Queering Climate Action: A Transformative Task

LGBTIQ+ organizations and activists increasingly talk about “queering” systems such as global climate action, global refugee systems or humanitarian aid. Sometimes this is a rhetorical reboot of existing strategies to increase inclusion, using “queer” as a reclaimed shorthand for LGBTIQ+ people. The process of adapting existing social and economic systems to address climate change and security threats should surely also ensure the inclusion of LGBTQI+ people.

But some queering advocates have more radical intentions, questioning whether the belated inclusion of LGBTQI+ people in overburdened or broken systems is a sufficiently ambitious goal.

Take action on climate change. Some advocates of queering argue that being content with inclusion in such systems puts everyone at a disadvantage. A world where temperature records are set month after month is a world that desperately needs transformative ideas that go beyond simply “making the best” of existing global climate policies. Yet such queering involves strategies that are easy to dismiss as utopian.

Precariousness and proximity

Many LGBTQI+ people around the world live in varying degrees of precarious living conditions. One cause is the consequences of the criminalisation of certain aspects of LGBTQI+ people’s lives. Another factor is the selective application of laws that victimise LGBTQI+ people or the lack of legal recourse. Discrimination within the family, exclusion from the parental home and resulting housing insecurity play a role, as does discrimination in school and the workplace, which limits opportunities to develop economic resilience. LGBTQI+ people may also face difficulties in accessing public and private services.

LGBTQI+ people face precarity across much of the world. Those who have come out may live with a heightened awareness of threats, while those who have not come out may live with an underlying fear of being outed against their will. Intersecting factors such as class, indigeneity and disability can also mitigate – or further exacerbate – precarity.

Among other sources of political, social and economic instability, climate change can also create more complex interaction networks for LGBTQI+ people. The underlying argument that “socially and economically disadvantaged and marginalised people are disproportionately affected by climate change” was developed in the “Livelihoods and Poverty” chapter of the 2014 Fifth Assessment Report. It has also been articulated in frameworks linking multidimensional inequality to exposure to climate hazards and increased harm from these hazards, as well as to a reduced capacity to cope and recover from the damage to human life that may result.

There is research and debate among LGBTQI+ organizations examining these interactions. LGBTQI+ people who experience slow-onset disasters such as droughts or rapid-onset disasters such as destructive storms, for example, often face particular challenges. First, pre-disaster precarity undermines LGBTQI+ people’s opportunities to build resilient lives and networks to withstand the impacts of disasters and support their recovery.

Yet the discrimination, violence and exclusion that existed before a disaster continues during disaster relief. They may be felt through direct discrimination by some aid providers or other community members – including violence in shelters. Other aid organizations may not take steps to reach out to LGBTQI+ people or understand their needs. LGBTQI+ people may also self-exclude because of legitimate fears that aid may be unsafe or irrelevant. New threats may also emerge, such as claims that LGBTQI+ people cause disasters – as punishment from God. And this unequal access to recovery aid can revive structural aspects of discrimination.

Addressing the problems

It is still rare for global development, disaster risk reduction or humanitarian processes to seriously address LGBTQI+ issues. These advocacy groups offer little policy and practical guidance on detailed approaches to specific issue areas. Research is still needed to understand which current and emerging climate and security issues require attention, but there are some initial candidates for study:

• Access to clean drinking waterActivists in Bangladesh have already reported that members of the gender-diverse hijra community face discrimination in accessing public water points that only provide water intermittently.
• Access to farmland, fisheries, forests and other agricultural resources. Literature reviews have shown that LGBTQI+ issues are not taken into account in agricultural research and extension. At the same time, the established links between gender-based violence, climate and agriculture must also take into account the discrimination, violence and exclusion experienced by LGBTQI+ people.
• Migration and forced displacement in the context of climate change. These challenges often occur in hostile contexts and in a system that is still learning to include LGBTQI+ people.

New policies like USAID’s Inclusive Development Policy 2023 are important steps forward, but there is still work to be done to turn good intentions into action. Part of the mission of my own organization – Edge Effect – is to develop tools to assess and track progress on these fronts to ensure that LGBTQI+ inclusion is more than pinkwashing.

the next steps

Some LGBTQI+ activists and allies question whether these measures are enough. LGBTQI+ activists challenge assumptions that underlie the discrimination, violence and exclusion that LGBTQI+ people experience. (For example, the common assumption that we are all – or should be – straight.)

Projects dedicated to radically queering climate justice locate the fight against these assumptions in analyses of systems that enshrine the status quo, artificially limit the range of options, and discredit or punish those who cross these boundaries. Targets of this work include global systems that are still riven by neocolonialism and racism, or that assume that prosperity must be measured by GDP growth.

Some queer, feminist, First Nations and similar actors are exploring alternative models in specific areas such as urban planning. Others are providing funding that breaks down the aid system’s silos between normal development and humanitarian crisis – a system born out of a privileged worldview that sees crises as temporary blips in otherwise upward trends. These activists are equally concerned about pinkwashing And with greenwashing and other related tendencies of systems to co-opt rather than reform.

The goal of these activities is not to reinforce a binary choice between those who work within systems to reduce inequality and those who work to create systems without inequalities. In fact, queering involves a move away from hard “either-or” choices and an embrace of “both-and” continua of tactics better suited to intervening in complex systems. No matter where you stand politically, philosophically, or geographically, there is a lot to do before Pride Month 2025!