Environmental chronic emergencies, women’s inequality, and international law

During the last decade, international legal scholars have increasingly explored the ways in which international law engages with women’s inequality in the context of the prevention of, response to, and recovery from disasters, including natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, or bushfires. On the contrary, less attention has so far been dedicated to explore the state of inter-national law on women’s inequality and ‘environmental chronic emergencies’ (‘ECEs’), that is to say, according to the definition proposed by this Volume, long-term, gradual environmental phenomena caused by the unsustainable extraction and use of natural resources, pollution and urbanization – such as, for example, air, water and soil contamination, increasing temperatures, sea level rise, loss of biodiversity, and deserti-fication – whose adverse impacts on nature and human beings, especially women, and other disadvantaged groups, are far less visible than those of disasters but no less pervasive. This chapter aims to fill this gap, building upon (and trying to contribute to) a flourishing literature that examines the complex interconnections between gender inequalities and environmental degradation through an ecofeminist lens. To this end, the analysis is organised as follows. Section 2 and Section 3 set the scene by, respectively, il-lustrating ECEs’ disproportionate gendered impacts on women and introducing eco-feminism as a particularly suitable theoretical framework for understanding their root causes and devising adequate legal responses. Section 4 then draws on ecofeminist in-sights to offer a critical analysis of how current international law, particularly human rights and environmental law, engages with women’s inequality in the context of ECEs. It shows that, while noticeable progress has been made in acknowledging the particular challenges that slow environmental degradation poses to women, weaknesses and limitations still remain – due to the conceptual architecture underlying relevant norms, processes and solutions – in how these challenges are currently addressed. Finally, Section 5 briefly summarises the analysis and provides some concluding observations