What do advocacies for climate justice and action, gender rights, and inclusivity have in common? In all of these worthy causes, women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community are disproportionately affected by extreme weather events and other climate impacts. They mainly come from the poor and marginalized sectors, and they usually have dependents under their care: the children, the elderly, and sometimes persons with disabilities (PWD).
In the most rural and undeveloped settings, they are the ones who deal with the daily drudgery of fetching water, and foraging for fuel which they use to cook indoors under dangerously unhealthy air quality conditions. During natural disasters, women heads of households who do not have able men to champion them, may find that women and children do not come first—that they may be overlooked or left behind.
These problems are also magnified where the LGBTQIA+ community is concerned. The so-called Special Amelioration Program (SAP) is supposed to be for the head of the household, who is usually male. Although LGBTQIA+ may be functioning as actual heads of their households, as breadwinners, and caregivers, they may not be recognized as such. Same sex couples with dependent children may also be overlooked and bypassed, or discriminated against. The “lived” names or the names which trans people go by, may not be the ones printed in their government IDs, and so they may not be included in official lists for ayuda, or even be denied health services. These are just some of the grave matters of concern, since the Philippines has among the highest rates of natural disasters worldwide. Thus, many LGBTQIA+ orgs are very much involved with environmental issues.
“Gender, LGBTQIA+, and the environmental advocacies have always been crosscutting issues that are not talked about enough,” states Anthony “Toni” Lopez, Executive Director of Youth Voices Count, Inc. (YVC).
YVC is a regional network of young people belonging to diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). This includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual (LGBTQIA+) individuals in the Asia-Pacific region. YVC is legally registered as a non-governmental organization in Iloilo City, Philippines. It advocates for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), youth empowerment, and human rights issues of young LGBTQIA+ people.
Toni and his fellow advocate, Gabriel Felix “Gab” Umadhay, are both BD Education majors. They both believe that education is key in enabling ordinary Filipinos to acknowledge and to understand the lines that connect gender and climate justice issues, so that they might be empowered to make changes. It’s admittedly slow-going. Teaching more traditional Filipinos to recognize and respect the rights of LGBTQIA+, to treat them with dignity and respect is an uphill battle, as popular culture usually portrays LGBTQIA+ as comic or freakish figures, to be ridiculed and disrespected, or even to be exploited.
Gab is with the Iloilo City Office on LGBTQIA+ Affairs—the only one in the Philippines. Other highly urbanized cities such as Quezon City, Cebu, and Davao have consultants with a Pride Council, but only Iloilo City has an actual government office with plantilla positions. They even have a budget for Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression (SOGIE) awareness seminars.
The coming together of these advocacies for gender and climate justice is a reminder that everything which rises must converge. Greenpeace has a vision of a world where forests flourish and oceans are full of life; where energy is as clean as a mountain stream; where everyone has security, dignity, and joy. But as Greenpeace reminds us: “We can’t build this future alone, but we can build it together.” And that’s what volunteers like Toni and Gab are doing.
###
Menchu Aquino Sarmiento is an Iloilo-based volunteer for Greenpeace Philippines.