We offer a large extract from the book "The era of climate justice" by
Paola Imperatore and Emanuele Leonardi, Orthotes Editrice, whom we thankfor their availability. In particular, we offer readers of the magazine
the paragraph on the emergence of climate justice in Italy.
"Since the streets of the world have filled with young people chanting
climate justice, it seems that the formula ecological transition is on
everyone's lips. As if it were something new, a stroke of genius that
the elites at all levels - UN, EU, national governments - would have
produced to meet the understandable demands of girls and boys. The book
by Paola Imperatore and Emanuele Leonardi dismantles this narrative,
showing it for what it is: a lie. The era of climate justice,
inaugurated in 2019 by the global strikes, is in fact first and foremost
the acknowledgement of the failure of the idea that the centrality of
the market can solve the climate crisis. Like it or not, despite the
"environmentalist" treaties (Kyoto 1997 and Paris 2015), the continuous
increase in emissions over the last thirty years - and, indeed, the
increase in the rate of emissions! - testifies to the defeat of this
ecological transition from above. It is no coincidence that the climate
strikes say something simple: "thanks for trying, it didn't work, leave
room for us" - that is, for the radical, systemic alternative. An
unprecedented political space thus emerges, yet to be filled but already
full of extraordinary potential: the ecological transition from below,
based on the essential combination of environmental protection and the
fight against social inequalities."
The emergence of climate justice in Italy
In Italy, climate justice emerges as the result of multiple processes,
heterogeneous and sometimes parallel, which over the years have found a
common space for elaboration and action on the terrain of
intersectionality and convergence.
...between 2016 and 2019 we witness the emergence of two large and
important global movements whose repercussions will be fundamental for
the trajectory of struggles in Italy. In 2016, transfeminist assemblies
of Non Una di Meno (NUDM) were born throughout the country, inspired by
the Argentine women who gave life to the Ni Una Menos movement following
the rape, torture and murder of sixteen-year-old Lucia Perez (38).
Although environmental violence is not the central focus of NUDM, this
dimension is nevertheless set to be read, understood and acted out
through transfeminist categories. In fact, NUDM opens a precious space
for thematicization and collective deconstruction of the binarism that
organizes our way of being in the world, questioning the founding
dichotomies of modern thought such as those between man/woman,
society/nature, active/passive and many others. Within this framework of
struggle, which found its first synthesis in the writing of a plan
against gender violence,(39) a reflection on the relationship between
humanity and nature develops that shuns essentialist narratives to
instead highlight the connection between bodies, territories and
environmental violence, whose common matrix lies in patriarchal,
capitalist and colonial oppression. As emerges from the intervention of
a person active in NUDM, during a national assembly against large
useless and harmful works in January 2019: The Non Una Di Meno Plan has
recognized biocide and environmental devastation as one of the
expressions of patriarchal violence against the bodies of women, of
LGBPT*QIA subjects, of human and non-human animals, of the Earth. A
systemic violence, which is based on all areas of life, on the logics of
ownership and exploitation of extractive, pastoral and patriarchal
capitalism in which the oppressed bodies of human and non-human animals,
and of the Earth, are at the same time ‘feminized' and ‘naturalized'. A
violence that invisibilizes and criminalises the struggles for the right
to freedom and self-determination over our bodies and for the defense of
land, water, air, forests.(40)
If it is not the transfeminist movement that first focuses attention on
the connection between environmental issues and power relations, we
believe it can certainly be said that Non Una di Meno - starting from
its own situated perspective - manages to open up, from the fight
against harmfulness to climate justice, a space for collective
discussion around this issue, even though - we repeat - it does not yet
adopt the terminology of climate justice as its own frame of reference.
Instead, it will be explicitly claimed by the subsequent wave of
mobilizations. In fact, between 2018 and 2019, a new cycle of
environmental protests exploded on a global scale, leading to the birth,
in a more stable and permanent way, of two large social movements:
Fridays for Future (FFF) and Extinction Rebellion (XR). In this global
process, Italy plays a particularly important role, especially thanks to
the appearance of a large number of local FFF groups, which began to
organize around the date of the first global climate strike, March 15,
2019, which was followed just a few days later, on March 23, by the
"March for the climate and against useless large-scale projects"
organized by territorial struggle groups throughout the country. (41)
Taking most people by surprise, 400,000 students took to the streets,
starting to wonder what sense there could possibly be in continuing to
study to secure a future that, due to climate collapse, could already be
irremediably compromised. Milan would even turn out to be the second
city in the world in terms of number of participants. Shortly
thereafter, around 150 FFF groups would be born, taking to the streets
almost weekly throughout 2019. (42) This cycle of mobilizations brought
a new generation to the streets, many of them with their first political
experience, which placed the demands of climate justice at the centre of
the political debate. This is an unprecedented fact. Of course, the
great media visibility of the initial mobilizations contributed to this,
particularly in the run-up to the climate strikes. In a few months,
numerous public institutions - from municipalities to universities, up
to the Italian and European Parliaments - have signed the Declaration of
Climate Emergency submitted by the climate movements in order to
recognise the urgency of climate change and act accordingly, with the
objective (already established, on paper, by the Paris Agreement) of
limiting the average increase in global temperature within the threshold
of 1.5° by 2100. In the meantime, under the pressure of a public opinion
increasingly attentive to ecological issues and the problem of climate
change, large companies of all kinds - first and foremost energy
companies - are starting to invest in advertising campaigns that are a
hymn to greenwashing (43) and dubious circular economy projects. (44)
...There is therefore an attempt, almost immediate and very energetic,
of "corporate recovery" of climate issues, aimed at softening the tone
and content of the protest. However - and this is a crucial step - this
attempt not only fails, but is also explicitly denounced by both FFF and
XR. What is happening, in the opposite direction to the attempted
co-optation by the elite, is a process of progressive radicalization
that will take shape during 2019, strike after strike. A change that
gives us the measure of this process is, for example, the different way
in which FFF Italia interprets climate change, at the beginning and at
the end of 2019. In the embryonic phase, the central frame - that is,
the framework through which reality is perceived and interpreted -
sounded more or less like this: "let's save the planet from global
warming because there is no planet B" . According to this narrative, the
challenge was to unite us all to save the planet, and to do so by giving
voice to science. The centrality that is recognized to the scientific
community is in some ways physiological for a movement that, like FFF,
was born on the impetus of the dramatic IPCC reports and the heartfelt
appeal of Greta Thunberg to "give voice to science".
We are a movement of people that addresses the whole of society. We
fight to stop climate change, relaunching the alarms of the scientific
community and denouncing the shortcomings of governments. ( 46)
These are the words with which the movement defines itself in the first
National Assembly in Milan, in April 2019. There is certainly no lack of
criticism of the "unsustainable and unjust development model" , however
this aspect is still immature at this stage. In a short time, this type
of discourse is accompanied - if not replaced - by a more radical and
political frame, summarized by the slogan "let's change the system, not
the climate" . In fact, in the second National Assembly held in Naples
in October 2019, the dominant economic system is indicated as
responsible for the climate crisis and - without denying the importance
of science - it is stated that «the data are scientific, but the choices
are political» (FFF Italy, Report 2nd National Assembly), (47)
redefining the relationship between science and politics and identifying
its legitimacy in a different and radical idea of ecology rather than in
mere technical knowledge - whose declinations and implications can
evidently be problematic if not slippery (think for example of nuclear
power, or even Carbon Capture and Storage [CCS]; and the list could go on).
For us, climate justice is closely connected to social justice, the
ecological transition must therefore be accompanied by the
redistribution of wealth, we want a world in which the rich are less
rich and the poor less poor. Changing the system and not the climate is
not a slogan for us. The change of economic and development system is
for us a central theme and necessarily connected to the transition
towards an ecological model. (48)
Global warming is progressively becoming a challenge that takes into
account social stratifications to understand both the origin of the
phenomenon and its consequences. Changing the system also means not
analyzing the ecological question as a sectoral question.
Intersectionality is a way of reading that allows us to read society in
analytical terms by systematizing the different struggles and the
multiplicity of oppressions that characterize our patriarchal, sexist,
racist, colonialist, macho system based on the logic of accumulation and
profit. (49)
The politicization of climate justice movements also occurs through
further processes, meetings, and contaminations.... Meetings, seminars,
and in-depth studies prove to be central in providing new climate
movements with a panorama of readings and practices related to political
ecology, questioning two misleading narratives: that of the Anthropocene
as an era in which humanity as a whole - without distinctions - becomes
a destructive geological force; and that of climate change as a
challenge that sees all people in the same boat - to highlight instead
the social and geopolitical stratifications. At the basis of this
political ecology is the understanding of the power relations based on
class, gender, "race", age and species that shape the way we impact the
planet and the way we pay the consequences of environmental degradation
and global warming. 51 Gradually, this process of discussion and
relationship intervenes on the reading patterns of the new climate
movements, preparing the ground for the process of convergence with the
demands of the world of work. It is in fact worth underlining the
contribution that the Political Ecology Network gives to the analysis of
the tension between environment and production, recovering the
experiences of worker ecology of the Seventies to develop, in the debate
on climate justice, a class perspective. 52 ... Without these
transformations, even in the awareness of their limits, it would
probably have been more difficult to imagine the convergence between the
GKN Factory Collective and the climate movements.
The construction of these moments responds to the need to address the
nexus between climate crisis, fossil capitalism, patriarchy and
colonialism. What is at stake is the ability to grasp all these
dimensions as intersected within that prism that we call political
ecology. In this long and intense journey, (61) which we have tried to
reconstruct in broad terms, the climate movement has faced a delicate
moment that we believe is necessary to consider, to account for how the
overall scenario in which the various realities find themselves acting
has changed and, at the same time, to understand the trajectory of
climate justice in Italy. We are referring to the pandemic that,
starting in March 2020, has upended daily life across the planet,
initially imposing a violent setback on the movement, which was
otherwise in full growth. This has forced all organizations to
recalibrate themselves in the months and years that followed. On the one
hand, there was the ability to promptly provide a reading of the
pandemic crisis connected to the ecological question, the centrality of
which at that point appeared undeniable. Both collectives and climate
movements have highlighted that the rapid spread of Covid 19 is related
to deforestation, the destruction of ecosystems and intensive farming
techniques, (62) which favor the species jump [spillover] of pathogens
between wild animals and domesticated animals or humans (zoonosis). (63)
It has also been emphasized how pre-existing air pollution has made
people more vulnerable to respiratory infections, quickly leading to a
surge in the contagion curve - evidently due to a health system that has
been the victim of thirty-year cuts and therefore afflicted by a
systematic shortage of medical personnel and beds, as well as personal
protective equipment, respirators and lung ventilators. (64) On the
other hand, the pandemic seemed, for a brief moment, the perfect
opportunity to reverse the trend: the Italian government had in fact
declared that it wanted to launch an ecological transition program
through the Next Generation EU funds, which would be the PNRR. But soon
the timid hope that public institutions could take charge of a truly
just transition, ecologically and socially, proved to be a pious
illusion: the "resilient" policies implemented by governments with
significant public investments became instruments of further
dispossession of the popular classes. And in fact, while the Government
continued its discussions with the main energy and military companies in
the country, primarily responsible for the ecological degradation, the
climate crisis and the quasi-colonial policies pursued in defense of
supposed strategic assets, large companies were preparing - after having
received generous public subsidies without "strong" conditionalities
(65) - to relocate, in the name of an ecological transition that is
completely false as it is based on the mantra of competitiveness, which
puts the thirst for profit of companies before the well-being of the
population. If therefore since 2019 the market-based model of governance
of the climate crisis was crumbling under the pressure of old and new
movements, from territorial ones to FFF and XR, with the PNRR and the
closing of the window of opportunity opened during the pandemic, any
expectation regarding the ecological transition from above definitively
fades. In short: it did not take long for the knots to come home to
roost. Instead of a transformation of work in the wake of a 360-degree
policy of care, we have witnessed the relaunch of large-scale useless
and harmful works and of concreting. The energy transition has shown its
antiphrastic face, even more so after the start of the war in Ukraine,
translating into new investments in fossil fuels and
mega-infrastructures - essential and strategic for the country according
to the increasingly insistent and aggressive narrative of short-sighted
institutions and multinational giants - while retail prices skyrocketed
together with the dividends of energy companies, also fueling a
devastating inflationary spiral driven by profits. (66) Here, in the
political will to protect big capital, lies the deep root of both the
high cost of living that has dramatically hit the working classes in the
last year and a half, and the ongoing degradation of nature. Precisely
for this reason, we need perspectives and movements that can escape the
dichotomies that have historically produced conflict between the social
question and the ecological question, and that instead recognize the
common matrix of environmental and class violence. And it is precisely
in this furrow that the struggles for climate justice are inscribed.
Notes
38) Dinamopress, Anger against the patriarchal sentence for the femicide
of Lucía Pérez in Argentina: https://www.dinamopress.it/news/rabbia-la
sentencia patriarcale-femminicidio-lucia-perez
argentina/https://www.dinamopress.it/ news/rabbia-la
sentencia-patriarcale-femminicidio-lucia-perez argentina/ [2018].
39) Nudm, We have a plan. Feminist plan against male violence on women
and gender violence: https://nonunadimeno.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/
Abbiamo_un_piano.pdf [2017]
40) Nudm, Assembly of movements against large-scale useless and imposed
works: https://www.alternativeaps.org/2019/08/19/uno
sguardo-sulla-partecipazio-ne-femminile-e-femminista
nei-movimenti-contro-le-grandi-opere/ [2019].
41) S. De Rosa, The battle of the climate:
https://napolimonitor.it/climate-change-towards-global-strike [2022].
42) FFF Italia, Official Map: https://www.fridaysforfutureitalia.it/
participate [2020].
43) Pressenza, Fridays for Future: campaign against ENI's greenwashing:
https://www.pressenza.com/it/2020/01/fridays-for-future-campagna-contro-il-greenwashing-di-eni/
[2020].
44) Economiacircolare.com, The Municipality of Palermo relies on Eni for
the circular economy. Environmentalists protest:
https://economiacircolare.
com/palermo-protocollo-eni-proteste-ambientaliste/ [2021].
46) FFF Italia, Report 1st National Assembly - April 2019:
https://fridaysforfutureitalia.it/report assemblea-nazionale-milano/ [2019].
47) FFF Italia, Report 2nd National Assembly - October 2019:
https://fridaysforfutureitalia.it/report-2 assemblea-nazionale/ [2019]
48) Ibidem.
49) Ibidem.
51) S. Barca, Forces of reproduction, Edizioni Ambiente, Milan 2023.
52) For a reflection on the relationship between ecology and the working
class see also G. Arrighetti, Per un'ecologia conflittuale. Notes on the
new edition of "L'imbroglio ecologico" by Dario Paccino:
https://www.leparoleelecose. it/?p=42465 [2022].
61) S. Ghribi, The hottest summer of autumn: and summer? Reflections and
perspectives of the climate justice movement in Italy:
https://www.leparolee lecose.it/?p=45098 [2022].
62) Ecologia Politica Network, Dialogues on the pandemic, cit
63) R. Wallace, Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of covid-19, 2020,
«Monthly Review Press», New York.
64) A. Malm, Climate, Corona, Capitalism: Why the Three Go Together, tr.
it. V. Ostuni, Ponte alle Grazie, Florence 2021.
65) The term conditionality refers to the clauses that a government can
place on a company in exchange for public financial support, with the
strategic objective of guiding its action.
During the pandemic, for example, many countries provided aid to large
companies, but placed demanding social conditions (for example, the
continuity of employment of workers even after the end of the pandemic)
or environmental conditions (for example, the commitment to reduce
emissions by a certain date). This did not happen in Italy. See M.
Mazzuccato, Non sprechiamo questa crisi, Laterza, Rome-Bari 2020, pp. 15-17.
66) F. Scirchio, The gas war:
https://jacobinitalia.it/la-guerra-del gas/ [2022]
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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