Climate Ex-change

What do citizens think: Which policies are effective to protect our planet and combat climate change? Which policies are fair? Is it better if politicians present a policy package? As citizens are also voters, it is crucial to find out more about the public opinion on different types of policies. Luckily, in the past decade, researchers in a lot of diverse countries (and in Austria too!) have done research on this, and the results are quite unexpected!

Mangrove forests, occurring at the interface of land and sea, are among the most biologically complex ecosystems on Earth. They have recently gained international prominence as climate superheroes for their efficiency in absorbing and storing carbon from the atmosphere. For the local communities that depend on them for food and firewood, mangroves take on different meanings. They are highly gendered spaces, key to indigenous food sovereignty and cultural identity. But mangroves are rapidly declining, threatened by logging and resource exploitation. Drawing from research in the Solomon Islands, South Pacific, I make the case that to meet entangled food and climate justice goals, mangroves (and their management) require locally-grounded and inclusive feminist approaches.