Social Position & Intersectionality (Leaving Cert CASD): Revision Notes
Social Position & Intersectionality
Introduction to climate injustice
Climate change doesn't affect everyone equally. Understanding why requires looking at capacity for action - this means the ability that individuals, communities, or nations have to respond to climate change through adaptation, reducing emissions, or influencing policy decisions.
Your social position and the power you hold significantly determine who can take action, who faces the greatest risks, and who benefits from climate solutions. This creates what we call climate injustice - the uneven ways climate change impacts different groups, often making existing inequalities even worse.
Climate injustice isn't just about environmental damage - it's about how social inequalities determine who suffers most from climate impacts and who has the power to create solutions.
How social position affects climate vulnerability
Ethnicity and environmental racism
People from minority ethnic backgrounds often face environmental racism - they're more likely to live in areas exposed to pollution and environmental hazards. For example, communities of colour in the US are more frequently located near toxic industries or in flood-prone areas.
This creates a double disadvantage: these communities face greater climate risks but often have less political representation, making it harder for them to demand changes or protection from authorities.
Environmental racism shows how climate impacts aren't random - they follow existing patterns of inequality and discrimination.
Gender inequalities in climate impacts
Women, particularly in the Global South, experience climate change differently due to their social roles and responsibilities. They're often more dependent on natural resources for activities like farming and water collection, meaning droughts and floods directly increase their workload and risk of poverty.
However, women are frequently excluded from the decision-making spaces where climate policies are created. This is frustrating because women-led movements, such as the Chipko tree-hugging movement in India, have shown powerful grassroots climate action when given the opportunity.
Socio-economic status and adaptive capacity
Wealth creates a major divide in climate vulnerability. Wealthier individuals and countries can afford adaptation measures like flood defences, insurance, and new technology to protect themselves from climate impacts.
Poorer communities have fewer resources to recover from climate disasters. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 demonstrates this clearly - poorer communities in New Orleans, mainly African American areas, struggled far more to rebuild compared to wealthier neighbourhoods.
Case Example: Hurricane Katrina Recovery
The recovery patterns after Hurricane Katrina clearly showed how wealth affects climate resilience:
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Wealthy neighbourhoods: Quick insurance payouts, professional contractors, full rebuilding within 2-3 years
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Poor neighbourhoods: Limited insurance, delayed government aid, many residents permanently displaced
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Result: The disaster actually increased inequality rather than affecting everyone equally
Understanding intersectionality in climate injustice
Intersectionality describes how different aspects of your identity - such as ethnicity, gender, class, age, and disability - overlap to create unique experiences of disadvantage or privilege. Climate injustice is intersectional because climate impacts aren't distributed equally across different groups.
Consider these examples of intersecting vulnerabilities:
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Indigenous women face the triple burden of gender inequality, poverty, and environmental threats from land loss or deforestation affecting their communities
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Young people in low-income countries have contributed the least to climate change but face the greatest risks from food insecurity, heatwaves, and displacement
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Disabled or elderly people are often more vulnerable during climate disasters, such as difficulties with evacuation during floods or heatwaves
Intersectionality helps us understand why some groups face much worse climate impacts than others - it's not just one factor, but how multiple disadvantages combine and reinforce each other.
Case study: Cyclone Idai (Mozambique, 2019)
This devastating cyclone provides a powerful example of how ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic status intersect to create climate injustice.
Case Study Analysis: Cyclone Idai's Intersectional Impacts
What happened
Cyclone Idai struck Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi in March 2019, causing widespread flooding, destroying homes, and displacing over 3 million people. Importantly, Mozambique is one of the world's poorest countries and contributed virtually nothing to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet suffered some of the worst climate change impacts.
Multiple dimensions of injustice
Socio-economic factors: Mozambique's poverty meant communities lacked infrastructure to withstand extreme flooding. Wealthier countries have flood defences, but Mozambique's low-income status left it completely exposed to the cyclone's force.
Gender impacts: Women were disproportionately affected, losing access to safe childbirth facilities and taking on extra work to provide food and water after the disaster. Cases of sexual violence in refugee camps also increased, highlighting women's particular vulnerabilities.
Ethnicity and global inequality: Mozambique's largely rural African population bore the costs of climate impacts created mostly by industrialised nations. International aid was slow to arrive, demonstrating inequalities in global response systems.
Intersectionality in action: Poor rural women became the most vulnerable group, facing loss of livelihood, health risks, and reduced security - showing how multiple disadvantages combine to create the worst outcomes.
Long-term consequences
The cyclone resulted in thousands of deaths, long-term food insecurity, and disease outbreaks including cholera. This disaster highlighted how low-emission countries are disproportionately affected by climate change caused by high-emission nations, strengthening calls for climate justice and global responsibility in addressing "loss and damage."
Cyclone Idai demonstrates the cruel irony of climate injustice: those who contribute least to the problem suffer the most severe consequences.
Why power matters in climate injustice
The relationship between power and climate impact reveals a troubling pattern. Those with more political, economic, and social power - including governments, corporations, and wealthy elites - often drive the emissions that cause climate change, yet face fewer immediate risks from its effects.
Meanwhile, those with less power face the worst impacts but have fewer resources to adapt or influence policy decisions. Small island nations like Tuvalu and the Maldives perfectly illustrate this injustice - they contribute very little to global emissions but are threatened with disappearance from sea-level rise. Their capacity for action depends entirely on international solidarity and support.
This "power paradox" in climate change means that those with the greatest ability to solve the problem often have the least immediate incentive to act, while those most affected have the least power to force change.
Key principles for climate justice
Climate change isn't just an environmental issue - it's fundamentally a justice issue. The differences in power and social position determine who is most affected, who can take action, and whose voices get heard in climate discussions.
A fair response to climate change must consider equity, inclusion, and intersectionality. This means ensuring that vulnerable groups are protected and empowered, rather than left to bear the worst consequences of a problem they didn't create.
True climate action must address both the symptoms (emissions and adaptation) and the root causes (inequality and injustice) of the climate crisis.
Key Points to Remember:
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Climate injustice occurs because climate impacts aren't distributed equally - they're shaped by social position and power
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Three key factors create different vulnerabilities: ethnicity (environmental racism), gender (resource dependence and exclusion), and socio-economic status (adaptive capacity)
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Intersectionality shows how multiple disadvantages combine to create unique experiences - the most vulnerable people often face several overlapping challenges
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Power paradox: Those who contribute most to climate change (wealthy individuals/nations) often face the fewest immediate risks, while those who contribute least suffer the most
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Climate justice requires addressing these inequalities and empowering vulnerable groups to participate in solutions