Why is Climate Change an LGBTQIA+ Issue?
By Luis Iglesias and Ruth Hollands, EmpoderaClima researchers
The ongoing climate crisis is one of the most urgent problems of our time. Despite the fact that its impacts’ are understood to affect all human beings in an undifferentiated approach, the way these are distributed, both in terms of incidence and intensity, alerts us to something completely different: most of the risks fall on vulnerable populations, specifically marginalized groups - which includes the LGBTQIA+ community (abbreviation for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Pansexual, Transgender, Genderqueer, Queer, Intersex, Agender, Asexual and other queer-identifying community).
An important similarity we can highlight when talking about the climate and queer agendas is that they are in the same subalternate configuration, with much needed resistance to survive. According to the coordinator of the gender working group at Engajamundo, Ana Rosa Cyrus, “climate and LGBTQIA+ justice are found precisely in a decolonized world, which needs to be built from a new episteme where silenced voices are heard and participate in the construction of spaces”.
In addition, Gabriel Mantelli, law professor and consultant at Conectas Direitos Humanos, believes that both are struggles that enhance the creation of new rights and legal guarantees: “in legal terms, the climate and LGBTQIA+ struggles end up signaling to public authorities the need to think about specific regulatory frameworks for the most vulnerable sectors of the population. (...) it must be borne in mind that both struggles take into account the issue of distributive justice and the ways of putting it into practice in an intolerant, binary and extractive society”.
It is not a coincidence, therefore, that these communities tend to live in areas of higher risk to climate change and are less likely to have access to the resources needed to relocate or even survive in scenarios of climate disasters. Experiencing difficult events as a consequence of the climate crisis may further marginalize these communities and negatively impact their standard of living.
Many members of the queer community fall victim to homelessness due to the stigma surrounding their sexual orientation or gender. Homelessness makes this community more susceptible to the impacts of climate change, as many members do not have the resources to escape from verbal, emotional or physical violence within their social environment and are therefore forced onto the streets with little to no support to survive.
According to a 2015 study conducted by the Williams Institute, 40% of homeless youth consider themselves as queer in the United States. In the United Kingdom, this number is around 24%, indicating an overrepresentation of sexual and gender minority youth among those experiencing homelessness. LGBTQIA+ youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness simply because they do not conform to the (often) heteronormative narrative socially and, in many areas, politically. This discrimination makes the LGBTQIA+ population vulnerable to consequences out of their control, leading them to live on the streets or in shelters - if these are even available to them.
Climate change manifests itself in abnormal weather patterns, which affects the homeless population gravely though extreme temperatures. According to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, the 10 warmest Augusts have all occurred since 1988 – with the five warmest occurring since 2015. Rising global temperatures can become deadly as many countries experience heat waves, and homeless people have to live through these events directly. The same applies to extreme cold temperatures, where these drastic changes only exacerbate these vulnerabilities, and this population will be among the first and worst hit.
Within the community there are disparities too: the transgender are the ones that suffer and are marginalized the most compared to the other identities. As the planet warms, more frequent and severe storms, wildfires, and floods will exacerbate these vulnerabilities, and this population will be among the first and worst hit. Many trans people are concentrated in coastal cities such as San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Amsterdam, Telaviv, Taipei, Cape Town and Kingston, making them at high risk for sea level rise and increasing storm surges, both consequences of climate change.
The queer community is not only victimized through extreme temperatures, but also through extreme weather phenomena. Due to hurricanes, cyclones, tsunamis, and other effects of climate change, the community continues to be marginalized as they do not often receive the same resources as hetero persons. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, trans people faced discrimination in emergency shelters, and some were even turned away in the American states of Mississippi and Louisiana.
During the 2010 Haitian earthquake, LGBTQIA+ persons and families were vulnerable in shelters and lesbian, bisexual women, transgender and intersex people were subject to gender-based violence and “corrective rape”. Members of the LGBTQIA+ community are also discriminated by the way resources are allocated in disaster relief for victims of extreme climate events; paperwork may ask for sexual orientation where the only options are male or female, excluding various LGBTQIA+ persons from being considered in aid efforts, further discriminating and victimizing them.
We currently do not have climate change adaptation and mitigation measures accounting for the marginalization of the queer population as “there is [still] a long way to go in terms of specific norms, as well as public policies, for LGBTQIA+ populations, both internationally and nationally. If we think about the current scenario in Brazil, we are stuck in this discussion as a result of the anti-democratic and LGBTphobic political situation established in the federal government”, says Mantelli.
Nevertheless, the climate struggle critically thickens LGBTQIA+ struggles by bringing a structural component to the debate on pro-LGBTQIA+ actions, that is, by deepening the struggle beyond the issues of gender, sexuality and expressions and also including issues of territory, race, economy and ways of being in the world. Cyrus exclaims that “both fights are about survival”, afterall. She also believes that it is impossible to think about climate change and not to think about the social part of this issue, even if conventional thinking is that they are separate matters - largely because of a colonial and global-north views under environmental subjects.
These two struggles are inseparable once they understand that they need to be humanized; that is, to decolonize knowledge, power, being and nature. We cannot fight for a new planet without dialoguing with other possibilities, understanding new essentials and this is a commitment that climate struggles need to incorporate.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for many populations that are already socially marginalized, human security will be progressively undermined as the climate changes. These issues must be addressed globally to determine the best course of action to help the LGBTQIA+ community and all others who continue to fall victim to the threats of climate change.
Therefore, yes, climate change is an LGBTQIA+ issue, and the climate justice movement must build bridges, not walls.