In this blog post I will be comparing how the degradation of the environment and ecofeminism, as seen in the article Speak Truth to Power, are related to the redaction of reproductive rights in the United States and the reproductive justice movement.
This week’s reading brings us to Africa, particularly Nairobi, Kenya, to examine Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement. The Green Belt Movement is a movement to “encourage farmers to plant ‘green belts’ to stop erosion, provide shade, and to create a source of income and firewood.” (Maathai, page 1). The movement also states that up to seventy percent of these farmers were women and to date fifteen million trees have been planted. Maathai is a true pioneer for ecofeminism in that she has championed these movements for farmers and has done extensive work on hunger prevention, for which she won the Africa Prize.
Maathai’s work in developing the Green Belt Movement and the fight for Reproductive Justice are uniquely related because of her metaphor of the “wrong bus syndrome”. And this is where I will tie together the fight for reproductive freedom and the fight to end environmental degradation. Maathai states that, “The other thing is that a lot of people do not see that there are no trees until they their eyes and realize that the land is naked.” (Maathai, page 2). Maathai makes this claim to emphasize that people begin to see the need for trees when they cultivate a tree of their own and begin to realize how quickly they are taken advantage of and how quick we are to degrade the environment under the guise of advancement for selfish reasons (President Moi’s desire to build a skyscraper and monument himself). This can be tied together with reproductive rights because the right to an abortion was legislated in 1972 and it can be argued that we became accustomed to having this resource available and we may have never realized that a world without Roe was possible until the 2016 election. Maathai moves on to say that “they begin to see that while the rain can be a blessing, it can also be a curse, because when it comes and you have not protected your soil, it carries the soil away with it” (Maathai, page 2). Another parallel is drawn here because while Maathai is talking about how if we allow environmental degradation to continue necessary, oftentimes seen as unimportant, resources as soil are ignored until they no longer there are due to rain or damage done by pesticides and herbicides. In the case of reproductive justice, the rain can be seen as the Supreme Court. It can, and has been a blessing and course. The court was a blessing in Obergefell v Hodges, and it was a curse in the wake of the Dobbs decision last summer. Rain is necessary for both environmental survival but it can also be an asset to environmental degradation if the earth is not taken care of. In the same instance that SCOTUS can work for the people but also against the people if the people in power act on the their own accord rather than what society is telling them we want. While the feminist movement warned about a post Roe world, the general society did not wake up and realize the “land was naked” until June of 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. And now we are in the fight of our lives because doctors, such as in Idaho, are fleeing the state and hospitals are shutting down Labor and Delivery Departments because anti abortion laws are blurring the lines between the law and the Hippocratic Oath.
Throughout this course, we have repeatedly discussed the oppressive analogy of “mother Earth” and how this has a fluid definition across all areas of female oppression. Maathai talks about that throughout her work with the Green Belt Movement that a lot of the mobilization, activism and work was done by women. Especially when she talks about standing up to the Kenyan government to stop the construction of the skyscraper and the president’s monument. She talks about how she and other women were beaten so badly that they ended up in the hospital. She stated that women were the ones that primarily were doing the nurturing of the seedlings, much like they are the ones that nurture the growing of a fetus into a baby during pregnancy. This metaphor of “mother earth” works with the both this account of ecofeminism and the fight for reproductive justice, because women are the ones that were nurturing the trees to better the environment, economy and food supply with the Green Belt Movement, while women are the ones fighting for their rights of whether or not to carry (“nurture”) a pregnancy. Women are the ones generally effected most by degradation of the environment, especially in the Global South, because their jobs are related to the environment. For example, without clean and adequate water supply women and girls are left to use shared baths and restrooms putting them at risk for unsanitary environments and sexual assault; and also due to environmental degradation and lack of resources women and girls in the Global South are less likely to have a adequate and constant supply of period products. When comparing it to reproductive rights women and girls, and people with uteruses, are among the most oppressed because forced pregnancy is a violation of their human rights.
Maathai states that “everyone needs to work together and to protect the environment” – just like everyone needs to work together to protect reproductive rights. The fight for the environment and the fight for reproductive are also similar in how they are retaliated against. During the campaign for the Green Belt Movement, Maathai says that “They did a lot of dirty campaigning to discredit us, including dismissing us as, ‘a bunch of divorcees and irresponsible women'” (Maathai page 4). Not only is this sexist and makes aim at discrediting the women of the Green Belt Movement’s integrity, this is very similar to how women in the fight for reproductive justice are treated. After the overturning of Roe v Wade, commentary from “news outlets” stated that the women who you protesting the decision were “crazy” or had guests that made claims that women were only mad because no one wanted to have children with them. This dismissal of women as second class citizens, or making stances that they are here to birth children, is very similar to environmental degradation because the environment is declines due to exploited it for profit and not investing in it, the same way women are being exploited for our capability to have children instead of our society investing in women’s livelihood by working towards reproductive choice and closing the wage gap for instance.
Maathai closes this article by saying that “Courage. I guess that the nearest it means is not having fear. Fear is the biggest enemy you have. I think you can overcome your fear when you no longer see the consequences” (Maathai page, 4). While I agree that you lose fear by when you no longer see the consequences, but I also think that in terms of the environment and reproductive rights fear can be used as a catalyst for change. If we fear what the planet will be like without clean and renewable resources, water, clean air etc we will be motivated to change. In the same way the fear of a society without basic reproductive healthcare and freedoms, should make women and people with uteruses fearful of our future, and we should use that fear to go to the ballot box and rally for change.