Anne-Marie Hanson

This article addresses the formation of the Chen Kole ‘Lob women's recycling cooperative and its relationship to urbanization, plastics consumption, and the exclusionary spaces of conservation-as-development in coastal Yucatán, Mexico. Increasing amounts of plastic containers and other nonorganic garbage contaminate backyards, protected wetlands and marine areas, and individual homes located in low-lying floodable areas. However, in this region, the majority of sponsored economic development programs are directed at managing men's activities in sustainable fishing and ecotourism within natural protected areas. Both women's work and urban issues such as recycling and waste management have frequently been excluded from state policies and development practice. I draw from oral histories of women's experience in the home, in conservation space, and as participants in grassroots plastics recycling to underscore what motivated women to become involved in recycling and garbage cleanup, and how women came to be considered local professionals who maintain clean spaces. These histories underscore the links between gendered work, urban practices, and conservation-as-development, and how women's urban recycling work affects social differences and ecological decline within vulnerable coastal areas.

There are rich intellectual and activist traditions of feminist scholars throughout the Americas. These traditions are not cited sufficiently nor taught regularly, but are central to the future of critical Latin American geography. Scholarly tendencies to privilege and generalize masculine, Eurocentric, and colonial theories and voices have in turn excluded many others. If the goal of critical scholarship is to imagine and create geographies that do not perpetuate unjust paradigms, Latin American feminist activists and scholars make key moves that should broadly inspire critical geographers. In particular, feminist methodologies, theories, and practices embrace differences as fundamental, and promote links between diverse epistemologies and embodied understandings of the relationships between land, territories, bodies, and social systems. The goal of the article is to encourage more critical feminist scholarship in JLAG that challenges the boundaries of knowledge concerning women’s and men’s lives in Latin America.

There are rich intellectual and activist traditions of feminist scholars throughout the Americas. These traditions are not cited sufficiently nor taught regularly, but are central to the future of critical Latin American geography. Scholarly tendencies to privilege and generalize masculine, Eurocentric, and colonial theories and voices have in turn excluded many others.

If the goal of critical scholarship is to imagine and create geographies that do not perpetuate unjust paradigms, Latin American feminist activists and scholars make key moves that should broadly inspire critical geographers.  In particular, feminist methodologies, theories, and practices embrace differences as fundamental, and promote links between diverse epistemologies and embodied understandings of the relationships between land, territories, bodies, and social systems. The goal of the article is to encourage more critical feminist scholarship in JLAG that challenges the boundaries of knowledge concerning women’s and men’s lives in Latin America.

This article focuses on women’s grassroots organisations and their role in confronting waste-induced water, health, and development challenges in low-lying tropical coastal areas. The article highlights women’s waste management and plastics recycling organisations in Yucatán, Mexico and their role in preventing water-borne diseases. Women educate the community on the links between garbage and human health, challenge exclusionary gender norms by increasing women’s participation in community sustainable development, and improve urban conditions in the coastal wetlands. I draw from 400 surveys with coastal residents and 14 oral histories with coastal women to underscore the muddy links that connect sanitation to gendered responsibility and the exclusionary spaces of urban development and ecological restoration in the swamps. The information shared through the histories and broad surveys emphasises how gendered roles and expectations are critical variables in shaping social difference, ecological degradation, and human health in low-lying coastal areas and cities.

El presente artículo se centra en abordar la labor realizada por organizaciones de base de mujeres y la función que desempeñan al momento de hacer frente a desechos que provocan problemas en el agua, la salud y afectan el desarrollo de las zonas costeras tropicales bajas. A manera de estudio de caso, el artículo se enfoca en organizaciones de mujeres de Yucatán, México, dedicadas al tratamiento de desechos y al reciclaje de productos plásticos, analizando el rol que juegan en la prevención de enfermedades transmitidas por el agua. Las mujeres informan a la comunidad sobre el modo en que se relacionan la basura y la salud humana; además, cuestionan la existencia de normas de género excluyentes, buscando elevar la participación de las mujeres en el desarrollo comunitario sostenible; asimismo, mejoran las condiciones urbanas en los humedales costeros. A partir de la información aportada por más de 400 encuestas aplicadas a habitantes de la costa y por 14 testimonios orales brindados por mujeres de esta zona, la autora profundiza en las turbias conexiones que entrelazan, por un lado, el saneamiento con las responsabilidades basadas en el género y, por otro lado, los espacios de desarrollo urbano excluyentes con la restauración ecológica de las marismas. La información recopilada a partir de los testimonios y las encuestas amplias da cuenta de que las expectativas y los roles basados en el género constituyen variables críticas a la hora de establecer la diferencia social, la degradación ecológica y la salud humana en las zonas costeras bajas y las ciudades.

This article addresses the formation of the Chen Kole ‘Lob women's recycling cooperative and its relationship to urbanization, plastics consumption, and the exclusionary spaces of conservation-as-development in coastal Yucatán, Mexico. Increasing amounts of plastic containers and other nonorganic garbage contaminate backyards, protected wetlands and marine areas, and individual homes located in low-lying floodable areas. However, in this region, the majority of sponsored economic development programs are directed at managing men's activities in sustainable fishing and ecotourism within natural protected areas. Both women's work and urban issues such as recycling and waste management have frequently been excluded from state policies and development practice. I draw from oral histories of women's experience in the home, in conservation space, and as participants in grassroots plastics recycling to underscore what motivated women to become involved in recycling and garbage cleanup, and how women came to be considered local professionals who maintain clean spaces. These histories underscore the links between gendered work, urban practices, and conservation-as-development, and how women's urban recycling work affects social differences and ecological decline within vulnerable coastal areas.

This edited volume explores how a feminist political ecology framework can bring new and exciting insights to the study of livelihoods dependent on vulnerable rivers, watersheds, wetlands and coastal environments. Bringing together political ecologists and feminist scholars from multiple disciplines, the book develops solution-oriented advances to theory, policy and planning to tackle the complexity of these global environmental changes.

Lead authors:
Anamika Amani (GWA, India)
Anne-Marie Hanson (GWA, United States of America)

As oceans, seas and coastal areas all over the world are facing increasing pressures owing to climate change, pollution and globalization, women and men feel the impacts of degraded coastal and marine ecosystems in different ways. Across societies, women and men use and manage marine and coastal ecosystems differently and have specific knowledge, capabilities and needs related to coastal and marine resources. Historically, the work and contributions of women, informal workers, and indigenous groups have been routinely ignored or underestimated in coastal and marine research, management, and policy, including, but not limited to, their important work in fisheries and aquaculture, in the processing and trading of marine products, in managing plastic and other waste from urban and tourist growth, and in conservation and disaster risk reduction initiatives.

Increasingly, collective calls for participative, integrated and sustainable approaches to marine and coastal science and management are met with calls for gender inclusiveness, mainstreaming and sensitivity across the environment and development agendas. Yet, even as policymakers, environmental managers and development practitioners are made aware of why gender mainstreaming is important in the integrated management of marine and coastal ecosystems, they lack the practical guidance and tools on how to do it. This report brings together gender experts and experts from other fields in coastal and marine research to bridge this gender-technical divide.

Global lessons and research to inspire action and guide policy change Advance copy

Recommended citation: UNEP (2016) Marine plastic debris and microplastics – Global lessons and research to inspire action and guide policy change. United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi.

This chapter focuses on women’s grassroots organisations and their role in confronting waste-induced water, health, and development challenges in low-lying tropical coastal areas. As a case study, the chapter will focus on women’s waste management and plastics recycling organisations in Yucatán, Mexico and their role in preventing water-borne diseases and educating the community on the links between garbage and human health. Women educate the community on the links between garbage and human health; challenge exclusionary gender norms by increasing women’s participation in community sustainable development, and improve urban conditions in the coastal wetlands. I draw from over 400 surveys with coastal residents and 14 oral histories with coastal women, to underscore the muddy links that connect sanitation to gendered responsibility and the exclusionary spaces of urban development and ecological restoration in the swamps. The information shared through the histories and broad surveys emphasises how gendered roles and expectations are critical variables in shaping social difference, ecological degradation, and human health in low-lying coastal areas and cities

Workkshop date: 7-9 August 2019The Center for Urban Resilience and Environmental Sustainability (CURES) at the University of Illinois organized the one-and-a-half-day “CURES Connections Workshop: New Voices and Paths to Urban Sustainability” on August 7-8, 2019, at the Discovery Partners Institute in Chicago, IL. This National Science Foundation (NSF) supported workshop (Award #1929856) aimed to explore the concepts for advancing Sustainable Urban Systems Research Networks. The workshop explored important dimensions of convergent sustainability science to establish the foundation for a new multi-disciplinary multi-stakeholder research network that can deliver actionable research-based and cost-effective solutions to the problems that communities of many sizes really face. This workshop brought together over 130 stakeholders from across the United States representing researchers and experts from many disciplines (e.g., engineering, natural and social sciences, arts, and humanities) from universities and national laboratories, municipalities, agencies, private industries, non-profit organizations, and utilities. Involving a range of voices from these many different societal sectors, we identified critical gaps in the implementation of solutions for sustainability challenges in energy, water, and climate in a range of different types of urban systems – urban, suburban, rural – and across city sizes from small to large. The workshop was designed using a participatory modeling approach. Based on the insight gained from keynotes speakers, and from experts in panels (from municipalities; private industry, non-profit organizations and utilities; social science, arts and humanities; and technical, earth and natural sciences) and the outputs from carefully designed workshop activities, the workshop successfully achieved the following four objectives: 1. Identifying factors differentiating sustainability solutions for communities of different sizes — participants summarized commonalities and differences in critical problems, causes, and consequences, lever points, facilitators, and barriers to change for water, energy, and climate-related issues among cities of different sizes. 2. Integrating researchers with municipal and industry stakeholders on research — the workshop brought together more than 50% of participants from non-academia. Such a large stakeholder presence led to broadening the perspectives of participants on issues (including causes and impacts) and solutions (including barriers and enablers). 3. The inclusion of neglected disciplines in sustainability research — provided a unique perspective through the lens of arts and humanities and human dimension which is traditionally neglected in urban sustainability discussions. 4. Developing implementable strategies supporting a large scale multi-stakeholder research network to tackle sustainability issues — participants developed problem-solution pairs for convergence research around green infrastructure, decision support, renewables/solar, building coalitions between cities/regional planning, and building new business models/economic models.National Science Foundation (NSF) 1929856Ope

This edited volume explores how a feminist political ecology framework can bring new and exciting insights to the study of livelihoods dependent on vulnerable rivers, watersheds, wetlands and coastal environments. Bringing together political ecologists and feminist scholars from multiple disciplines, the book develops solution-oriented advances to theory, policy and planning to tackle the complexity of these global environmental changes.

ABSTRACT This article focuses on women’s grassroots organisations and their role in confronting waste-induced water, health, and development challenges in low-lying tropical coastal areas. As a case study, the article will focus on women’s waste management and plastics recycling organisations in Yucatán, Mexico and their role in preventing water-borne diseases and educating the community on the links between garbage and human health. Women educate the community on the links between garbage and human health; challenge exclusionary gender norms by increasing women’s participation in community sustainable development, and improve urban conditions in the coastal wetlands. I draw from over 400 surveys with coastal residents and 14 oral histories with coastal women, to underscore the muddy links that connect sanitation to gendered responsibility and the exclusionary spaces of urban development and ecological restoration in the swamps. The information shared through the histories and broad surveys emphasises how gendered roles and expectations are critical variables in shaping social difference, ecological degradation, and human health in low-lying coastal areas and cities.