Womxn of the Global South bear the brunt of the insecurity and work generated by these policies.
The political left in the US and UK have been advocating for Green New Deals (GNDs) as the transformational socio-economic response to tackle the climate crisis since the financial crisis of 2008.
So far, all GNDs - whether national or international - aim to dismantle the profit-driven fossil fuel economy, and transition equitably to a ‘green economy’ that promotes social, gender and economic justice.
This series of articles has been published in partnership with Dalia Gebrial and Harpreet Kaur Paul and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in London. It first appeared in a collection titled Perspectives on a Global Green New Deal.
The feasibility of the Green New Deal depends on whether it reflects the scale of the challenges faced in the Global South as a result of extraction and exploitation of natural resources, energy and cheap labour by the developed North.
Rights
Imperial trade liberalisation has saddled the Global South with alarming debt. High interest rates compounded by structural adjustment policies have paralysed the ability of Southern states to invest in public infrastructure, build environmental resilience, tackle health crises like Covid-19 - let alone fund a GND.
Womxn of the Global South bear the brunt of the insecurity and work generated by these policies.
Trade rules dictating the privatisation of essential services in healthcare, sanitation, water and education have disproportionately burdened womxn, who take on the gendered, unpaid work of collecting water and fuel, cleaning, preparing food and providing care for children, the elderly and ill.
More than 75 percent of unpaid care work in the world is undertaken by poor womxn and girls who can spend up to 14 hours a day doing care work in rural areas. Their contribution to the global economy when valued at minimum wage is $10.8 trillion - more than three times the value of the global tech industry.
In developing countries, 90 percent of women are working in the informal sector, and their unpaid domestic work subsidises the capitalist economy. In other words, wealth for the rich is accumulated by eradicating basic labour and human rights of womxn and girls across the world.
Overhaul
Neo-liberalism demands gendered divisions of labour that place the burden of precarity on womxn. Meanwhile, these same womxn are left to face insufferable pollution, displacement and dispossession in the name of profit and economic growth.
Despite contributing the least to the climate crisis, womxn of the Global South bear the brunt of unpredictable seasonal patterns that destroy their crops and water sources, harm health, cripple food sovereignty, force greater poverty, and expose them to violence and conflict, entrapping womxn in a cycle of intergenerational inequality and discrimination.
Womxn of the Global South bear the brunt of the insecurity and work generated by these policies.
Given this context, how can a GND reverse the dominant economic system, which persistently undervalues, invisibilises and exploits Southern womxn’s labour to sustain ‘growth’ in the North?
Without shifting from the rhetoric of ‘growth’ and addressing the historical and gendered injustices that have caused climate, ecological and health crises, the GND risks reinforcing ‘business-as-usual’ - promoting ‘green’ colonialism masked as ‘sustainable development’.
A feminist and human-rights based ‘decolonial’ GND must overhaul technocratic and market driven solutions that merely “cost shift” to more marginalised populations - especially womxn.
Dignity
It must center the social well being of the most vulnerable by redistributing capital and resources in the form of climate reparations and binding Common But Differentiated Responsibility (CBDR).
Resources should be mobilised to secure vast public financing of essential and environmentally viable public infrastructure.
Fossil fuel subsidies must cease and budgets from military and prison industrial complexes redirected to developing social protection schemes, decent work, redistributing care, ecological regeneration and restoration - lifting the burden of unpaid care and domestic work from the shoulders of marginalised women.
A Global Green New Deal must shape a new social contract that re-orients this broken economic system away from unrestrained exploitation of natural resources and labour to one built on human dignity, solidarity, equity and protecting our planet.
This Author
Kavita Naidu is a former climate justice programme officer at Asia Pacific Forum On Women, Law And Development, based in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
