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Kathy

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Intertwined: Women, Nature, and Climate Justice

by Rebecca Kormos

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read in August 2024

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Kathy said: " I love this inspirational book! In this book “Intertwined: Women, Nature and Climate Justice” Rebecca Kormos writes with a scientific and poetic personal lens about her experiences and how she has seen the world change in the last few decades with cl I love this inspirational book! In this book “Intertwined: Women, Nature and Climate Justice” Rebecca Kormos writes with a scientific and poetic personal lens about her experiences and how she has seen the world change in the last few decades with climate impact. She writes passionately about her own personal experiences in her beloved Gabon where she started out as a young scientist reporting in the field and how over the decades this beautiful jungle and its creatures have been severely impacted by deforestation and mining. She writes about the indigenous native American Ohlone women from the San Francisco Bay area whose ancestral burial grounds have been desecrated by “development” and their matriarchal society was lost during colonization, and how they are “re-matriating” their culture. Kormos’s book is a clarion call for all women to awaken their sleeping warrior and join other women to reclaim their power to heal, to teach and to lead in climate change issues. It is also a fascinating report of those brave women who are already doing this work.

Her chapters are categorized analogous to how a tree grows, from the roots of climate change, to the trunk (mother nature, mother earth), branches (interconnected movements of climate change) to the leaves that have sprouted from this wonderful tree! There are quotes in the book describing the miracle and beauty of nature - “a leaf makes sugar from air and water” and her prose describing her personal motivation to protect nature takes you right into the jungle with her -the smells of vanilla, the textures of the trees, the colors of the bright fruit. She takes you to the jungles of Africa, India and Asia to speak with women who care and are doing difficult environmental work despite their obstacles. This is an informative and beautiful call to action for all humans, nature lovers, but especially women. Because she tells us that women have a unique untapped potential to heal our planet. And yet, she tells us, that women are so underrepresented in leadership positions for NGOs, climate organizations, that seek to heal our planet. She argues that women need more leadership seats at the table of climate change. And she describes with unequivocal and stark detail that women (and children and elderly) suffer the most during climate disasters and famines that follow and why.

She tells the story of a team of female rangers who protect Kenya from poachers and how they passed the grueling ranger test, while the male trainees had failed! The reason for their strength to endure this three-day long test of constant movement, very little sleep and very little food, she writes, is that most of them had endured much worse growing up in a world of male sexual violence, and hunger, since women suffer more when there is famine, as a result of climate change. They had developed what Rebecca calls “absolute raw grit”!
Kormos challenges our society’s vocabulary around nature; for example, the use of the name “mother nature”; if you google this, she says, images appear (from our patriarchal society) as a sexy goddess bearing fruit with breast heavy and full belly. This, she says depicts women as a sex object or birth vessel, but Mother Nature, she says, is truly so much more. She also accounts that many indigenous cultures, to whom we are now ironically asking for help in climate change, do not see this entity as only female as their elders were both male and female with equal power. Additionally, and most important is how the world views so called “less developed” countries on only financial scales. She points out that by empowering women, there are benefits that flow to their children, their communities and their environment at local, national and global scales.

When I think of Mother Nature, I think of her as an extremely powerful being on the earth (who is pissed off now) and could very easily wipe every human off the face of the planet! This could happen and the Earth would still survive in some form whatever Mother Nature wants it to be!! Or perhaps this is a call to us from Mother Nature to wake up the sleeping female warrior in all of us that may have always been there since the beginning of time. In evidence of this Kormos recounts that the 35,000-year-old ivory carvings, found in Germany were actually women hunters (not men) as our patriarchal society assumed.
Kormos writes about women as very strong and certainly not a weaker or more vulnerable sex, but that our patriarchal and capitalistic society has placed restrictions on women that have made them vulnerable; such as lesser earning power, child bearing, family care, unpaid domestic work to name a few. Kormos argues that three things are most important to empower women to help heal our planet from climate catastrophe –

1) Education
2) Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services
3) Land ownership.

All three of which women have enjoyed for some time in the US, the UK, and other so called “developed” countries. However, Kormos writes that the Global South in the less “developed” countries, women do NOT have these basic things. Think about this!
Kormos's book details and documents all her sources and provides a volume of biographies of the women doing the work, references, almost a go-to starter book for any woman, or any human who wants to get involved in reversing climate change. This book provides HOPE in the untapped female “raw grit” to challenge the doubt we may feel about reversing climate change. She powerfully argues that greater inclusion of women in conservation and climate science is the key to the future of the planet.

In this US election year, we have heard the call to put a woman in charge; a “joyful warrior”- perhaps now is the time!
If you have ever had any inspiration to work on reversing climate change this is the book to read NOW! ...more "

Aug 23, 2024 11:35AM · see review