Border crossers: Feminist decolonial geography and climate change

Abstract

While more geographical studies around climate change incorporate gender in the climate debate, few of them explore the epistemological value of gendering climate knowledge, fewer, the potential of feminist decolonial climate knowledge. Using border thinking, this paper brings Feminist Science and Technology Studies, Decolonial Theory, and Feminist Political Ecology into conversation with human geography to stress how a Feminist Decolonial Geography is well suited to tackle climate change. This approach can trace the origin of dominant ideas around climate change and enunciate their location, challenging normative, disembodied, and universal claims. By delineating the power relationships that transform people into hierarchical categories, we can trace the socio-environmental relationships that also contribute to climate change. The identification of exclusionary structures and rules to participate in climate science and beyond can elucidate opportunities to create a more equitable knowledge base. Border crossers represent opportunities to expand our epistemological canon. To resolve the climate crisis, we must adopt the navigating and negotiating skills of border crossers, hybrid, and bilingual world travelers. An essential vantage point to resolve the climate crisis.