In this episode we featured Andrea Vega Troncoso a queer, dominican, decolonial feminist and climate justice advocate. Originally from Santo Domingo, DR, Andrea now lives in Lenape lands or Brooklyn, NY. She’s currently working at WEDO (the Women’s Environment and Development Organization), supporting their global advocacy work at the intersections of climate, environmental, gender and development justice.

During the first part of the episode Andrea shares with us what it means for her to work under a "feminist framework" for climate action. Andrea expands on the idea of "care work as climate work and care jobs as green jobs", and centering the lives of Black and brown women who perform care work across the world. Next we focused on Andrea's undergrad thesis as an example of looking at the climate crisis affecting the DR and other islands through a feminist framework. Her thesis looked closely at how intertwined coloniality is to our current crises, especially the climate crisis. Lastly, we discussed the violence that "Latinidad" or the homogenization of Latin America contributes to the further marginalization of Black and Indigenous people within climate justice. As people of the "Latin American" diaspora, we felt it is our responsibility to continue having honest conversations about our different positionalities based on race, gender and class within the climate justice movement. To learn more about WEDO visit https://wedo.org/

And to (re)listen to other episodes discussing the complexities of Latinidad and its intersection with environmental justice check out these episodes:

https://nuestrasraicesverdes.com/series/chicanismoandindegeneity/
https://nuestrasraicesverdes.com/podcast/latinidad-representation-for-who/

Black Environmentalism & Settler-Colonial Education

Raíces VerdesBy Raíces VerdesAug 11, 2020