“Social Justice And Sustainability Must Go Together”

Yayo Herrero has found in ecofeminism the “coat rack to hang all the things that she had learned”. Among his projects, the Transitions Forum and a book to highlight the lack of love we feel towards everything and how we have reached this environmental crisis.

In the opinion of this anthropologist, state coordinator of Ecologists in Action, we will only get ahead if we understand that the solution does not go through the electric car, nor through technology that connects the entire planet, nor by consuming much less, but by a fair distribution of material goods. She is co-author of Climate Change (Litera Libros, 2019).

“Ecofeminism is useful to understand the moment we are in and live a fair and dignified life”

– Have you always been an ecofeminist?
– My first activism was in solidarity with the countries of the global south, I participated in the trade union and environmental movement. I come to feminism from environmentalism but with a fairly simplified idea of ​​feminism, and without thinking about ecofeminism to turn the relationships between people around. Reading Anna Bosch I understood the link between the two. When I understood that we were eco-dependent, interdependent, vulnerable to our limits, I saw that this created the basis for rethinking the economy.

“Why don’t we have a solid green party?”
– There isn’t. A party that attends elections every four years tends not to say anything that is uncomfortable or misunderstood without people commenting on it on the street. And the environmental movement is tremendously uncomfortable because it challenges wealth, work, the economy … That is why parties like Más País have never made environmentalism a central issue. Until we win things with a social majority, politicians will not take it to their program.

“Are we women warrior enough?”
-The feminist movement is telling more about what is happening, leading movements of the Earth. In Spain, the movements in defense of a more natural way of eating are by women, and in defense of housing, platforms for those affected by evictions, in schools, with pensioners, with femicides … In politics there are powerful women like Eva García Sempere, Clara Serra and more who are entering this line. But the same political parties must be rethought, because nothing alternative can be built if society and structures are violent and unequal.

Women can do a lot anywhere and weave ties.

–What can urban women do to promote ecofeminism?
-Very much. Cities are the largest carbon sinks and greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, and where the most energy is consumed. Ecofeminisms are very important because they can act on proposals of the building models, mobility, air quality and well-being of the city itself, drastically reducing animal protein, working on electromagnetic and chemical pollution. Women can do a lot anywhere and weave ties. And being black is not the same as being white and European; that is why some nationalities challenge us to rethink ourselves as people.

– Should environmental policies be more pink?
–Green policies aimed at reducing GEIS that are unjust from the gender or class point of view are not worth it. Each public policy must consider how it affects women, children and the elderly to be sure that, by trying to solve problems, it does not aggravate them. Sustainability and social justice must go together. We try to do it through the activist work of denunciation and the investigation of committed people, such as Dr. Carme Valls Llobet. That is why nature is key in ecofeminisms, very useful to understand the moment in which we are and live a fair and dignified life.

“That the rural fabric must offer women ways to develop their capacities”

– Why has Spain been emptied?
– It has to do with how public policy has abandoned many rural areas. For people to want to live in the countryside, they have to have a lively and dynamic rural fabric. And then there is a little analyzed part that has to do with the tremendous machismo that exists in many towns, which have been driving many young girls out of an aging space. That is why the rural fabric must offer women ways to develop their capacities, and that is why there are many women setting up agroecological projects in the villages, such as the Sindicato Agrario de Galicia.

–What place in Spain has the most potential to transform itself into a sustainable territory?
– One is Extremadura, with countryside, biodiversity and agrarian culture, and which could be at the forefront of cutting-edge projects. Vitoria is very advanced in urban sustainability, bioregion or ecoregion, extrapolating the urban approach to other municipalities. And Cantabria has social and political majorities that support sustainability. Meanwhile, we have to build alternative practices to do pedagogy because, from time to time, there are leaps of consciousness. Everything can change from one moment to the next, like when Greta Thunberg and the Fridays For Future movement appeared, and took thousands of people to the streets.

–You have just returned from Santiago de Chile in full social explosion
–I was invited to give talks at various universities. Chile is aware that the economy has grown enormously at the cost of the impoverishment and precariousness of the people and the land: devastated territories, sacrifice zones, tremendous pollution, extractivism, thermoelectric plants, copper mines, old and poor people with miserable pensions because for 30 years everything (water, studies …) has been privatized without improving people’s living conditions …

– What area were you in?
–I was with the group of Women of the Sacrifice Zone in Resistance, and what they told me were genetic malformations, children born with cognitive and learning disorders, cardiorespiratory diseases and sudden episodes of contamination that they have not always found an explanation for. On the same day in 2018, more than 300 boys and girls fainted at school in different places, which has been repeated until November 2019, reaching more than 1,000 people. They believe it was due to the interaction of various chemicals.

– Why has Chile reached this extreme point?
–It is not because of misery, but because of a bad concept of wealth. Chile has set an example as a model for the privatization of various sectors, such as pensions. The water supplied by Santiago is owned by Aguas Andinas, which belongs to Aguas de Barcelona. And now that they want to expand some hydroelectric facilities, they need more water and they buy it from Aguas Andinas, but it is the drinking water that Santiago supplies. It is a business disconnected from the risks and needs of the people, which does not put the population at the center.

But any path that is not aware that the solutions necessarily go through consuming less energy, less minerals, less water, is a dangerous path.

– What other bad examples are we following?
– We have exceeded the limits of the planet. But any path that is not aware that the solutions necessarily go through consuming less energy, less minerals, less water, is a dangerous path. An example is the electric car. It is fine to electrify public and collective transport, but to think that we can go from a combustion car to an electric one is a fallacy because minerals such as lithium, neodymium or platinum are needed, which are limited. To tackle the decrease in materials you don’t have to be an environmentalist. Good sharing is when resources can meet everyone’s needs.

“And how could this be fixed?”
–Lack of social pedagogy. The fight for Madrid Central is a good example. People are not stupid and in the end they say that, if they or their children are going to get sick breathing, it will be necessary to slow down traffic in the city or create regulations on the energy reduction of buildings that generate tremendous emissions with heating and air conditioning . So, with passive techniques, drafts or by installing solar panels on the roofs, it is possible to reach 2050 in compliance with the Paris agreements. It takes political will and that many people understand current problems and want those changes. You have to wake up.

“Are we at that point?”
– I believe that the nature of the crisis and the solutions have been hidden. Because most of the solutions involve putting a stop to the huge profits that some economic sectors have. But climate change cannot be solved with capitalist logic because this model is the cause of the environmental crisis. And this must be stated clearly. The catastrophe is doing nothing to get out of the collapse.

– What great truths should be said?
-First that the economy should not continue to grow with the same criteria as up to now. Other than that the well-being of the people cannot continue to rest on the consumption of more and more things. And learn to live with more justice. To understand the moment we are living in and to get out of this crisis, we must learn to share to extreme levels.

– What role should technology play in all this?
–New technologies are not going to make us have a dematerialized economy, because information and communication technologies, including 5G, are anything but dematerialized. The amount of materials, servers, screens, antennas, minerals … they need is enormous and it is supplied with minerals from the earth. Furthermore, the health consequences of these measures are not assessed.

–Finally, do you think there is environmental racism?
–Yes, unwanted infrastructures are always in less favored areas, such as incinerators. But if you want to fight something, you have to organize. Douglas Rushkoff outlines in his book Team Human how to team up with other humans to escape the disaster that millionaires know we are approaching and from which they plan to flee with technology. Health is not informing that electromagnetic pollution is harmful, although it is obvious that if the environment gets sick, so do we. That is why so much fibromyalgia and endometriosis that are approached as if they were hysteria.