of the piece and that it attracts the reader’s attention by either making a controversial statement, providing a thought-provoking or new insight into the subject;
• Utilize a Black feminist

We publish articles in various formats, which range from 6,000 words for more theorized articles, which form the main reference pieces in an issue, to shorter pieces with a minimum of 1,500 words.

Formats of Contributions

• Article (6 000 words max) should be based on new research and contain analysis and
• Briefing is an adaptable format for writers to write on a wide range of subjects (2 500 – 4 000 words)
• Focus examines an aspect of a chosen theme in detail (4 500 words max)
• Profile looks in detail at an organisation, project or legislation, or a person (2 500 – 3 500 words)
• Report-back covers reports on meetings, conferences workshops etc
• (1 500 – 4 000 words)
• Review typically reviews books or films (1 500 – 3 000 words)
• Interview can record a conversation among a group of people or a one-on-one interview in which the writer asks the interviewee/s questions on a subject (1 500 – 3 000 words)
• Open Forum is a vehicle for debate and argument, or pieces which deal with argument and difference of opinion on a subject/issue (2 500 – 4 000 words)
• Perspective is an adaptable format in which writers are able to use a more personal reflective, narrative style (1 500 – 3 000 words)
• Poetry

Contributions should be submitted in the following format:

File type: Microsoft Word

Font: Arial

Line spacing: single Justification: left Referencing: Harvard style

All submissions should have the following:

Abstract: 200 – 300 words Keywords: approx. 5 keywords

Bio: 100 – word author biography, including email address Bio picture: head-and-shoulders photo in 300 dpi jpeg format

Contributors are encouraged to provide photos and/or graphics to illustrate their submission

Selection and Editing Process

All submissions are peer reviewed. Articles, briefing and focus pieces go through a double blind peer review process, while all other contributions are reviewed by at least one member of Agenda’s Editorial Advisory Group.

Reviewers comment on the suitability of a text for publication in the Agenda journal, as well as provide comments to help develop the piece further for publication if required. Contributors will be asked to rework the paper accordingly.

On resubmission, the piece will be assessed by the Agenda editor and a final decision made regarding its publication in the journal.

Please note that Agenda reserves the right to edit contributions with regard to length and accessibility or reject contributions that are not suitable or of poor standard.

Agenda also invites the submission of poems on the topic of women’s rights and gender.

Please note, as per Agenda’s policy, writers who have published in the journal within the last two years

WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to publish – to allow new writers to publish in Agenda