ABSTRACT
There is a growing consensus that climate change will have severe and disproportionate consequences for often-invisible and overlooked communities, places, and the people within them. The extractivist ideas and practices implicated in resource extraction and climate change play a dual role in this disproportionality. These ideas and practices not only illustrate a compelling need to think about how the experiences and knowledges of often-invisible people can become more prominent in policy processes that govern natural resource extraction, but also highlight the need for more sustainability-focused public policy. The knowledge and expertise of those overlooked within communities affected by resource extraction is urgently needed to counterbalance the corporate push for extraction and the direct role of extractive industries in fuelling climate change. Over the past ten years, the authors have collaborated with Indigenous and northern women in several northern Canadian communities to better understand not only their experiences living in resource-affected areas, but also their preferences for engaging in policy decisions that affect their lives. Concurrently, the authors have carefully examined the application (or lack thereof) of intersectionality in public policy, particularly in impact assessments, which are central to major resource extraction and development-related decisions. Drawing on this work, Levac and colleagues argue that applying GBA+ (an intersectionality-informed framework) in impact assessments offers the potential to improve climate change responses because GBA+ can strengthen communities’ adaptive capacities, foreground Indigenous knowledges, bolster meaningful engagement, and counter the extractivist mindset which values private profit over widespread economic and social costs. In making this argument, they explain how northern and Indigenous women’s experiences and preferences for policy engagement can be better reflected in impact assessments, and how more inclusive engagement processes can challenge extractivism, and thus mitigate climate change.
