Can We Achieve Climate Justice Without Gender Justice?

Today is Blog Action Day and the topic this year is Climate Change. I am a strong believer that we need to take drastic efforts to reduce the human impact on Mother Nature - save energy, reduce our addiction to oil (and red meat), recycle and compost - those are just the first steps. But I will say, it is hard to ask human beings to treat the Earth better when we can't even treat each other with enough respect to achieve global gender justice at the same time as we seek climate justice.

And when it comes to climate change - women are in a seemingly symbiotic relationship with Mother Nature as they are often disproportionally effected by the declining state of the environment as seen in this article by Care.org:

Women often lack the assets they need to build their resilience to a changing climate, said Christina Chan, a CARE senior policy analyst who participated in the march. The missing resources include land, credit, access to support services, new technologies and a place in decision-making bodies. The results can be tragic in disasters such as the back-to-back typhoons ravaging Southeast Asia this week.

''More women are injured or killed during hurricanes, floods and cyclones,'' Chan said. ''They are less likely to hear official warnings and to be able to swim or to escape quickly, especially if carrying young children. They are also less mobile than men, confined to their homes.''

In seeing how this relationship is intertwined it becomes clear that it's not about climate justice versus gender justice, but rather they must be mutually achieved.

Can we do both?