Unpacking the Link Between Patriarchy and Climate Injustice

Growing up surrounded by small, integrated environmentally circular family farms, I witnessed a problematic transformation: our neighbors were forced to either expand, switch to monoculture farming or large-scale dairy or animal production, or face the threat of being pushed out of business. Many couldn’t survive the transition. Banks, the animal feed industry, and government policies — controlled primarily by powerful men — pressured these changes. The women who had played crucial roles on these farms were gradually replaced by machines, and corporate-controlled seeds, fodder, and oil-based fertilizers became the norm. New government policies forcibly stopped our practice as children, to collect organic green waste from the houses in our neighborhood as feed for the farm animals. Only ‘factory made’ feed was permitted.  

As a college student in 1968, I became part of a new movement in The Netherlands called “Men, Women, Society.” It was initiated by two feminist women and aimed not only at fighting for women’s rights but also at addressing the limitations patriarchy placed on men. The movement emphasized that patriarchy is a straitjacket for both women ánd men, and that liberation from these rigid roles and dominant male power required joint efforts. It was an urgent call for the emancipation of men. Though I felt very much at home in this movement, the connection between patriarchy and environmental issues had yet to be made.

Later, while living in Bangladesh for six years during the 1970s, I observed the same patterns of gender-based stereotyping, discrimination, and violence — along with similar shifts in agriculture. Development agencies and the UN were promoting so-called modern agricultural practices that relied on harmful chemical fertilizers and pesticides, overruling traditional agricultural practices that were well adapted to the climatic conditions and opportunities. In earlier days Bangladesh used to benefit from the annual overflowing of its rivers, bringing new fertility to the delta. But with fast increasing numbers of poor landless people forced to live on low land and river floodplains as well as serious human-caused erosion in the hills of neigbouring countries, annually recurring flooding has become disastrous, particularly for the lives of poor people and among them particularly women and children. Climate change has worsened the risks of flooding with its erratic monsoons, increased hurricanes and rivers filled with soil from neighbouring countries. 

As a low-lying delta country similar to other vulnerable low-lying nations, Bangladesh is now among the first nations seriously in danger as a result of global climate change. 

The Netherlands is a low-lying delta country as well, formed by rivers with rich alluvial soil, historically attracting a dense population, like Bangladesh. The big difference is that, due to its past as a colonising nation, the Netherlands has amassed the capital to protect its delta regions and the people living in low lying areas, countries like Bangladesh do not have such luxuries.

Over time, I realised that the patriarchal dominance of men in power over women, and in colonial history over entire nations and peoples, is deeply linked to the dominance and control over nature. The same attitudes that fuel violence against women (and against men and others without power) are also responsible for violence against the environment. And yet, there was little recognition of this connection for a long time, either in The Netherlands or in the global environmental movement. For a long time activists, movements (and researchers) lived in their own silos. 

In the Netherlands I also became involved in the environmental movement, but I realised that thinking about gender power issues, and certainly patriarchal masculinities as dominating the environment was mostly absent there.

Fortunately, international women’s rights organisations, such as WEDO and later Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF), began addressing these intertwined issues. In India, the eco-feminist Chipko movement, led by climate scientist Vandana Shiva, also began highlighting the links between environmental and gender justice.

More recently, some of us in the MenEngage Alliance came together following the 3rd Global Symposium—the Ubuntu Symposium—and established the MenEngage Climate Justice Working Group. We recognised that patriarchal control not only perpetuates gender inequality, economic injustice, and various forms of exploitation, but also drives environmental destruction, neocolonialism, and unsustainable practices in industries like food and textiles.

This understanding led to MenEngage’s involvement in addressing climate injustice through a lens of patriarchal masculinities. While we do not intend to become a climate protection organisation ourselves, we aim to be allies to the movements already addressing environmental issues. Our role is to shed light on how patriarchal masculinities contribute to environmental destruction and to build bridges between separate movements for gender justice, environmental protection, and broader feminist informed systemic change.

By breaking down the silos between these different spheres, we can amplify our impact — at local, regional, and global levels — and create a more unified push for justice in all its forms.

This perspective builds on a lifetime of witnessing the interconnectedness of gender power dynamics and environmental degradation. Our work in MenEngage is about making these links clearer and, in doing so, contributing to a more just and sustainable world.

By Jan Reynders, Senior Gender Justice and Sustainable Development Consultant, and representing MenEngage Europe on the global Climate and Environmental Justice Working Group and the Advocacy Working Group.

Jan Reynders, (MA in Development Studies)

Apart from being an active father and grandfather, I work as international Gender Justice and Sustainable Development consultant (evaluations, programme design, training, visioning, policy and strategy development, organisation and network development, change management) and as feminist activist; researcher and academic lecturer in the field of gender justice, women’s (socio-economic and political) rights, transformative/positive masculinities’ training, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), engaging boys and men in GBV prevention, conflict (prevention)/peace issues and sustainable development, and the promotion of feminist system change. 

In my work, I address boys and men as part of the solution to achieve gender justice, rather than (only) the problem, using an intersectional approach in analysing power and privileges positions (age, cast, class, ethnicity, identity, etc.). I do not believe in a ‘zero-sum’ approach, merely re-dividing existing power and wealth between women and men, or in simply flipping the gender-power coin to benefit only women, but in co-creating elements of gender transformative processes and system changes that contribute to sustainable socio- and economic development, gender and other justices, equality, peace, safety and happiness everywhere and for all people in their diversities, simultaneously promoting sustainable development and environmental protection for future generations. 

I am a member of the international MenEngage alliance; AWID; Share-Net International (Knowledge Platform on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and HIV prevention), advisor International Cooperation for Emancipator foundation, and I am active in the Dutch Gender Platform (WO=MEN).

Contact: reynders.jan@net.hcc.nl