According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 80% of people displaced by climate change are women or girls, due to heightened risks of poverty and exclusion from resources and decision-making processes. It is projected that this will continue to increase with projections that by 2050, climate change will push up to 158 million more women and girls into poverty and cause 232 million to face food insecurity. This exposes how women, femmes, and gender-diverse people, face the most severe and disproportionate impacts of climate change due to structural and systemic inequities. These impacts are compounded further by intersectional and multi-layered identities, including race, class, ability, and age.

Black women, femmes, and gender-diverse people across the African Diaspora are particularly exposed to these impacts at significantly higher rates due to systemic inequities perpetuated by anti-blackness, colonialism, racial capitalism, and heteropatriarchy. This includes higher rates of gender-based violence, discrimination, unpaid domestic labor, and economic inequality. Witnessing these realities has inspired my interest in exploring climate justice issues that lie at the intersection of climate, racial capitalism, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy. I hope to reveal and explore a more expansive view on how to enact climate justice through Afrofeminism, which Patricia Hill Collins defines as a theory that centers the unique intersectional experiences of Black women and feminized people across the Black Diaspora. Rooted in Black feminist theory, African feminist thought, and Black liberatory frameworks, Afrofeminism provides a critical lens that addresses how gendered racism, colonial legacies, and other intersecting systems of oppression.

Through an Afrofeminist praxis (applying Afrofeminist theory into practice), I continue to apply a multi-disciplinary and intersectional lens to my climate justice work, which includes advocacy, environmental campaign and event coordination, research, and writing.