Greta+Gaard+and+Lori+Gruen

= = = = ===//Ecofeminis m// ===

Greta Gaard and Lori Gruen begin their essay, "Ecofeminism: Toward Global Justice and Planetary Health", by bringing up the problems that face us and severely affect third world countries, especially women and children. These problems include: overconsumption which goes hand in hand with overproduction of waste, pollution which affects the water and quality of the air, deforestation, world hunger, and systematic underdevelopment. They further explain the relationship between mutual reinforcement of the oppression of humans and the natural world and that there exists a separation between the two.

__//Ecofeminist Views// __ Many Ecofeminists have different views and approaches to gaining understanding of how global oppression works and what first caused the separation of the human from the natural world. Some views include:

Ecofeminists (all?/some?) identify cash crops as the primary cause that has led to the destruction of natural resources in many developing countries.
 * Carolyn Merchant sees the separation of culture from the natural world as an effect of the scientific revolution. With nature increasingly seen as a machine to be dissected and analyzed rather than something that was alive, she believes this lead to the mistreatment of animals and the lack of ethical consideration towards nature since it was considered dead.
 * Other Ecofeminists claim that patriarchal religion was the beginning of this separation. They claim that this dates back to 4500 b.c. (278). At this time, the shift from goddess worshipping cultures to cultures that worshipped male-deities influenced the focus of these cultures to change from the earth and women’s fertility being sacred, no gender hierarchy, to nature being seen as a sky god’s creation.
 * Patriachal domination as a human evolutionary development has also been suggested to have separated women animals and nature from men and their cultural activities.

“In India, for example, the mixed tropical forests were replaced with the non-native cash crops of eucalyptus tree and sugarcane, both of which require enormous amounts of water for such a semi-arid region (280)."

They also discuss livestock production as a major cause of desertification and intensive cattle production as a major source of pollution.

A very complex issue which they bring up is that of reproductive control vs. population control policy. Birth control programs alone cannot fix the problem of “population”. It is a deeper problem than simply population size. Instead other factors are of greater importance: the lack of having economic security, good health care, better education, and autonomy for women. [Sanchez] 

__//Facts/Quotes// __ <span style="background-color: rgb(0, 255, 0);">(state year for these figures and perhaps update with 2007 or 2008 figures?) <span style="font-size: 120%; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> <span style="background-color: rgb(0, 255, 0);"> (ok, good thus far but do they have a conclusion? how do they bring all of this together under "ecofeminism"? How does this relate to EE?)
 * <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">85% of the world’s income goes to 23% of the world’s people (276).
 * <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">1.2 billion people lack safe drinking water (277).
 * <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">“It is the North’s overconsumption, coupled with the globally unjust distribution of wealth, resources, and power, which is causing world hunger and environmental degradation” (282).
 * <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">“Nothing less than the future of the earth and all of its inhabitants may well depend on how effectively we can all work together to achieve global justice and planetary health.” (287).

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