Environmental justice is reproductive justice

Environmental justice is a phenomenon that is seldom understood, especially when we consider our personal level of commitment to address climate and environmental issues.Lost in the quagmire of interpreting concepts and having to translate them into tangible, actionable motives, this is proving to be an arduous feat on matters concerning climate change and environmental justice; and it doesn&#039;t get easier when we consider the environment and climate as an aloof, abstract, sometimes even pie-in-the-sky area nobody wants to focus on – let alone has enough patience to. Yet, environmental issues continue to worsen despite our wilful ignorance.“Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people - regardless of race, colour, national origin or income - with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies,” as defined by ClientEarth, an environmental law charity.This definition is further buttressed by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, when she said climate justice “insists on a shift from a discourse on greenhouse gases and melting ice caps into a civil rights movement with the people and communities most vulnerable to climate impacts at its heart”.In fact, a broader definition of &#039;environment’ is the surroundings or conditions in which a person lives. By this definition, the environment would include your home, place of work, school. These are the places you spend your time, and they play a big role in your overall health, happiness and well-being.In light of the above, what do these definitions mean in our local context, and how has Namibia defined it for herself to adequately implement measures which will ensure that reproductive justice, inter alia, is realised through climate justice and progressive environmental policies? More importantly, what have been the long-term impacts of climate change on reproductive justice and the communities that would otherwise be most affected?Serious, irrefutable, inescapableWhen we begin to link the overarching goal and meaning of reproductive justice - which is in simple terms the right to parent, the right not to parent and the right to parent in a safe and healthy environment - then we need not treat the topic of environmental justice and climate change as a Western, global north cause but as a serious, irrefutable and inescapable global and local threat to social development and human existence as we know it.A written submission by Saving Okavango’s Unique Life to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) for its 82nd session succinctly and unequivocally summarises the serious environmental implications that are bound to arise as a result of gas and oil exploration in the Kavango East and Kavango West regions of Namibia.This comes after the announcement that a Canadian oil and gas company, ReconAfrica, will be drilling in the north-eastern parts of the country for oil and gas - fossil fuels which contribute to greenhouse emissions that exacerbate climate change. Even more alarming, beyond the obvious environmental risks and damage they pose, is the impact it would have on women and children who would disproportionately be affected due to existing economic and social conditions.The submission reads: “...The development of oil and gas in the Kavango regions — home to critical freshwater sources on which numerous indigenous peoples and local communities depend in a semi-arid, drought-prone country - jeopardises the rights of rural women and girls in the affected communities, including the rights to water, health and livelihood, under CEDAW Articles 12 and 14”.In the framework of the above definition of an environment, against the backdrop of reproductive justice, mostly women’s livelihoods and the right to parent in a safe environment would be at threat (as alluded to and confirmed in the submission). For example, the right to water and uncontaminated water would be undermined; with the Kavango East and West already being the least developed regions in Namibia, and ‘much of Namibia’s water resources based on groundwater aquifers and, to a lesser extent, on water from the Okavango River’, the consequential and cascading impacts of oil and gas exploration would undermine even government’s efforts to attain gender parity.The submission goes on to assert that unconventional methods of oil and gas production, like fracking, could lead to a depletion in water sources and health hazards, inter alia. In fact, the Okavango River is the main source of water for the people living along the river, and for their livestock, while inland villages depend entirely on groundwater from boreholes and, in some cases, from seasonal pans.Jeopardising lifeContaminated water as a result of oil and gas drilling would lead to health implications and, inevitably, reproductive health risks. It jeopardises a person’s ability to have a healthy pregnancy (should they choose to carry a pregnancy to term), and there are chances of experiencing infertility, which certainly is an outside interference with the right to plan for a family in a safe and healthy environment.In addition, complications at birth and the costs thereof would economically strain a family as well as the government, particularly the local community of the Kavango regions, who purport to have 42 clinics to a combined population of 223 352 inhabitants.What is even more alarming is that the Kavango regions ‘had the fourth highest probability at birth of not surviving to age 40’, according to the United Nations Development Programme’s human poverty index.Surely, there are more examples on environmental threats which undermine reproductive justice beyond the oil and gas exploration case study, and a comprehensive assessment of wider impacts and examples are yet to be adequately advocated for and mainstreamed within existing environmental policies. Be that as it may, once again, intersectionality as a tenet in meaning and practice must be fully adopted by our government to demonstrate its political will and commitment to advancing gender equality through the prism of reproductive and climate justice.*Ndiilokelwa Nthengwe is an intersectional gender justice activist and author. Follow them on Twitter @Ndiilo_Nthengwe, on Facebook as Ndiilokelwa Nthengwe and on Instagram @ndiilo_n.

Environmental justice is reproductive justice

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Namibian Sun 2025-05-02

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Environmental justice is reproductive justice

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Namibian Sun 2025-05-02

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