Earthrise Has Launched A New Video Series Exploring Climate Intersectionality

6 months ago

Climate+ will be made up of five short videos

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Media company Earthrise has launched a brand new, five part video series in partnership with Oxfam to delve into the multifaceted relationship between climate change and social justice. Each episode of Climate+ will focus on a new topic, with episodes launching weekly from today (8 July) across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Oxfam’s website. Here’s everything you need to know.

Climate+: Earthrise’s New Climate Intersectionality Series

The five themes are gender, conflict, class, colonialism and health. Filtering the climate crisis through these perspectives, the video series aims to highlight the urgency of addressing climate change through this social justice, equity lens.

The first episode is available to watch now. In it, activist Joyce Koech highlights how intertwined the climate crisis is with gender inequality, sharing how women and girls face the worst impacts of climate change, and yet are usually excluded from solutions. Amplifying the voices of the widely disregarded, especially women and girls from the Global South, plays a crucial part in climate resilience around the world.

Next week (15 July), Climate+ will explore how conflict is increasing around the world, often exacerbated by the climate crisis. Drought, flooding and scarce resources push people into desperate situations, increasing armed conflict and social unrest, particularly in climate-vulnerable regions like Sudan, for example. The climate crisis, then, can fuel existing tensions and create new ones, making recovery much more difficult – meaning it is crucial to address these issues together.

Then class will be at the fore (22 July), with Climate+ critiquing the predominantly white, middle-class climate activism seen in nations like the UK and highlighting the severe consequences faced by marginalised communities as a result. In the UK, lower-income areas face much more pollution, struggle the worst financial strain from rising food prices, and are more prone to extreme weather, from heatwaves to flooding. The episode calls for an inclusive approach to climate activism pushing for the voices and needs of those most affected to be heard so we can ensure a just transition towards a sustainable future.

Joi Lee

In episode four of Climate+ (29 July), the topic is health, considering this on an individual and global scale. The uptick in heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods we have seen in the climate crisis disrupts vital resources, infrastructure and healthcare systems, leading to wide-ranging public health impacts, from exacerbating physical illnesses to triggering major mental health crises. The climate crisis is a public health crisis, and addressing these problems together is crucial for protecting our wellbeing.

In 2022, the IPCC finally acknowledged a longstanding claim from the Global South: that climate change is rooted in the legacy of colonialism – and the final episode of Climate+ (5 August) zooms in on this. Colonialism exploited people and resources, destroying ecosystems and ravaging the earth in pursuit of profit – and still, the Global South suffers the consequences of a problem they didn’t cause. The episode calls for reparations to ensure a just transition to a greener future.