10 - Realizing Climate Justice through Agroecology and Women’s Collective Land Rights

Summary

Introduction

The feminization of agriculture, or the sharp increase in the number of women in farming, is the result of a deep and ongoing agrarian crisis. Some scholars have more aptly named this phenomenon the ‘feminization of the agrarian crisis’ to capture how the ongoing agrarian crisis places a greater burden on women farmers than it does on their male counterparts. Patriarchal norms and attitudes prevent women from owning and controlling land, and women from marginalized castes and classes are the most disadvantaged (Pattnaik et al. 2018). Over 70 per cent of women in rural India are engaged in farming, but since the majority do not formally own land, they are not officially recognized as farmers and are instead considered as ‘farm helpers’ (Agarwal 2021). Given the substantial inequalities that affect women's ownership of and control over land, they cannot avail the benefits of land ownership – economic security, social status, and state support, among others.

This chapter looks at climate justice in the context of women in agriculture. Climate change and gender inequalities are deeply intertwined. Governments and civil society actors have launched various programmes aimed at climate resilience and adaptation in agriculture. However, when analysed through the lens of climate justice, these efforts do not always promote social equity. On the contrary, in some cases, mainstream climate solutions threaten women's land rights and farm-based livelihoods.

Using the novel framework of agrarian climate justice, which combines ideas from agrarian justice and climate justice, we explore women's land rights within agroecology programmes in India. We argue that advancing women's collective land rights through climate initiatives can achieve the twin aims of climate resilience and agrarian justice. We focus on agrarian land and do not look at forest lands, which, although equally important, are outside the scope of this chapter. Drawing from feminist scholars’ work on intersectionality, we emphasize the importance of an intersectional understanding of the differences between women based on intersecting identities of caste, class, age, education, and marital status, among others (Lutz, Herrera Vivar, and Supik 2011). Such an understanding is important to ensure that climate policies reduce, instead of reproduce, inequalities.