Intersectionality and the Environment

Summary

Intersectionality has emerged as a central concept across activism, academic scholarship, and public discourse. At its core, intersectional analysis considers how systems of power and oppression—including anthropocentrism, cisheteropatriarchy, imperialism, racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and white supremacy—work together to deepen existing inequalities. In the early 21st century, scholars in environmental sociology—the study of how social systems interact with ecosystems—have increasingly recognized the value of intersectional analyses in examining the connections between environmental issues and social inequality. Intersectional analysis offers a critical intervention in environmental sociology research, a field that generally contends that social problems related to inequalities are at the root of environmental problems. In other words, systems of domination of people by other people produce labor exploitation and sacrifice zones, or places where people and the environment are exploited so that corporations and consumers have access to cheap commodities and energy without paying the true costs of production. Intersectionality and environment research argues for the indispensability of the most marginalized people and the more-than-human world. It is their expendability within global capitalism that allows for the exploitation and dislocation of people, and the destruction of environments with little or no compensation. These so-called negative externalities have local effects on marginalized communities and ecosystems that combine to form global-scale problems, including inequalities between nations and climate change. It is important to recognize that these problems are interrelated, and intersectionality research highlights the ways in which environmental degradation and social inequalities are intimately connected. Intersectional thought can be applied in environmental research to better understand environmental injustices related to risk and vulnerability as well as resilience and social movements.